Hays Travelogue

On Saturday, we flew to Adana where we spent the night and rented a car for our trip south into the province of Hatay. Adana reminded us of Cairo. The streets were packed and noisy — cars, trucks, donkey carts, motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians, fruit vendors — and the designated lanes were overflowing from 2 lanes to 3 or 4. Although our map showed that the streets were named, there were no street signs that we could ever see. It’s the kind of city where you drive by instinct and intuition. We found our hotel by stopping a lot and asking for directions. Once there, we went out for authentic spicy Adana kebab. Sunday, after many wrong turns and detours, we escaped Adana and headed for the Karatepe Open Air Museum near Osmaniye.

This eighth-century BCE Hittite fortress is now part of the Karatepe-Arslantaş National Park. From the small museum and ticket booth, we walked to the first of two monumental gates which was lined with carved tablets, reliefs, pillars, and statues. From the first gate, we walked along the old walls and through a pine forest to the second gate close to the shore of a manmade lake. The carved reliefs made us wonder if the Mayans were actually a lost band of Hittites.

Tags:   Hittite · Karatepe · TurkeyNo Comments