Charging in Cayeli, Turkey

The first hotel between Trabzon and Batumi that we were heading for was charging for the room far more than expected. Also, a gas station in front of the hotel with a three-phase socket, didn’t want to let us charge there (unfortunately their English was too bad as that we could have convinced them or understood their reasoning). Benedikt and I got already used to denials and a recurrent hotel and electricity search every night that we are in a new city. Usually it takes two to three trials to find a place that offers us electricity and a nice hotel room. I took me some time to get more relaxed with this fact and to not get frustrated.

There was no reason to get frustrated that night, since we found a few kilometers further east, in Cayeli, a small and friendly hotel that not only offered us a nice triple room with breakfast, but also three-phase electricity in their basement garage. We charged with 11kW overnight and left Cayeli with a 100% charged battery the next morning.

Cayeli is a nice little town in the very east of Turkey. Cay means tea in Turkish and the hills around Cayeli are covered with tea plantations. We liked the atmosphere of this town. After staying for more than 10 days in Turkey it was time to say goodbye to that country and cross the border to Georgia. A country that couldn’t be much more different to Turkey.

Before we left Turkey though, the country where we had mysteriously internet connection, an extremely nice surprise happened to us. One day earlier our Autopilot stopped working (see this post). Benedikt and I were worried that we will have to be driving the next 20.000km without Autopilot. Mysteriously and from close to scratch, about 5 km before the Georgian border, Benedikt noticed the camera lines on the screen behind the steering wheel. We stopped on the right shoulder, restarted the car and … the Autopilot worked again! You can’t believe how relieved Benedikt and I were. Till now, we don’t know how this happened. It is very unlikely that the problem solved itself. Our theory is, that it was a Tesla technician in Switzerland who helped us out with a distant repair work. Luckily we were still in Turkey and the car was online when that person was doing this. We are definitely saying a big thank you to this unknown hero!

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