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| Day 9: A
travel day as we fly from Ankara to Diyarbakir.
We land at a NATO base and spend 30 minutes
standing under the wing of the airplane as we
wait for the buses to pick us up and the police
to check us out. Upon reaching the terminal,
another 1/2 hour wait to get inside. We are
entertained by F17's taking off for their daily
raids on Iraq. Finally, getting
inside the hot terminal, we run into another
TravelQuest group led by Jay Anderson. Then, onto
our hotel.
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| Excitement
is growing as we realize that we are at last
inside the Path of Totality and the eclipse is
only one day away. We stay at the Caravasary
Hotel, a 500 year old building which really shows
it. We keep reminding ourselves that the hotel
has 'character' while we put up with spotty or
nonexistent air conditioning, cold showers, and
bathroom plumbing that looks like it came from
the 14th Century. |
 The Caravasary Hotel
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| Water
was purchased at the market three doors down. In
their refrigerator were commemorative Coca Cola
plastic bottles with a red tinted circle and a
picture indicating you should look through it. I
hope people didn't try looking at the sun through
that! |
| Several
of us went on a site inspection trip that
afternoon. On the road out, a tour bus, trying to
pass a slow car on a rise, ran into a military
vehicle injuring one of the soldiers. The road
was tied up for 30 minutes. Upon
arriving at the town of Basnik, we discovered
that our initial plans to set up outside of town
had been thwarted. The local Kurds in town had
decided that they wanted to set up an eclipse
viewing site for the benefit of the
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 Accident
on the Highway
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| estimated 700 eclipse
travelers that would be in the area. They had
cleared a field, erected tents for shade, set up
food and soft drink stands and built latrines. This
all looked great, but several in our group had
concerns about the overhead power lines
obstructing our views, and the crush of visitors
interfering with photography. Therefore, it was
agreed to set up a secondary site 1/4 mile away
for those wishing to do photography.
That night, we had a
pre-eclipse dinner with Jay Anderson and Steve
Edberg giving talks. Aram tried to warn people of
the oppressive heat and encourage people to give
up 50 seconds of totality and view from the
hotel. He had few takers.
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| A Note on Security:
While we were in Turkey, the PKK formally
announced that they were leaving the country and
becoming a political, rather than terrorist
organization. The day before that announcement,
the above article was found in the local
newspaper. Despite their announcement, security
was very tight at the airports. We were somewhat
releaved to find the eclispe site was across the
street from a military checkpoint. We also heard
that, although security appeared somewhat low key
on eclipse day, there were actually 15,000 troops
in the area protecting us. |
 
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