Kayaköy Turkey.

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Kayaköy is a deserted village in south west Turkey. Terry’s niece, Alison Brown joined us for this leg of the trip. She worked for the US embassy in Turkey, and this village was on her bucket list of places she wanted to see. In ancient times it was the city of Lycia, Later, Anatolian Greeks lived here until approximately 1922. The ghost town,
now preserved as a museum village, consists of hundreds of rundown but
still mostly standing Greek-style houses and churches which cover a
small mountainside and serve as a stopping place for tourists.

At the end of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) Greek inhabitants, mostly elderly women and children, were forced to leave through a march of fifteen days. During that death march,
the roads were strewn with bodies of dead children and the elderly who
succumbed to hunger and fatigue. The exiles of the next year were no
less harsh. In September 1922, the few remaining Greeks abandoned their homes and embarked on ships to Greece. Many of the abandoned buildings were damaged in the 1957 Fethiye earthquake.

Many of the exposed interior walls Still have warn coats of paint that serves as a reminder that this village was occupied not long ago. I imagined residents going about their lives in the narrow Stone alley ways. As Terry and Allison hiked ahead, I stopped to sketch on a bluff overlooking the ruins. I thought that this was a view that a painter like Cezanne would have appreciated. In September of 2014, the Turkish government announced plans to develop
the village. It plans to offer a 49-year lease that will “partially open ‘s the archaeological site to construction” and anticipated
“construction of a hotel, as well as tourist facilities that will
encompass one-third of the village.

Istanbul Turkey Day 1.

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Terry’s niece Alison Brown works for the United States State Department and was stationed in Istanbul, Turkey. Istanbul is an exciting highly populated city that straddles Europe and Asia across
the Bosphorus Strait. The Old City reflects cultural influences of the
many empires that once ruled here. In the Sultanahmet district, the
open-air, Roman-era Hippodrome was for centuries the site of chariot
races, and Egyptian obelisks remain. This is a city I would love to live in. There is so much history and culture that needs to be sketched.

Just getting from the airport, to Alison’s high rise apartment was an adventure. Once the taxi got off the highways, which were lavishly decorated with thousands of Daffodils, the side streets started snaking up hills. The streets get very narrow with cars are parked on both besides of the street . Every block becomes a game of dare as drivers face off for the narrow passage in opposite directions. Alison’s apartment building had guards at the driveway entrance with steel stanchions that could lower into the pavement when a car is cleared. One window of Alison’s apartment looked like it had been hit by a bullet causing a hairline crack. Alison didn’t think much of it. 

Terry played with Louie, Allison’s French Bulldog, as I did this sketch. Afterward, we explored the area to find a restaurant. Not knowing the language, we just pointed at item on the menu. Turkey never let us down, the food was always delicious. The hole in the wall restaurant we found turned out to be a place we returned to time time again.

Our Guide

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Terry hired a guide, named Rainald Framhein, to drive us around Panama City. The tires on his car had blown out the week before, so he picked us up in a new rental car. Driving in Panama is an adventure. Stop signs and lights seem to be considered suggestions often ignored. Cars merging into traffic would blindly accelerate assuming they would push in. There were several instances when I was certain I would die but our Rainald’s lightning fast reflexes saved us. There was a constant angry barrage of horns honking and curses shouted out in Spanish. Alison spoke fluent Spanish after six months of intensive language studies prior to her posting at the U.S. Embassy. Terry knew some Spanish from having lived in Venezuelan for a year. I knew how to say “yes” and “thank you.” Luckily many of Panama’s citizens knew English. Even better they use American currency.

The first place we explored was the Parque Natural Summit. This natural refuge was established by the United States. We hiked up a two mile dirt road until we reached a grass clearing at the summit where we had a wide panoramic view overlooking all of Panama City. I didn’t sketch since I was exhausted and sweaty from the hike and besides I had just sketched the city skyline the day before. As we relaxed, taking in the view, I noticed a long line of Leaf Cutter Ants as they marched down a tree trunk and then along the forest floor. I laughed when I noticed a smaller ant hitching a ride on a leaf fragment being carried by another ant. It turned out even this hitch hiker had a role to perform by keeping parasites away from the leaf. The constant activity reminded me of the angry traffic on the streets of Panama City. The ants were more organized than the concrete civilization below them. They cultivate the leaves to create a fungus which is their food source. They were successfully farming thousands of years before humans. To cleanly cultivate this crop the ants have been using antibiotics which the human race only discovered some 60 years ago. Research is being done that may help make hospitals more sterile and perhaps new drugs can be found from the never ending work of these tireless workers. When the leaves have been cleaned of their fungus, the ants remove the waste and pile it up in immense mounds which are easily seen on the rain forest floor.

Casco Viejo

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Casco Viejo is the historic quarter of Panama City. It is located on a small peninsula just south of all the modern highrise construction. It is surrounded by slums and we were instructed to never walk into these districts. The old quarters streets are narrow one lane passages. The historic buildings are run down and life is lived in the open. People sit on stoops and lounge on balconies. Windows are all thrown open in the hopes of catching a sea breeze. On the way to a restaurant I caught a glimpse of a woman using her kitchen as a hair salon. A toddler stumbled unattended on a second floor balcony. Men shot craps in a narrow alley. Life bustled everywhere waiting to be drawn.

Alison brought Terry and I to a small outdoor cafe in the Plaza Bolivar. While we sipped drinks and had lunch, I sketched the monument to Venezuelan General Simon Bolivar the “Liberator of Latin America.” An Andean condor was perched on top of the monument. In 1926 Bolivar organized a meeting of independance with the leaders from all over Latin America in the plaza.
At the base of the monument there were wreaths of live flowers. Alison wished the Embassy had given her an apartment in one of the 19th century buildings surrounding the plaza. She imagined lowering a basket from her balcony so the cafe could send her up a siesta snack.

Armed with machine guns and motorcycles, there was a constant military presence on the streets. This was unnerving at first. There were only a few tacky tourist shops. The quarter instead had a sincere lived in history. I could have spent the entire week there and never run out of things to draw.I rushed the sketch so we could drink in more of the sights.

Panama

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Terry’s niece, Alison Brown, has just begun working as a cultural attache at the American Embassy in Panama. Terry and I decided to fly down for a visit. As the plane approached Panama City I was surprised by all the new sky-rises that sparkled like the Emerald City. Alison picked us up at the airport in her sporty little yellow jeep. Getting into and out of Panama City by car is apparently a challenge. Allison couldn’t find the highway back to the city so we wandered the back roads back to the city. Coca Cola signs and Kentucky Fried Chicken joints were everywhere. Housing for many consisted of hastily constucted tenements with tiny balconies where laundry was hung to dry. The cement structures were covered in a dark wet mold that dripped down the facades.

Alison’s apartment was in a brand new sky-rise tower that looked like it belonged on the Las Vegas strip. Her thirteenth floor balcony had a great view of all the new construction so I grabbed a dining room chair and sat outside to sketch. Walking up to the low glass railing gave me vertigo but once I was busy sketching, I forgot the height. Alison’s neighborhood sprouted up in the last year. She lives across from a brand new hospital and a block away from a sparkling mall. Land has been cleared for two new sky-rises behind her building. Little had been done in these empty lots in the months that she has been working at the Embassy.

At night the skyline is mysteriously dark. Most of these new buildings are deserted. Few lights flicker against the starry night sky. There are rumors that Colombian drug money is laundered into the new construction. It is hotter in Panama than Orlando. My shirt was sweat stained before I completed the sketch. Alison took us to the mall for some delicious tapas. The mall looked like any mall in America with its chrome furnishings and giant screen ads.