Our next stop, Cappadocia, requires a 10-hour overnight bus ride. We hop on our Fez Travel bus in Olympos, grateful there are only a few of us. Plenty of room to stretch out and try to get some sleep.
We’re a little nervous about one thing: there is only one bus driver as we board for the overnight trip. Our previous Fez Travel guide told us there would be two drivers for the overnight trip, because it was such a long drive (and two drivers are required by law). The Turkish government put the two-driver regulation in place after an overtired driver fell asleep at the wheel, and drove off a cliff killing him and a busload of Russian tourists.
To ensure compliance with the new regulations, bus drivers are now required to carry an identification pass, which they plug into a special console in the dashboard. This pass records pertinent info on the driver – is he going too fast, driving too long, etc. All this is recorded to the driver’s pass. To be helpful, when it’s time to take a break, switch drivers, or slow down, the console beeps to remind the driver. If the driver drives past these limits and the pass records that he has done so, it’s a hefty fine.
We’re not too concerned as we board the bus, as we assume we will pick the other driver up along the way. Or so we hope…
As twilight deepens, we depart, winding up into the mountains from Olympos. Our group, which includes a couple of Australian women and two Irish men, are looking forward to watching DVDs to help pass the time. One problem: we happened to be on the only Fez bus with no DVD player. Ah well, we’ll just get some sleep.
We settle in, and the bus goes silent. Some people listen to their iPods, some read by flashlight, and others close their eyes and try to sleep. We decide to stretch out across four seats and make a bed of it.
We take a break around 1 am, stopping at the mecca of all truck stops. Brightly lit, the station is crowded with hundreds of people and dozens of shops and food stalls. This stop makes a NJ Turnpike rest area look like a $.10 lemonade stand.
Passengers and drivers stand around smoking cigarettes, while others go inside to buy snacks or drinks, or visit the facilities. Outside, a woman sits on a platform making savory pancakes on a griddle. A stall sells cooked corn kernels, which the stall operator mixes with unpronounceable spices and seasonings. Fresh fruit, baklava, Turkish music CDs are all available.
We also run into Kees, one of our new friends from the gulet trip. He had left a pair of his swim trunks in our gulet transfer bus and we brought them along with us, hoping that we might run into him in Cappadocia. Happily, shorts and Kees are reunited. Kees is traveling on a packed public bus, and is less than complimentary about the conditions. Hearing about his bus, we feel a bit more grateful for our spacious ride.
It’s now been about five hours since leaving Olympos, with another five hours to go before we reach the Cappadocian town of Goreme. Our bus driver motions that it’s time to get back on the bus. We board, looking for his relief driver to come along. And keep looking, while our about-to-expire driver takes the bus right back onto the highway.
By this time we had noticed a few loopholes in the implementation of the driver regulations. Instead of stopping every two hours for a driver break, when the pass beeped, our driver would simply pull over to the side of the road, stop the bus for a minute, then pull back out again. That 5-second pause on the side of the road seemed to reset the pass timer for another two hours.
We begin to wonder how our driver will get around the six hour driving limit, now rapidly approaching. Silly us, rule-following Americans! When the time comes and the console begins to sing its loud beeping “YOUR TIME IS UP” song, the driver pulls over on the side of the road, discreetly pulls his pass out of the console, and puts in a different one. Maybe this second pass is a cousin’s, a friend’s, or a black market special. In any case, we now have a “new” driver, and a fresh pass to drive for another six hours.
For the next couple of hours, he seems okay. I fell asleep, as I am prone to do in any moving vehicle (including helicopters, but that’s another story). Mark, ever alert and vigilant, stays awake and watches our driver attempt to do the same.
The driver rolls down his window to let in the night air. Then he starts sticking his head clear out the window, channeling his inner canine and hoping that the 100KPH wind will keep him awake. Of course, whenever his head goes out the window, the bus slowly begins to veer into the left lane of the road. The ONCOMING lane. As the bus rolls clear across to the other side of the road and begins to hit rumble strips on the far side of the opposite lane, our driver snaps to attention, and overcorrects until the right tires of the bus are in the gravel on our side of the road.
This behavior repeats itself three times, at which point Mark nudges awake Lyndsey, our Fez Travel guide, and strongly recommends that our driver take a break. Lyndsey agrees after witnessing the left-right two step, and asks the driver for a break. Ten minutes later the bus stops and we pour out for some fresh air (and coffee for the driver). An hour later we arrive in Goreme.
Looking back on that night, we wonder why we continued on the Fez bus. We had already paid for the tickets, and new tickets for the public bus would have cost an extra $40. Were our lives worth more than $40? OF COURSE! But what we didn’t know is whether another bus would have been any different.
Several years ago, I was traveling in Uganda with my friend Jaime Carron. We were trying to get to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park to see the mountain gorillas. Public transportation was almost non-existent, and most of the time we got around by jumping in the back of pick-up trucks: a do-it-yourself, impromptu shuttle service. The truck beds were always crowded with other paying passengers and their myriad wares.
Sixteen people (including us) were in the back of a truck as it raced along the one-lane dirt road into the lush Ugandan countryside. I remember thinking “this is a stupid way to die”, and that my mom, a physical therapist, would be very angry with me if I got disabled or killed doing something so blatantly dangerous.
And then we were speeding through a small village – maybe 10 houses – and a baby goat stepped into the road. The driver didn’t pause. A second later, a sickening thump. And we rushed away.
After the goat, I wouldn’t ride in the back of pickup trucks anymore. It cost three times as much to buy one of the coveted front seats in the truck cabin. But I paid it, and thankfully, Jaime did too. This worked fine for the next few rides, but then one day we found ourselves stuck in a small village.
The truck we had arranged to take was leaving around 5 am. The driver came and knocked on our door. We hoisted our backpacks and walked out to the truck – and in the two front seats were two local women. They weren’t moving. The driver motioned for us to get in the crowded truck bed. Crap. Jaime and I considered our options.
If we didn’t go, we could be stuck in this tiny, nameless village for an extra day (or longer), until another ride showed up. But I just couldn’t get in the back of the truck. We went back to our room to figure out what to do next.
Word travels fast in a small village. Half an hour later we had a knock on our door. Another driver was heading the direction we wanted to go, and the two front seats were available. With seat belts fastened, we left.
Traveling, not unlike life, entails certain risks. Many you can evaluate, others sneak up on you and require flexibility and quick thinking to mitigate. Somehow, the majority of Turks and Ugandans and Laotians manage to get from Point A to Point B without going off a cliff, even on overnight trips and when traveling in truck beds. In the States, we live in a society that takes great pains to minimize or eliminate risk in nearly every form, and have established a legal system that lets a pedestrian sue Google for being struck by a car while walking down a country highway while following Google Maps on her Blackberry.
I don’t claim to know the right balance between a society in which rules are there to be egregiously flaunted (when they exist at all), and one that attempts to protect its citizens from every conceivable form of risk and allows them to point the finger elsewhere when common sense fails. But I do appreciate the value in implementing and enforcing safety regulations, as there is value in maintaining personal situational awareness and exercising common sense.
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Oh goodness. I had a driver like that the first go-round with Fez. As we were coming in to Kusadasi his eyes kept growing heavy and closing. I had to tell the tour guide, who then watched him like a hawk. He ended up being our driver again from Olympos to Cappidocia and I was none too pleased. Fez should worry more about its passengers and less about cutting costs. Don’t they make enough from us and all of the kick-backs from our spending to invest a little in our safety?
Unfortunately, I don’t think so. Not enough passengers. I suspect this may be the last season for the Fez on/off bus, judging from comments from the guides as well as the largely empty state of the buses. Too bad, because it is a cool concept and a good way to meet other travelers.