KEY POINTS:
"Get down! Someone's coming!"
In the distance headlights rapidly approached. There was no escape, no legitimate excuse for our situation. Desperately we ducked behind the car, but it was futile. All about us the dust was already glowing in the light.
Chris swore under his breath as the faint squeal of a car braking signalled that we were caught. Like a naughty child I stood up from my hiding place, pretending to busy myself with our tent.
Car doors opened and two men emerged from the glare of the headlights, their dark heads inclined quizzically. Apparently tourists with absurdly painted rally cars did not regularly sleep in the fields of this isolated part of northern Turkey.
"Hello," I said in my Turkish accent, smiling insincerely.
The men didn't speak a word of English, but seemed friendly. A few awkward moments later, one of them was in the front seat of the car directing us somewhere and smelling strongly of body odour.
The man in our car was called Hussein and like pretty much all the men we met in Turkey, he was a champion (women on the other hand were much less forthcoming and largely absent from public places).
As New Zealanders we like to think of ourselves as a pretty friendly lot, but compared with Turks we are frigid and reserved.
When the lunatics on the motorways in Turkey overtook us, they tooted twice and smiled.
When we asked people for directions they wouldn't just point, they'd get in their cars and lead us to our destination.
They would surround our car when we parked, sit down next to us at beaches and bring us cups of Coca Cola at every opportunity. And that was before we told them that we were New Zealanders.
Apparently if you want a few million Turkish brothers, all you need to do is arrange for your ancestors to fight and die trying to invade their country. Turks love us.
So Hussein's behaviour was not coming as a great surprise, even when he led us into a room with three couches in it and indicated that we could sleep there.
Although the room was like a Turkish sauna, Team M3 smiled at each other when he left the room: It was after midnight, we were exhausted from another long drive and we each had a couch with our name on it. (Marta and Hussein pictured above on one of these couches.)
Minutes later, as we were patting our beds, Hussein re-emerged with a big bottle of coke and a bowl of pistachio nuts. Refusing such hospitality under the circumstances was unthinkable, though we realised immediately the danger we were in.
After the third top up of coke we worked out that if we didn't drink any, Hussein would not be able to top us up anymore. Our ingenious discovery had two unfortunate consequences, however:
1. By 1am Hussein had drunk over a litre of coke and was bouncing of the walls, talking to us as if we were old friends, rather than people who couldn't understand a single word of what he said.
2. To compensate for our apparent distaste for coke he built a fire in his stove, boiled some water and made us an enormous pot of tea that we were going to have to finish before going to bed.
By 2am we were becoming desperate.
The temperature seemed to rise with each glass of tea or new dish of food. Sweat was literally dripping off us.
When we tried to open the windows Hussein was aghast, pinching the skin on his arm and screwing up his face to demonstrate what would happen should we be so foolish.
We were now talking openly in English - when Hussein wasn't jabbering in Turkish - about the possibility of simply picking up our things and driving back to our field, all the while smiling politely.
Finally, at about 3am, we managed to convince our host how tired we were. Clearly a little disappointed, he took away the unfinished food and brought in blankets to keep the things that pinched his arms away.
We soon discovered that these things were flies that liked nothing better than feasting on human sweat.
The problem was that as soon as we fell asleep under our protective blankets, we became so hot and sweaty that we would unconsciously cast off them off. This would allow the flies to lick and bite our exposed and very sweaty limbs.
At first light, shattered and a little disorientated, we decided to make our escape, thanking Hussein profusely for the special brand of torture that he had inflicted upon us.
"No" we assured him, we could not stay another night as we waved and locked our doors.
The road ahead led to Georgia, where we hoped people would be a little less accommodating.
Matt Kennedy-Good
Click here for photos.
Click here for the team's website.
