Avusor Plateau, Rize, Turkey

This guestpost is from Salih, who has visited so untouched and virgin places in Turkey . You can view his blog here (in Turkish) and if you liked it, can vote here in Blog Awards Competition. Salih, thank you very much for your support and wish to enjoy more posts from you...


Avusor Plateau is in Camlihemsin town in Rize. You pass through Ayder Plateau to reach here. The road is pretty ok until Ayder Plateau, but after that it narrows and gets worse. You follow the road near the cliff which feels like you are flying. Too exciting in the bends, not all the cars succeed to go around the curve at once. The view is amazing.

Once you get closer to the plateau, small stand alone houses start to appear. Noone lives in most of the villages, anymore. But you can come across people in unexpected areas.

You can see Avusor Plateau in above picture, there are around 40-50 houses here. They are not that tall because of the snow. We have a short break in a resting place which has a small shop and cafe. No way to sleep overnight. If the weather is ok, you can stay in a tent or stay in Ayder Plateau, the closest.

The old lady makes some tea. She is running both the shop and cafe. Both places are made of wood. Interestingly, it was so comfortable, maybe we were bored of concrete.

Cafe looks like old Turkish inns from this movie, a totally minimalist interior design. Anyways, we would not expect more from such a place in 2.600 metres high.

And that`s `Sasgun Bakkal` that has been restored recently. It was quite different in the old photos. This looks artificial, they wanted to have a funny Black sea style. (Black sea jokes)

This shop may be surprising for a city guy, cause there are not so many product types, one per each. There was another shop in the plateau but was closed.

When we were walking around, we met also Mr. Recep (Turkish Prime Minister)

After another break, we wanted to see the famous lake of the plateau. A local guy caught us and started to tell about the history of the plateau and the lake. As he could not finish his story, he wanted to join us and did until the lake.

And this is a mini hydroelectric plant up to the village. The village takes the electricity from here. In most of the Black Sea villages and plateaus, you can see these little plants.

The lake is 45 minutes far from the plateau and it`s an enjoyable and comfortable path..

The guy found us again and started to talk about the history. His knowledge impressed us. Old name of Pazar, Rize`s town, was Atina. It did not sound so real, that time, but google proved the guy, its name was Atina until 1928.

The view is awesome. The name of the hill is `Kemerli Kackar`. Don`t get confused about lake`s name, it`s either Avusor Golu, Buyuk Gol or Kemerli  Gol. On the map, it`s as Buyuk Gol.

In all the trip in this region, for sure there is `tulum` and in each flat area, they play `horon`. I was surprised at first, but well this is normal here. The hill over there (in the photo above) is `Kemerli Kackar` and lake is just on the hillside.


Thanks to CAYDOSK for the trip. If you come here, there are many trips organized by local organizations. You should attend one of them.


CHECK THE MAP from Camlihemsin to Buyuk Gol