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Travel Stories: Under Pressure In Turkey

June 25, 2021 /

As I switched on the ignition, dashboard warning lights, instead of fading out after a couple of seconds, stayed shining and winking like an aeroplane cockpit. The first of these said flat tyre.

“Not problem, not problem”, said the car hire guy, waving his hands dismissively and pointing me towards the vehicle exit. Even as I walked around studying the four tyres, each with no obvious sign of defect, he continued to bark the same phrase. “Not problem, not problem”.

Hire car boss man came over to intervene, helpfully grabbing Google translate on his mobile and pointing to the word “tyre”. I held my palms upwards to show the international hand signal for “and your point is?”.

“Not problem” he said, and walked away.

The second significant warning light was the fuel, in that there was roughly a teaspoonful left in the tank and the red light shone like brake lights in a skid. In half English half Turkish, they told me that I must return the car at the end of the 28-day hire with the same amount of fuel in as it had at the start; in succinct English that I knew they wouldn’t understand, I told them that the chances of me having the skill to leave so little in the tank without running out were just about zero.

Despite reservations about the tyre we headed off, filled up at the nearby service station, put air in the tyres, and the warning lights all disappeared. Maybe we should have had more faith..

And so the car behaved itself for three weeks, right up until one sunny morning in the lovely town of Kas, when not only did the warning light shine as brightly as the morning sun but this time we could clearly see which was the offending tyre. A quick trip to the gas station followed, after which it was all of 200 yards before the warning light flashed back on and we knew a trip to the tyre shop on the hill was inevitable.

Four burly Turkish guys were drinking tea and playing cards waiting for someone in Kas to have a tyre problem and were therefore positively delighted to see us turn in to their messy yard. 

“Speak English?”, I asked, scanning my eyes across all four of them looking for a nod which didn’t come. Having alerted these guys to the warning light, one of them stepped forward armed with mobile gauge. With what I thought was, although I say so myself, inspired use of a mix of sign language and sound language (hissing like leaking air, mostly), I managed to convey the real situation, at which point the Gang Of Four flew into action and within minutes the wheel was removed and placed in a water bath. And it really was a full bathtub, sitting out in the yard, solely to detect punctures. No mod cons here, it’s Turkey after all.

The guys detected and removed a giant nail from one tyre, checked the other three, charged me an embarrassingly small amount of money, and sent us on our way. Except the warning light was still on.

“Not problem, not problem”, they said, and indicated that all would be well in, say, two miles. Two miles later, the light stayed on. And stayed on. Coming back into Kas later that day, we were relieved to see the Gang Of Four, sitting drinking tea and playing cards waiting for someone in Kas to have…..yeah you get the picture. 

They frowned at me. I showed them the warning light. They frowned at the light. One of the Gang tested all four tyres, and looked up, and I knew what he was going to say next.

“Not problem, not problem”. Then he pointed to the dashboard warning light. “Maybe problem”, he says. 

And so we spent the next seven days driving cliff top roads, hairpin bends, steep climbs, rough surfaces, with the nagging fear created by that irritating light goading me from the dashboard, threatening to bring disaster at any moment. Finally, we reached the final day of hire, and pulled in to the hire car bay in the airport car park where we signed off the paperwork, handed over the keys and hoisted up the backpacks ready for our onward journey.

He checked fuel levels, checked for dents, looked over the vehicle…. and checked the dashboard, pointing straight at the tyre warning light and looking accusingly at me for an explanation. 

“Not problem, not problem“, I said, and walked away, feeling just a little smug.

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