I found that there were two sides to Caye Caulker.

This small island – population 1,200 – retains a lot of Caribbean charm and for now resists the crass overdevelopment that has turned neighbouring Ambergris Caye into a theme park. On Front Street you’re dazzled by the brightly-painted beach houses. Your 15 year old snorkel guide is already a divemaster yet he’s cool, modest and has impeccable manners. You get broad smiles every morning at your favourite café.

Meanwhile drug pushers loiter outside the Chinese-owned supermarket. Scruffy, shambling men make muffled, salacious comments to tourist women. Cute little street kids call you a rich whore as you leave your lodgings.

In contrast to those rainy Cayo mornings, we touched down on Caulker under hot sunshine. We took one of those golf buggy taxis from the airstrip. The driver nodded to everyone he passed on the sandy road. Palms swayed and flowers burst with colour on all sides.

We arrived at the office to take the keys to our rented place and there we saw the first of many enormous dogs, gazing at us ambivalently as we swiped our credit card. I’d read about all this. I considered myself quite well-informed. All the same, we were reminded to be sensible. To say no to offers of drugs. To avoid getting into conversations with sketchy types. We wouldn’t do that in our own city, so we shouldn’t do it here.

As warnings go, these are pretty mild. They fit right in with the advice about tap water (you can’t drink it and you probably shouldn’t rinse with it) and the high local cost of sunscreen. All the same, standing at a counter opposite a handy-looking man filling out forms and being scrutinised by his man-sized dog, this scene did have something of the police caution about it.

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Caye Caulker

Among Belize's northern cayes and divided in two by a 1961 hurricane, life on Caulker is summed up by the island motto 'Go slow'.

Go slow

Even laying in a hammock, listening to Parliament and sipping on rum and lime seems pretty lively for this place.

It’s late afternoon and as I gently swing this way and that, only the hummingbirds are busy. J is nearby sketching a particularly fecund looking coconut palm.

Caye Caulker seems quite touristic after San Ignacio. A few Dutch, a few Canadians, lots of Americans. And we all rather stand out, as we did among a big group of spectators at yesterday’s ladies’ football match. I never did find out which teams were playing. [Island Stars (home team) vs. Millenium Girls (Belize City), I later learned]

Caulkerans [sic] are noticeably more entrepreneurial than San Ignacians [sic, again]. Many family homes are also shopfronts or cookhouses or garages. The ancient lady two doors down will do your laundry and she’s had a little sign made to tell you so.

During our ride out of San Ignacio, Dutch shuttle driver William Hofman had told us how local cabbies resented his success. He was stealing their business, they told him. But incoming tourists were not calling them, retorted William. Development is inevitable, he reckoned. The only question is whether or not you were ready to participate.

If San Ignacio’s cabbies are dithering, Caulkerans seem clearly to have made their choice. Doubtless this has changed Caye Caulker but perhaps no more so than Hurricane Hattie in 1961. The evidence is everywhere you care to look. For building materials, all the lovely hardwoods are gradually being replaced by concrete and the builders are piling on more storeys. Nature will find concrete much harder to hide than the limestone of Mayan temples.

Those of us who visit as tourists are largely responsible for these changes. The Caye Caulker community shares its island with tourists – whose presence doubles the population every year – and that must surely represent a lot of pressure and unusual influences on local resources and development.

Offshoring

Offshoring in Europe may mean having one’s job done cheaper by Asia but in Caye Caulker it’s about taking a boat ride out into the beautiful waters that make the Northern Cayes such an attraction.

J and I did the classic Hol Chan – Shark Ray Alley snorkel trip with Carlos Tours and, whilst the reef is not for various reasons on the scale one finds in the Red Sea, the proximity to sharks and stingrays is exciting.

Elsewhere we were fortunate for our last full day in Caulker to visit Goff’s Caye, which included a stop on the way to watch manatees at Swallow Caye. Though sometimes perfectly deserted, the tiny Goff’s Caye seems to be a favourite destination for cruise ship parties. Whether or not that was their origin, we were probably lucky that there were so few other groups on the Caye that day.

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Boats from Caye Caulker

Belize's northern cayes are home to a wide array of aquatic life and the best way to see it is by boat!

On this side of the Mopan river is Benque, Belize. On the far side is Melchor de Mencos, Guatemala. The air is full of last night’s rain and sickening diesel fumes. We’re at the border checkpoint, a confusing mess of trucks, money changers, uniformed men with pump action shotguns and a lot of blank staring people hanging about.

J and I emerge from the border house with passports stamped and we get into a dusty car with Guatemalan plates, driven by a heavy-set, silent type who only later reveals that he has in fact a handsome command of English.

They’re building a new bridge into Melchor de Mencos but it’s not finished, so we take on the narrow, older crossing instead. We’re stuck in traffic trying to cross the bridge and the crowd is pressing in. Eventually, after a stop at a gas station in which everyone is smoking, we clear town on a highway punctuated by intermittent rough sections.

After about an hour of broad, deforested landscapes and sleeping dogs and poor shacks and rich churches, we approach the village of Ixlu (“Lady Catfish”) near the banks of Lake Petén. Ixlu has all the usual suspects – a couple of tiendas named after women, a little bar, a colourful graveyard and lots of washing lines – but it also has our guide Luis.

Luis introduces himself and then translates a few newspaper articles for us. He’s a fast-talking septuagenarian who starts out like a club comedian but turns out to be a Mayan mystic.

This is no schtick: Luis is a timekeeper. He’s here to describe the events of the world. This is his birth role. His birthday is the same as mine. He brushes away the coincidence. To Mayans there is no such thing. Instead he stops dead and fixes me with a serious look. He tells me that it means I’m also a timekeeper. Luis stops dead again and fixes us both with a serious look. He says we have a long hike today. This staccato is something he will do throughout our visit to Tikal. It gives a rhythm to everything. He’s keeping time.

Luis has been doing his job as a timekeeper, this same job, four times a week for over fourteen years. Tikal is one of his best friends.

That best friend is much older of course. It was founded around the fourth century BC and came to prominence in the Classic period. Unlike nearby Caracol, Tikal has been fully mapped and its true extent is known: an area of 16km² containing 3,000 buildings and home to around 90,000 inhabitants, though some believe the city state could have fed almost half a million.

Tikal’s history is exemplary of Yucatec Mayan history. An agrarian society was in evidence around 1000BC which grew to prominence during the course of the early centuries AD.

Conflict and alliance with other city states followed and then a strong, probably ruling connection with Teotihuacán in modern day Mexico.

Tikal’s zenith began in the late 4th century AD and lasted almost two hundred years, during which time its influence spread widely throughout the Yucatán Peninsula and encompassed several client settlements.

In common with most Mayan city states however, by the 9th century Tikal had become unable to cope with the demands of such a large population and intense regional competition for resources and it entered a period of irreversible decline.

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Tikal

One of the largest and finest Mayan sites in the Yucatán Peninsula, Tikal in Guatemala is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Luis is busy. He is calling to birds and monkeys. He is climbing the ruins via all the small paths he knows. He explains the ball court system to J. He points out the architects’ signatures in the stonework. He warns a tourist off the ramparts of a fragile building.

Luis says that all religions are valid. He says they all converge like tributaries on the same great river of life and death. He says that it is useless to fight over this religion or that: all religions are merely mathematical and they all contain the hidden, codified messages of the universe.

Luis talks about ley lines, sutras, I-Ching, Stonehenge and Jesus Christ walking on water. He has us standing in temple doorways, closing our eyes, humming, feeling the energies of the place.

Luis describes an infinite cycle of waves – the biorhythms of the individual and the attack and decay, the ebb and flow of the world.

Luis says that humans alternate in their collective awareness and proximity to the creator force. The capacity for enlightenment versus the capacity for obfuscation. And the world alternates simultaneously, between stress and balance. These concepts are universal, not simply Mayan.

Luis says that in 2012, the end of one of these great cycles will come to pass. This is not the end of the world, says Luis. It is the end of a world.

Balance must be restored. Humans must rediscover their proximity to the creator force.

John Chuc drives us out of San Ignacio on a cool, rainy morning in Cayo. We soon hit the stony, potholed tracks that constitute the majority of Belize’s minor roads. We pass through several villages, each of which have been paved with their regulation mile’s worth of asphalt.

John tells me later that he hopes that all those minor roads will stay unpaved. If the tarmac arrives, he says, so too will the bigger vehicles and their drivers and passengers and heavy loads. And with them the expectation that everything in Cayo will have to speed up. Such an expectation would be created in direct opposition to the Mayan tradition, the Mayan way of life. Progress, reckons John, is subjective and should not always be inevitable.

Kids play on the roads. Dogs sleep on the roads. Huge elephant grass grows on the fringes of the roads and threatens to steal them back for Nature. That is John Chuc’s sort of progress.

When we reach San Antonio, John makes a brief stop and I get out to stretch my legs. The quiet is deafening. A young Mayan smiles shyly as she floats by. Later the road starts to rise steadily while the temperature drops.

Into the forests

We cross the brown, busy Mahal River and enter the Chiquibul National Park. There are electricity pylons, incongruous among the trees of the forest. Somewhere nearby a controversial dam project still supplies no current to them after design faults were discovered.

On the far bank of the Mahal, the stony white tracks give way to bright red clay: today it makes for a wet and rather treacherous surface. The clay and the increasing altitude indicate that we have now entered the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve. The existence of this native pine forest was a late discovery in Belize, a territory whose thick forests and tiny population precluded any serious exploration until the early twentieth century. In recent years, up to 80% of the pine forest was severely damaged by a massive infestation of beetles. A restoration programme in progress since 2002 aims to replant 3.5m beetle-resistant seedlings across 36,500ha. The programme is reportedly very successful but the landscape visible from the dirt road looks rather bare all the same. I roll up the window a little: it’s cooler up here.

Eventually we reach the Douglas D’Silva Forestry Station at one end of an abandoned loggers’ settlement called Augustine. Augustine today looks more like a deserted prison camp than a village. John tells me that a few licensed loggers still live in Augustine. True enough: in amongst all the neatly-spaced but deteriorating shacks I spot a few bits of soggy washing on a line.

The British Army still comes up here occasionally for jungle training exercises but its presence this close to the Guatemalan border is unlikely ever to be conspicuous. Our destination today is closer still and memories of Guatemala’s military manoeuvres in the 1970s are still relatively fresh in Belize.

Today vehicles heading to Caracol are escorted to and from the site following recent reports of visitors being robbed at gunpoint, a story more common across the border in Petén. These attacks are believed to have been conducted by Guatemalans entering and operating in Belize illegally under the cover of thick forests around the border.

The week before my visit, a band of Guatemalan loggers enticed by valuable hardwoods had been identified and pursued by the Belizean army. The loggers – working only at night but with the noise of their saws audible to the night guard – fled camp immediately. In their haste they left behind their heavy equipment and this was duly confiscated.

Caracol: the city state

The entrance to Caracol is the end of the line and the last few kilometres to the site are paved with asphalt. Visitors find there a couple of nondescript buildings including a small information centre with a handy scale model of the complex.

Caracol – or Oxwitza, to give the city its proper Mayan name – was rediscovered by a Belizean logger in the late 1930s. The British officials who subsequently visited the site incorrectly concluded that Caracol was of relatively minor importance in comparison with other sites then being excavated around the Yucatán Peninsula. A later topographical review revealed their error: the findings suggested the extrapolation of a much bigger overall plan.

Such was the accuracy of this conclusion that only 10% of Caracol has so far been excavated and exposed despite decades of work by archaeologists. Buildings that form part of the Caracol plan have been discovered as far as 30km away from the principal dig.

In common with all major Mayan complexes, Caracol was home to a self-contained, socially stratified and highly sophisticated society. The city state was led by a small patriarchal élite, protected and advanced by a warrior class and supported by broad middle and servant classes, with the population probably exceeded 150,000 during Caracol’s zenith period in the 6th century AD.

Built on a site far away from rivers in the midst of thick jungle, Caracol was designed deliberately to be difficult to locate and built from about 650BC. The population survived entirely on rainfall and localised farming operations, utilising intelligent irrigation and storage systems.

The need for blood

High on the Vaca Plateau, the people of Caracol had no need of neighbours. However this did not mean that they isolated themselves from the rest of the Mayan world. When growth outstripped resources – as certainly happened at Caracol – the city state required the blood of the élite to maintain the life force of their creator deity. Though Caracol’s rulers could ritually supply some of their own blood, war with other city states became necessary to secure adequate sacrifices.

Mayan wars seem almost clinical in their scope and prescriptive formula: battles involved only warriors and nobles, usually took place at agreed locations well away from the urban complexes and apart from the taking of prisoners, vanquished city states were left otherwise intact. All the victors usually wanted was the blood of their adversaries’ élite.

Ball games

As the rain falls gently on our heads at Caracol, John begins to explain how the victors obtained their sanguinary tribute. We’re standing before Altar 21 in the centre of a ball court on which was played a sort of divine game bearing a few similarities to tennis and squash.

The two players were taken from the vanquished élite and they bounced a heavy, 7.5kg latex ball between them. This ball was probably hit only with the hips and could deflect from the walls but was not supposed to touch the ground.

The winner of this game might have been spared, but it is more likely that both players were beheaded and their blood dedicated to the creator deity.

Playing the game was surely very difficult but the élite class probably trained and practised for the eventuality of formal play throughout their active lives. John explains that, contrary to the appearance of brutality in these proceedings, the ball game was a sacred ritual for which all players were spiritually prepared and in which they were proud to participate.

Plazas and buildings

Later I climb the steps of several of the taller excavated buildings in each of the two plazas.

First among these was Structure A2 on the western side of the A-Group plaza. Probably built during the first couple of centuries AD, A2 was found to contain numerous tombs and stelae at its summit.

Meanwhile the Temple of the Wooden Lintel, on the eastern side of the A-Group plaza whose function was to support astronomy and timekeeping activities. The eponymous lintel is in fact original to the structure which was built around AD70, a full nine years before Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii over in Europe.

Then followed the highest of the complex: Caana (“Sky Place”), which dominates the B-Group plaza. Caana is still Belize’s tallest building and seems to have been fully rebuilt in the late 7th century AD to contain at least 70 rooms.

The end

The ball game and evidence of timekeeping activities are just two examples of how elaborate the cultural formalities of Mayan civilisation were.

Yet however sophisticated they had become, the Classic Mayans could not respond to the vicissitudes of Nature. Up to the middle of the 9th century AD, Caracol continues to record events and then there follows the ‘radio silence’ characteristic of the period across the Yucatán.

There are several theories behind the so-called Classic Collapse which was probably never so total as historians once believed. Among these is the persuasive idea that the period of sudden decline at Caracol coincided with a severe regional drought. The fact of Caracol’s distance from stable water sources seems particularly to support the possibility.

Whatever really happened, as John explained, the jungle probably reclaimed the great, millenial city within a couple of decades. Now as we leave Caracol behind for the entrance clearing, I look back briefly and find that the jungle had already claimed the site from my view.

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Caracol and Chiquibul

Accessible only by rough roads, Caracol is the largest Mayan site in Belize: in its day, a city state home to over 150,000 people.

John Chuc is a guide from a local Mayan family well-known in Bullet Tree Falls, Cayo. He runs K’in Winik Jungle Tours based in San Ignacio.

It’s already hot by mid-morning on Saturday in Cayo. I’m standing in the middle of the noisy, sweet-smelling weekly market in San Ignacio.

People come here from all over the District and it feels like most of them are indeed here right now! J and I hitched a lift from Theo and family at Parrot Nest Lodge in Bullet Tree Falls. It’s our last full day in Cayo and we’re thinking about hiking up to Cahal Pech above the town as we file through the market.

Most of the stallholders on the town side are selling fruit and vegetables: bananas, onions, cauliflower, cho-cho. Down the middle, they offer cooked food: tamales, burritos and hot corn tortillas in black plastic bags.

At one end of this middle section, a young man is chanting Bible passages and Christian admonishments in a breathless Spanish monotone. He holds a microphone in one hand and his other one is flailing about in a strangely angled, witchdoctor dance.

On the Mahal River side of the market, many of the stalls seem more like jumble or garage sales in their lack of a common theme. Old toys, books full of brown pages, sandals, second-hand clothes, used lipsticks, towels and pirated DVDs.

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Cayo

We stayed near San Ignacio, capital town of Belize's wild western district bordering Guatemala.

While not without its problems (what city in Europe or the United States does not have any problems?) San Ignacio is a good base from which to visit Mayan ruins and organise rainforest activities but like at the Saturday morning market, it’s also a funny old place to browse around and find a surprise.

This is more or less how we ended up spending the rest of the day – despite our best laid plans – in the home of British ex-pat Paul. He and his family had all of that warm, welcoming, disarming friendliness to which it’s very difficult to become accustomed as a rush-rush European.

The sheer sincerity of Belizeans and many of the fascinating ex-pats living in Cayo takes a good while to click, to the extent that I think it took us until our morning of departure to finally get it.

Driving down from Koeln, the valleys turn brown and then yellow. That yellow comes from hundreds of neatly packed rows of autumnal vines, plunging down steeply to the river below.

In the failing afternoon light, the glassy river surface is disturbed only by a water bird too far and too dim to determine.

It’s already dark by the time we pull into the city and at least three degrees colder than it was when we set off earlier. Fire-lit, low ceilinged taverns tempt passing visitors. There’s nowhere to hide even in a thick coat.

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Trier

Germany's oldest cathedral in Germany's oldest city: we visited Trier on a cold autumn Sunday morning.

Trierer Dom

Next morning we visit the Dom, Germany’s oldest cathedral in this, Germany’s oldest city. There’s a service in progress – it’s Sunday of course – so we don’t get too far inside.

The Dom is built on the firm foundations of the ancient Roman city – which dates from about 30BC – and was itself founded in 326AD on a much bigger plan than we see today, which easily occupied the square in front.

Porta Nigra

The remains of the ancient city gate still stand today at the northern end of Trier.

The gate was built before 200AD but it has since been substantially reduced in size. The stone used in its construction has blackened over the centuries: the structure was already described as ‘black’ in medieval times.

I’m only here for one day before flying out to Nevşehir, so the airline neatly adds my bag to the infinite loop limbo of transit luggage. Right now, I haven’t yet learned this little fact of Turkish logic.

Folks who clearly packed the kitchen sink slide away smugly with all their bags until the arrivals hall is temporarily empty. I’m all alone with a silent carousel and a Baghdad flight unloading here soon.

When my bags have disappeared in the past, it has always taken a while to get them back. Here in Istanbul, I don’t have a while. So I talk to a sullen face. The sullen face directs me to another sullen face. I whisper the right words at Turkish Airlines’ very own Sublime Porte and twenty minutes later my bag miraculously appears. I’m pretty ecstatic, but I don’t show it out of respect for a more unfortunate Canadian mother and daughter duo. The last drop of their luck seems to have run out.

I take the metro which inexplicably ends at the outskirts of the city. I transfer to the Kabataş line and wait on a tram. One appears in the opposite direction and a larger-than-life American asks me which way to go. He’s from Orange County, California. He has that special manner that all older Americans have, the one that renders international borders and languages absolutely irrelevant.

A tram comes by and it’s packed. We let it pass but he predicts the next one will be the same and he’s right. So we pile in. By now I know he’s retired, he’s on a cruise and his wife has skipped coming ashore here. His thick arms as red as traffic cones, he explains that he makes things out of used plastic bottles and he likes to travel around handing them out. We get separated for a time and he somehow finds a Turk who once visited Chicago. Before we part at Sultanahmet he gives me the sawn-off neck of a green soda bottle and suggests I wear it as a sort of chunky ring. And I do, for the whole trip.

I get lost trying to find my little hotel in this old district of hot, narrow streets and crumbling houses. I thread through the pickup trucks and the stationary taxis and the defeated-looking men. When I find the place, there are kids playing with a ball in the dust and yellowish clothes drying on a forgotten washing line. But my little hotel is immaculate, with an incongruously new painted sign.

The sun’s just beginning to set by the time I’m done visiting Hagia Sophia. It took two trips to finally see it: I got halfway down the enormous queue at the entrance the first time before realising I’d brought no cash for the ticket. The second time, there was no queue at all and I strolled right in.

Down by the former site of the Hippodrome, the ezan is called from the Sultanahmet (Blue) Mosque (1616) and a reclining dog howls along at a similar pitch. The long square is now almost devoid of hawkers and the battered gardens between Hagia Sophia and the Sultanahmet are slightly cooler.

The courtyard at Sultanahmet is all geometry with its central fountain for ablutions (Şadırvan) and its view on the main prayer hall. This is a very active mosque, but non-muslims can still enter shoeless on the far right side, so that’s what I do. Inside the carpeting muffles footfalls and voices alike. The walls and ceiling are covered in the famous, beautiful İznik tiles for which this mosque is famous and from which it earns the “blue” epithet.

It gets dark rapidly in the streets below. Picking their way between solitary white lights, everyone is anonymous. Groups of women come out onto their front steps to chat. Cats sneak about in the shadows, reclaiming their territories from the omnipotent sun.

Night shops, cafés and the sweet smell of nargile. That ubiquitous chugging Turkish music, now electrified and over-produced and delivered by truculent, unshaven men and girls in absurdly thick make-up.

Too early but without undue difficulty, I get up the next morning, ahead of the next stage of my little Turkish journey.

Outside I hear already the plaintive, old vinyl calls of the muezzin and I wonder how people around here sleep. Not so much because of the hours of the ezan but rather the endless, tortured grind of vehicles in the steep, narrow streets. Who knows where they’re all going?

While I stand in the foyer, one such elaborate ballet of forward and reverse plays out before me. Crunching gears and headlights filling every window of every house. My driver has that haphazard disregard for his vehicle that can only come from time-worn experience. His paintwork is surprisingly pristine however. Soon we reach the wider boulevards beside the Bosphorus. Yellowish dots twinkle from the Asian side whilst over here it’s all kitchen showrooms and discount brand stores.

In the domestic terminal, I’ve no idea which desk to use for my check-in. I waste time I don’t really have coming to the conclusion that any desk will do. Turkish logic is much too simple for an Englishman used to numbered queues.

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Istanbul

This teeming city spreads along both sides of the river Bosphorus, across which the cultures of the East meet those of the West.

The passenger demographic on this flight from Istanbul to Nevşehir is mixed. Almost everyone here is actually bound for the town of Göreme, about 30km from the airport. Arguably more visitors to Göreme arrive by bus, for reasons of budget or greater leisure.

I’m standing outside the single building that handles both arrivals and departures at Nevşehir. Despite prior arrangements, nobody has come to collect me. During the cab ride that I’m eventually forced to take, I get a good look at my surroundings. Rolling, dry hills uniformly the colour of muscovado sugar, interrupted occasionally by little vineyards – most producing raisins rather than wine – and orchards of figs and apricots. Staples of Central Anatolian cuisine.

We roll through Nevşehir itself, a city of empty, forlornly hopeful boulevards. Tower blocks with no relationship to the landscape. Twenty-six thousand people live there and yet I see only one: an eastern cowboy with long, slick hair wearing denims and boots. A mobile phone in a holster and car keys in hand.

The morning is already hot when I arrive in Göreme to a suitably warm profusion of welcomes and apologies. Host and driver take care to settle up out of earshot, the Turkish way, and I take breakfast overlooking the old village. Basic, comfortable cave houses packed in nor particular fashion around monstrously stout needles of rock. These hoodoo headlines grab all of the viewer’s attention, reducing the village itself to a footnote.

People were attracted here millenia ago by the harsh, alien landscape and they’re still coming today. Only the religions have changed. Paganism, christianity, islam and now commercialism. This latter explains the rustic tracks marked by gleaming street signs. The surprisingly sensitive upscaling of certain cave dwellings. The mess of downtown: carpets and trinkets and pide and carpets. Restaurants with photographic menus. Freestanding cash machines and a busy bus station with transport to Malatya, Erzurum, and ‘dangerous’ Diyarbakır. There are curious Turks from the big cities. Middle-class, middle-aged ballooners. Young, unshaven backpackers. Toe dippers and veterans.

Open Air Museum

I take a tip from my host and decide to visit the Open Air Museum during lunchtime. The tour groups are busy nosebagging during the hottest hours and I can expect not to have to queue for the churches.

Ascetics came to live here at least as early as the seventh century, praying to their god and depending on the goodwill of locals for their sustenance. They cut niches, shrines and then whole dwellings into the rock needles they found, painting symbols and then sophisticated frescoes. Finally, the metaphor of isolation was discarded and small groups of faithful formed monastic collectives named after saints.

The big draw today are the well-preserved paintings in the churches (kilise) at the top end of the museum. Climate and ignorance have effectively protected these artworks for many centuries and, apart from a certain amount of later defacement for religious reasons, the colours and compositions are vivid enough for their meanings and symbolism to be clear to visitors.

Night falls and the wind rises in Göreme. I’m rather tired and mindful of an early start tomorrow. I seek out Café Safak among the jumble of gift shops and samey restaurants. Ali the owner is friendly and keeps house while his wife does the hot, hard work in their tiny kitchen. At some point, a young oriental girl begins to wait on tables, the first of numerous employed in Göreme’s tourist trade. After some lentil soup and filled bread pancakes (gözleme), I head back to my cave for a bit of sleep.

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Göreme

In central Turkey, unique and beautiful rock formations can be found around the village of Göreme, which attracted communities of religious ascetics during the Byzantine empire.

Hamam

After my epic walk the following day, I take a nap and then do a Turkish hamam up at the Kelebek. This is not a strictly authentic experience (young oriental girls instead of brutal, burly Turkish men) but I’m not complaining. The process goes as follows:

I strip down to a cloth around my waist (peştemal) and enter a long, warm room with a marble platform in the centre. Around the sides are niches with warm water taps and bowls used for the soap massage which we’ll come to in a moment.

I enter the sauna in one corner and barely get started chatting to a Canadian couple when one of the girls collects me for my soap massage. I lay face down out on the marble platform and she pours on bowlfuls of warm water, then lathers my feet, legs, torso, back and arms in thick suds. She massages each bit and pours on more water. Turn over, then rinse and repeat. Finally, I stand over by a niche and get another couple of swills of water and we’re done. The best sensation is actually having these bowls of water poured over me.

I hang out in a quiet room and find it a little cold after the tepidarium I’ve just left. Somebody is coughing violently elsewhere in the hamam: obviously they can’t take the steam!

Pretty soon I’m being led away again by a different girl, this time to a treatment room with the obligatory harp and dolphin soundtrack: sort of melodic but lacking in musical structure. I’m here for reflexology, thinking it will be great after 28km on the trail. In fact, it turns out to be rather painful, despite having stretched earlier on my return to the cave. In reflexology, every part of the foot relates to the health of an organ or other part of the body. The way this is going, I reflect as I push my face hard into the doughnut headrest, I must be dying all over!

Back to the quiet room and after due relaxation, I change and leave for dinner, feeling pretty great after all.

That evening, at the terribly named Fat Boys’, I meet a couple of backpackers from Québec and Milan who hooked up somewhere in Turkey about ten days earlier. We swap stories, drink coffee and they share a nargile. I envy them somewhat, since tomorrow I will have to go back to Nevşehir, but in the grand scheme of things we’re all just passing through.

Rua Afonso de Albuquerque, Lisbon

The proud Padrão dos Descobrimentos (“Monument to the Discoveries”) at Belém almost strides right off the waterfront and into the Tejo. A jostling line of artists, scientists and sailors queues for a view of the sea with sponsor and founder Infante Henrique at front. This is the pride and heritage of Portugal as represented by Salazar’s Estado Novo.

At Cais do Sodré they built the carracks and caravels to navigate the still unknown seas. From Belém they sailed for new worlds and brought back untold riches. Africa, India, Malacca, China and possibly Australia. Gold, silver and pearls. Nutmeg, cloves and cinammon. With the proceeds they built a great faraway empire, ruled from the great city of Lisbon.

Like Rome, Lisbon was built on seven hills, though most of these have considerably steeper gradients than their Roman cousins. Those less inclined to inclines can always take it easy on the funicular.

Lisbon spreads from the valley floor by the Tejo estuary, up and along the sides of the seven hills. The hilltop bairros each retain their own distinct character.

Cut to today. As we scaled the narrow, hot streets of the central districts, I had the impression of slow decay. Broken pavements, cracked walls and graffiti. Exposed wiring and struggling scaffold. Proud ceramic and stucco façades peeling off. Grass growing in gutters. Odours of cooking oil and dust and urine.

These are the small details that give Lisbon a gritty, candid sort of charm. Unpolished as it may sometimes seem, it’s safer and a whole lot friendlier than many other European cities. There’s also ample evidence of new development, particularly down at the dockyards by the Avenida de Brasília. The renaissance of the Chiado quarter after the destruction of a massive fire in 1988 also points to a firm future.

Architecture

To any Lisboeta with an awareness of history, architecture must appear ephemeral anyway. In 1755, a massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami destroyed almost the whole city and much of Portugal’s thriving southern region.

As a result, little evidence of Lisbon’s ancient structures remains. In addition, the Marquês de Pombal’s reconstruction programme, which recognised the necessity for speed and economy rather than inspiration and elegance, ensured what now seems an rather unenduring rebirth of the urban landscape.

Later, a sustained period of economic decline due to expensive wars and the early independence of rich Portuguese colonies did little for the civic engagement and patronage. Pombal’s Lisbon has consequently grown rather tatty, while the jarring, modern experiments of the Amoreiras district do little for the outer city.

Yet the very paucity of Lisbon’s older architectural heritage has meant that the architecture that did survive beyond 1755 is rightly cherished.

The Sé de Lisboa, whose western façade dates from the original version of 1147, has undergone numerous additions and transitions throughout its history but it has never been laid low by nature.

Less fortunate was the Carmo Convent, whose buildings and legendary library were ruined by the earthquake. However the site was never cleared and the ribs of the nave vault still stand tall today, like the bones of some enormous, forgotten beast.

Downstream and beyond the dockyards in Belém, the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (begun in 1502 and mostly complete by 1580) is another survivor of 1755. Clearly visible in a Renaissance map of the city which hangs today in the Decorative Arts Collection of the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (see Art below), the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos is depicted in a location on the banks of the Tejo.

However when the high waters of the 1755 tsunami receded, this extraordinary monastery – constructed in white lioz limestone in the Manueline style – now found itself several hundred metres from the waterline.

These same receding waters came close to leaving the Torre de Belém high and dry. Also built with lioz limestone in the Manueline style, this tower has always reminded me of certain Indian religious structures such as the Harimandir Sahib at Amritsar – a curious comparison given that the Portuguese expeditions to India began here.

Together, the Mosterio and the Torre were classified a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.

Food

With so much coastline, much of Portuguse cuisine is synonymous with fresh fish. Beside the beach at Portinho da Arrábida, both J and I had very tasty peixe espada or cutlassfish straight off the grill with boiled potatoes.

Later in the trip, I tackled a large plate of prawns at local cuisine specialist O Fumeiro (Rua Conceição da Glória, just off Liberdade), followed by a stew of cod and beans. Simple but delicious.

Apart from seafood, Lisbon can also boast of a disproportionately high number of excellent vegetarian eateries. Our best (and most simple) meals were enjoyed at Jardim de los Sentidos just above Praça da Alegria and the excellent buffet at Terra near Principe Real.

For lunch, we made a couple of refuelling stops at the renowned Pois,Café in the Bairro Sé and currently for sale. Excellent gazpacho for a super hot day!

Art

At the home of Portugal’s foremost modern art collection – the Berardo Museum – we were unlucky enough to find the permanent collection closed to the public. Temporary exhibits were accessible in the meantime.

The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga covers art from medieval up to modern.

In addition to minor works by Lucas Cranach, Memling, Dürer, Gonçalves and Piero Della Francesca, the MNAA displays a broad range from the Flemish Late Gothic period, most of which are atelier productions.

The highlight of the whole collection is Bosch’s triptych masterpiece The Temptation of Saint Anthony (c. 1500).

Decorative arts and religious devotional artefacts are contained in a fascinating separate collection, foremost of which is the recently restored Custódia de Belém (a Catholic monstrance) dating from 1506.

My personal cultural highlight, on a path less travelled by tourists, was the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian.

Gulbenkian was an Armenian businessman and petroleum expert. He was one of the last great entrepreneurs in a time when personal fortunes were increasingly replaced by corporate, indeed national interests. Fortunately for the city of Lisbon, where Gulbenkian lived from 1942 until his death in 1955, he was also a collector and philanthropist. The eponymous Museum a few blocks north of Parque Eduardo VII now hosts his art collection.

The collection is eclectic, consisting of artefacts from the ancient civilisations, decorative arts from the Near and Far East and paintings by artists including Van der Weyden, Bouts, Ghirlandaio, Rembrandt, Guardi, Turner, Millet and Renoir. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the museum comes last of all: a small chamber entirely dedicated to the jewellery and glasswork of René Lalique.

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Lisbon

Once the grand embarcation point for the world's explorers, today Lisbon is a quieter yet still exciting city.

Palácio da Pena, Sintra

The train out of Lisbon’s Rossio station heads through a succession of dormitory towns and tower block estates before finally the broad plain opens up and the greenery thickens. The only grey clouds we’ve seen so far on our trip now hover in a heavy sky. Finally the train halts at the end of the line and out on the platform we don another layer: it’s much cooler here than in Lisbon.

Palácio da Pena

The bus grinds improbably up through the switchbacks towards a misty summit. I’m feeling a bit queasy as the enormous, flabby arm of a Frenchwoman reaches across me and grabs the handrail to steady herself. Later, after we’ve climbed the rest of the way to the castle on foot, after we’ve negotiated all the stairwells and narrow passageways, we’ll see this same Frenchwoman again, only just arriving at the entrance.

The bright palette of colours and the architectural whimsy for which the Palácio da Pena is justly famous are rather lost in the grey mist. There was a small monastery here until the 1755 earthquake, which did so much damage to the city of Lisbon, all but rased it from the rocky outcrop on which it stood. The monastery chapel survived and was incorporated into new buildings erected by Ferdinand II in 1848, who bought the estate.

Ferdinand engaged a German amateur architect called Eschwege who brought from his home country the sensibilities of Rhinish castle architecture. To the construction Ferdinand himself added Moorish and Islamic elements.

In contrast to the fantastical façades, the interiors are generally less exciting. With the exception of a couple of spaces including the lavishly restored chapel, my general impression was one of rather sober utility. Moreover, probably due to the limitations of the mountaintop site, the palace feels almost cramped with its low ceilings and surprisingly small rooms. Entering the palace after a stroll around the walls and courtyards feels like entering a tent!

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Sintra

A visit to the beautiful village of Sintra and two of the castles for which it has become famous.

Castelo dos Mouros

From the battlements of the Castelo dos Mouros, one can normally see the Palácio da Pena across the ridge but today it was invisible in the mist. Though it may have spoiled the view of the distance, the same mist lent considerable atmosphere to the Castelo itself.

Moorish in origin as its modern title suggests, the Castelo was occupied by Afonso I whose forces gained control of Lisbon in 1147. In peace, its military importance was diminished and it fell into ruin, only to be substantially restored by Ferdinand II at the same time as the Palácio da Pena was being built.

It is difficult to say today how much of the restoration matches the original plan, though the towers are apparently quite authentic. We also noted recent excavations, in which were unearthed Moorish water cisterns and a cemetery postdating the Moorish occupation.

Unfortunately we had neither the time nor adequate weather conditions to acquaint ourselves with Monserrate or Quinta da Regaleira.

At a (vegetarian-friendly) café called Casa Bernardo (Rua Gomes Fernandes), we met a couple of British folks who were running the place. They described their gladness at escaping from Britain and living a different sort of life. They could hardly have chosen a more fascinating alternative than Sintra!

Such was the pleasure we derived from seeing Madrid by bike and such was the shortness of memory over the saddle discomfort we suffered that we decided to do it again in Lisbon.

Having planned the whole trip in secret, J booked a couple of excursions with Lisbon Bike Tour, an adventure company run by the delectable Filipe Palma.

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Lisbon bike and kayak

Lisbon is great to visit by bike - provided you start at the top of a hill. And when you're done with the city, the beautiful coastline awaits!

Arrábida

The first day was split between a mountain bike ride along the tracks and (quieter) roads of the Parque Natural da Arrábida.

The parcours ran from the vineyard village of Vila Fresca de Azeitão to the slender beach at Portinho da Arrábida, where we enjoyed a fresh fish lunch.

During the afternoon, we headed out from the beach in our kayaks as far as a sand spit off the coast of Outão. The return journey was much easier thanks to a favourable wind!

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Lisbon

On the second day we picked up the bikes again, this time at the Miradouro do Parque Eduardo VII, whence Filipe took us on a tour of Lisbon.

The ride was not particularly difficult, with the first half being downhill all the way from the Parque Eduardo VII to Praça do Comércio, with intermittent stops for historical background. Even so, negotiating paths shared with pedestrians and traffic crossings did require a certain amount of caution and coolheadedness.

We stopped briefly for a little glass of ginjinha and some classic pastéis de nata at Martinho da Arcada, a café frequented by intellectuals, artists and writers. Both Fernando Pessoa and more recently José Saramago had reserved seats there.

After refreshments, we headed out along the riverside through Cais do Sodré and the dockyards, under the Ponte 25 de Abril to Belém. The tour ended splendidly at the Torre de Belém, from which point we picked up our own itinerary by heading to the Museu Berardo, the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos and of course the “official” Pastéis de Belém shop for another (well-earned) dose of pastéis.

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Boa viagem!