Being a geek has many advantages, and I saw no reason to pretend not to be one just because I was in another country. Here is some distilled geek wisdom.

First, the emphasis is definitely on internet, not café. Only a few serve drinks.

When you walk in, you will find every machine is being used by at least two small boys playing shoot-em-up games. Down the end of the room there will be one or two older guys at a table. When they see you, they will shoo a couple of the small boys away to free up a machine for you. Cost is a uniform one lira per hour or part-hour. Pay when you leave. Ask the guys if you need any help -- we always found them very helpful. Ask in advance if you want to print anything, as something usually needs setting up or turning on.

Connections are generally slow, but not unbearably so.

The machines run Turkish Windows -- usually XP, sometimes 98. Before you go, it might be worth memorizing the order of the actions under the "File" and "Edit" menus in Internet Explorer. They are in the same places in Turkish Windows, but the words are totally different.

Mobile phones. Kate says in the Book that shops in Turkey will be able to unlock your phone and fit it with a Turkish SIM card. This is only true for some phones, and the cost varies wildly with the type of phone, so check before you leave home. The other option is just to keep your normal SIM card; on our pay-as-you-go phone, voice calls were expensive (2 Euros/min outgoing, 1.5 incoming) but texts were cheap (1 Euro to send, free to receive). If you have a contract rather than pay-as-you-go, you may need to get your phone company to enable roaming for you (free).

Entertainment. If you're like me, there will be times during long uphill trudges when you need the energetic boost that some good loud music can give you. And Claire and I enjoyed listening to recorded drama from the radio during those long dark evenings out on the hillside.

You will need a flash memory player rather than one (like an iPod) with a hard drive, as it's much easier on batteries (and much lighter). If space is limited, you should find that 80kbps is an adequate encoding rate for music, and 48kbps for voice. We have iRiver machines, but there are plenty of good alternatives.

GPS (Global Positioning System). This merits a fact sheet in its own right. I am a big fan. What GPS does is to use signals from satellites orbiting the earth to tell you exactly, to within a few metres, where you are on the planet. If you load up your GPS receiver with data about the route, it will tell you which direction things are in, how far, and when you arrive. You do need a compass as well, though, because satellite reception can be blocked by tall trees, cliffs or bad weather. I have a Garmin eTrex GPS 60, which is light, has good battery life, and is meant to be waterproof, though I never used it in the shower... Now, if we'd been able to get all-in-one GPS and mobiles, we could have avoided hacking through the jungle at Phellos for an hour and a half trying to find each other after one of us (the one with the black and yellow device in the picture) missed a very obvious waymark, but that's quite another story...

Batteries. All our equipment takes AA (LR6) size. We used Duracell, easily available in Turkey. We found that if e.g. the camera complained of low batteries, they were still fine in the torch or MP3.

* A geek is a computer nerd. The word originally referred to a man who bit the heads off live chickens in a travelling circus, but I don't do that.