August 30, 1996
Why I thought that coming to Ankara and finding a campground would be easy, I don't know. Perhaps because our five days camping at the Atakoy Campground near Istanbul had been so relaxing. Those days had softened me. At the border we'd picked up a Turkey campground map and an Atakoy brochure from tourist information. That little red tepee was exactly were it was suppose to be. But the tepees near Ankara? Well, they were different.
Ankara, the capitol of Turkey, wouldn't have been on our list of places to visit if it hadn't been for investigating Visas for Syria. We'd already battled the tangle of streets in Istanbul this morning while trying to find the motorway, (Istanbul's population is ten million and we swear every one of them was on the roads when we were) and we weren't looking forward to another battle later in the day. But again we were softened when the ride to the capital was smooth and easy; over 400 kilometers of high speed motorway, practically traffic free. We'd been lulled by the sound of tires on pavement into a false sense of security; finding a campground would be painless.
But that sense of confidence ended when the Motorway did. The unfinished section led to our destination, the maze of winding city streets, heavy with bus and taxi traffic glared at us straight ahead. In we plunged. Yellow taxi cabs were upon us like ants - we were the marshmallow being carried by their army into the swarming den. We couldn't turn, we couldn't stop, we could just be pushed along. And then matters got worse - they always find a way to do that. A celebration for Victory Day was in progress downtown. Most of the streets were blocked to traffic. Those that weren't were taken over by another army of people ants. Grid lock lay just ahead. "Relax, let the yellow army ants carry you through it," I told myself. But although my brain repeated relaxing mantras, my knuckles remained white, wrapped around the steering wheel.
Somehow we made it out of the mess. We made it to the edge of town and stopped. Our country map of Turkey at a 1:800,000 scale put us somewhere on a thin yellow line surrounded by grey. All the wider red lines led back to the city center The people at the pizza cafe were very friendly; so eager to help. Five of them streamed forward to consult our map. One man waved his hand to the right, another man nodded approval and jutted his hand to the left. The girl, who had produced a city map, traced a route with her fingernail that lead back to the center. She tapped it on a thicker yellow line that was cut off by the paper's edge. Another man curved his finger around the red line trailing off the bottom of the map. The girl folded the map and put it away; then they each wrote street names on the back of business cards. "Watch for these." With the stack in our hands we thanked them, smiled and drove off totally confused.
The people at the Shell gas station were friendly too. No one spoke English but we gathered that at least one man had heard of the campground. He offered to ride with us the 25 kilometers to get there. It was right near his home, we could drop him on the way. (At least that's how we interpreted his pull at the door handle). We nodded, we thanked them, but we'd go it alone all the same. Twenty-five kilometers seemed an awfully long way. We studied the maps again. One map put the campground inside the highway ring, the other put it outside. But either way it didn't matter, when we got to the highway it was still in pieces waiting to be assembled.
We ended up at another gas station (I know not where) and since the sun was already sinking we began this query a bit differently. "Is the gas station open 24 hours? Can we park here?" "Yes and yes." So here we are, somewhere near Ankara, dreading the battle we will be faced with tomorrow. We have no idea how to get back to the center of town, but we do know that finding a campground will be anything but easy.