We spent 10 great days on the trail after leaving Fethiye at the end of January, walking the varied rural landscape in this tail end of the Taurus Mountains. From the first steep climb up above the bay at Olu Deniz, we were initiated into a mountainous territory of limestone and rocky, sometimes treacherous, trail. We wound through olive groves at all elevations, built on terraces etched out of the hillsides by generations of hard-working hands. The small farm fields, now plowed into winter furrows, seemed to promise a crop of stones, flung down from mountain heights and rising through centuries of erosion, more than a crop of wheat. But Turkey is an amazingly productive place...

B and I are taking a break from hiking to let a storm pass over us in Kalkan... we've just had 10 days of great hiking and we're thinking of going out for more if the weather cooperates.

The walking has been wonderful! The terrain is like nowhere we've been before, and

On these travels, even a relatively uneventful day can fill our brains with so many thoughts and questions that we hesitate to post an update until we've untangled a bit and feel we have something intelligent to say. Sometimes, though, that keep us from even letting folks know what we've been up to.

We left Istanbul, finally, after a nice party at Doro's house and a day of running errands. We got our Istanbul photos uploaded, by the way, and started a post on all the things we did during our month there, but it's not finished yet.

An overnight train took us from Istanbul's asian train station (on the east side of the Bophorous) to Denizli,

Last saturday, we were on our way to meet our friend Gonca for lunch. On the phone, she warned us that it would be the first year anniversary of the assasination of a prominent liberal journalist. There would likely be protests, she said, and she warned us not to get mixed up in any.

Someone should make a movie about the odd little hotel we found, and stayed in for a few days here and there, in İstanbul. İt's a slightly ramshackle old building, stashed in wobbly

Börek's hard to describe... it comes in many forms and variations on the same theme can be found in Greek, Romanian, and likely many other cultures. Think spanokopita, or even an English hand pie, and you're close! Here's a recipe (in broad strokes) from watching Doro's Armenian housekeeper Flor make a potato börek.

Kisir (pronounced "ksrr") is Turkey's version of tabouleh, a salad of bulger and parseley. Cem taught me how to make it, and although, on our first attempt (at Hayati's house), we decided to call it pilaf instead, our second attempt, at a party at Doro's, was a success!

Long story short, our phone works again... we can send and receive calls, apparently, as of tonight. After hours of standing around Turkcell offices

Friday we learned that our non-Turkish cell phone is not allowed to remain unregistered longer than 2 weeks... it stopped working that morning. We spent the afternoon at Turkcell, our network provider, after a shifty phone guy