Day 26: Rize Valley

Overview

Driving duration: 5:13 h
Distance: 294.9 km
Avg Speed: 57 km/h
Start: _Giresun
End: Danzi Camping
Night Location: 41°7'20" N 41°7'14" E

East, east & east

The focus of the day is clear, let’s go further east. We can already “smell” the border, it’s getting closer in big steps. But we still enjoy these days in Turkey. The highway was for most of the day along the Black Sea coast, often quite empty and a good road.

It’s interesting how on some days, not much happen, but the days still feel great in the end. Today was a day like this. Actually we still did stuff, just not the shine holiday stuff :)

First we went to a laundry service in Trabzon, the lady told us that it will take 3 hours. As we now had some time to spend, we first did some quick grocery shopping directly where we parked to drop off the laundry. This was one of the best stores we encountered in the last weeks, especially the fruits and legumes.

There was also a Decathlon close by, so we had to visit it. Only there we realized that it was in a mall, so we walked around and tried to remember all the times we thought “damn, this would be nice”. But our brains are getting older, so we could only remember a cord (to hang more laundry) and found it in the Decathlon. We also bought some more towels, as we only started with a single one each and realized that some clean spare towels could be a nice thing.

Also some planning was required, this was done in the parking lot and we found a nice campsite in the Rize Valley. Then and there we didn’t know that the Rize Valley produces nearly all of the tea that Turkey produces. And as we drove to the campsite, the sights were really impressive. Steep slopes, full of tea plants. Many trucks that were transporting the leaves down the valley. And at the start of the valley, different tea companies that were drying and producing the tea.

It took us over 35 minutes for the 20 km to the campsite from the start of the valley. These roads are always slow, but super interesting. And also a bit of a preview of what will follow in the coming weeks and months.

The family that runs the campsite is super nice, we got unlimited chai, had the first “real” shower in over a week and were allowed to use their kitchen (space!!!).

If everything goes well, we will tomorrow cross into Georgia.

Pictures

Activities