I decided to have today as a gentle day saying goodbye to my new-found friends at the hotel and around Selcuk. After breakfast I popped round for a tea with Hassan the Barber and we said goodbye. He was very keen that I should stay another couple of days so that he could take me fishing on Sunday. I was really tempted by his kind offer, but I felt that I really ought to get moving. I could have stayed another week in Slecuk all too easily!

As lunchtime approached I popped round to get a couple of beers for some of the family and they invited me to have a farewell lunch all together with the family, who seemed to be growing bigger and bigger every day! Nevertheless it showed just how good friends we had become in such a short time and what an absolute gem of a hotel I had come accross. It was really sad to say goodbye to all of the guys who'd looked after me so well, expecially Jimmy, Juneyt and Mutlu who'd alwayd been around to have a laugh or show me something. Indeed I left them 1TYL to bet on some horses (one of their favourite pastimes it seemed) and I await the outcome to find out if I have won - apparently they will keep the money until I return as an incentive!

Still I left Selcuk feeling quite low and this wasn't helped by the fact that I had a 15 hour bus journey to Capadoccia still to undertake. My mood was imporved significantly though by the news that Fulham had triumphed in a tense game against fellow lodoners, Charlton. I tried on and off to sleep but found it too uncomfortable and was constantly being woken up as we pulled into bus stations every hour. At one station I stepped out into a pool of blood bleary eyed only to notice that just next door a man was gutting and skinning a sheep - exactly the site I wanted at 2 in the morning. Just as I had drifted into a deep sleep, a large, voluptuous and voluminous woman decided to join the bus at Konya and was barking orders at the top  of her voice to her rather confused-looking father who no matter where he sat was ordered by his daughter to move. Fortunately when she started a phone conversation that could have turned into a marathon the conducter told her to shut up, and she did so obediently.

I was shaken awake and told that we had arrived and so hopped off the bus and before I realised where I was it had sped away. Easter morning was in fact spent not in Goreme as I had been led to believe by the conductor, but 10km away in the dull-looking town of Avanos. It was nearly 5am and as I wondered around the empty petrol station a man motioned to me to come inside and at least be warm, watching Turkish Pop Idol on TV for 3 hours until a bus which could take me to Goreme woudl arrive. And so I sat with the petrol attendant, who spoke almost no English, and counted the minutes until the bus finally came to take me to my final destination nearly 18 hours after my trip had started.