Tag: lake

The first time at 3770 meters (June 2023)

Pretty close to our nice place at Van Lake was the Süphan Mountain. It looked wonderful from down there and so we decided to climb up as far as we could. The summit was absolutely snow covered so we did not plan to reach it but still we wanted to go up, up, up.

Again we went up pretty fast and had a super nice time. After we had reached our highest point at 3770 meters, we were sliding down the steep gravel patches and snow fields and had so much fun.

In the meantime, Yolo took some rounds on the paddling board with Vrolex on the Van Lake. Vrolex was a very nice couple from Switzerland traveling in their van. And when they said that they were going in the direction of Georgia as well, we said that we should meet again there.

You can see our tour on Komoot.

A nice spot at Van Lake and searching for latex-free condoms in eastern Turkey (June 2023)

After the crater, we went down to Van Lake and found an awesome spot next to the water.

The water was very rich in minerals and after swimming in it we felt super soft. And after washing clothes in it, it was the same. We even took some of it with us when we left a couple of days later.

But now we were facing a challenge: having sex every day made us running out of latex-free condoms. Cindy had a latex-allergy and so the ordinary latex-condoms were no option. So we started rationing our condoms and started searching for the latex-free ones in dozens of super markets and pharmacies. Not an easy mission in eastern Turkey. Most of the ordinary condom boxes had pretty decent layers of dust on them and nobody understood what latex-free meant. But giving up or getting children was not an option and so we continued our mission.

Although the people we met could not help us, they were all so lovely. This Turkish hospitality is just unmatched. Everybody is interested, friendly and helpful. This made our mission much easier although we had no success.

And then we met the first woman working in a pharmacy. She could speak very good English, knew what latex-free means, and was able to order some latex-free-condoms for us. We ordered three boxes and were relieved. But only a bit because in the end we only got one box. So the mission continued…