Full of expectations, we (Stefan and Mirthe) went to Turkey for two weeks of good, sweet rock climbing.
We were craving for some sunshine, rocks and relaxation.
Unfortunately, only the sun fulfilled our needs.
During the two weeks at the crags, we got more and more tensed.
It's not really in our nature to complain, but we guess this time we should. Just to make others aware of our bad experience.
Review Climbers Garden Campsite
We were not happy at all with the campsite where we were staying. We went to
Climbers Garden and (excluding the restaurant) pretty much everything sucked. There was no warm water, if there was water at all. We encountered thousands of bugs in the public kitchen, Also the atmosphere in the shared rooms was frustrating. Most of the others were grumpy and weren't polite at all. So if you tried to cook yourself a meal in the crowded kitchen, you got pushed around without any apologies. Another irritating thing was that we were told to make a reservation in order to get some bread in the morning. So we did, but often it was finished and our reserved bread was given away. Also, no excuses. Sometimes we got a bit leftover from the day before or they told us to go to the neighbor. At the third night we startled awake by digging just next to our tent. It turned out a couple set up their tent 5 cm. next to us and moved a big hump of gravel.
A few days after, everything in our tent got soaking wet because we were standing on a sloping site whereby our outer tent couldn't protect us from the rain.
At the end of our stay, the boss wouldn't talk to us about our bad experience. The only thing what he could say was: "they should have moved to another campsite if they didn't like it". Well, probably we should have done that earlier. We heard from others that there was warm water at
Josito, that is was quiet at
Rido camp and that the tea was free all day long at
Kezban. Those other three campsites are maybe a better choice to check out if you are heading to Geyikbayiri.
What about the climbing?
Well, we can't be really positive about the climbing either. It was cray crowded at the crags and again the other climbers weren't the most polite.
The second day Mirthe got a heavy rope burn because of the shitty rope course in a 7c. A huge gap between the wall and the rope... one small fall (without any weird stuff) and there it was. The open wound for the rest of the two weeks.
Most of the routes proved to be too long for our rope (and probably also our endurance). We didn't even try to get on it. Way to much trouble. Be sure to bring a 70/80m rope for sure if you go there.
So there was not much to do in our grade with our rope. If we wanted to get on some 8a and harder, most of the times we should have climbed 20 meters of 6th grade slab before the 8a even started. We didn't feel for that at all, so we got on three shorter routes graded 8a or harder and those weren't the nicest ones so we didn't even get the motivation to go for it.
There's only one route that Mirthe enjoyed and that was called Power Slave. A nice, continues route at a straight wall. Our last day we went to a sector called Küllüin. That was the sector we enjoyed most in the end. A nice combination of shorter, overhanging routes varying from 6a to 8b.
So, we are glad to be home again :) Crazy huh?
Going to built some nice hard projects in our sweet little plastic fantastic gym today, and get the climbing started again!
