Çayeli

Çayeli (Laz: მაფავრი/Mapavri) is a town and district of Rize Province on the Black Sea coast of eastern Turkey, 18 km east of the city of Rize.

Çay means tea in Turkish and a large percentage of Turkey's tea is indeed grown in this lush green district.

Geography

Çayeli consists of a narrow coastal strip and a large section of the Black Sea Mountain range which rises steeply and runs parallel to the coast. The Rize mountain section of these mountains reach up to 2,000 m in the district.

The local economy is mainly dependent on tea-growing, along with some sweetcorn, which before tea was planted in the 1940s was the major crop here. The town and the cultivated area are all on the coastal strip, while the mountain hinterland is sparsely populated. Indeed the steepness of these hills is legendary, and celebrated in song; the late Barış Manço used to sing a version of the local ballad Çayelunden Öteye Ciderum Yali Yali, which tells of a man so much in love that he was even prepared to haul his household over the mountains of Çayeli.