Blog Posting Delay

Well, our vacation is nearly at it's end. Randee and I have a few more
blog posts that we'd like to make, but at the moment our only reliable
computing device is my iPhone. *Somebody* left his MacBook charger in
southern Turkey - but I'm not naming names.

So, as nobody really enjoys typing on the iPhone, it looks like future
posts will have to await our return to NJ on Sunday (unless some
Londoner lends us a charger when we overnight there on Saturday :-) ).

2009/08/08 12:20 AM (Istanbul time)

/Chris

Dirty Dancing

On Sunday we hired a boat to show us the local sights. The day before we had made arrangements with Abdulah down at the dock for a day long boat trip for 20 lira apiece (about $14). At 10am we were at the dock, and shown to our yacht – a flat, bargelike boat (picture Disney’s Jungle Cruise boat, only bigger, with a real engine). Because of the size of our group we had the boat all to ourselves. Our tour guide was not Abdulah, but elderly Hassan, who was missing a few teeth and spoke virtually no English. This was going to be an adventure!

We motored slowly through the very twisty river, which is lined with reeds and sits in between steep mountains. The language barrier meant that we were never quite sure what our itinerary was. Hassan seemed to say “yes, yes” to everything we said.

First stop was the local mud bath and thermal spa. At first we thought we were going to the “little” one, but somehow we later thought it was the “big” one (see what I mean about his “yes, yes” reply?)… Whether it was big or small didn’t matter – we hadn’t laughed so hard – well, since the night before when the guy showed up for his friend’s party. The mud bath itself is about a 20’ square of grey liquid, about 18” deep, with a foot or two of mud below. Everyone goes in wearing their bathing suit and comes out looking like a grey statue. We slipped and slid our way through, coating ourselves and each other, screaming with laughter from beginning to end. Once you got over how disgusting it felt it was absolutely hysterical. After painting ourselves, we then had to dry in the sun before washing the mud off under outdoor showers – there was mud in places it just should never be. Next up were the thermal baths. We had our choice of inside or outside. The outside one was pretty yucky – extremely hot and smelly, and full of flotsom on the surface. The inside one was better – hot but bearable (in fact, once you got in it was very soothing), cleaner, but smelling equally bad of sulfur.

Suffering from the Benjamin Button Effect, looking 10 years younger after the mud bath (Lizzie quickly figured out she was now only 2), but still needing a bath, our next stop was a swimming break in Lake Köyceğiz. The water was warm but refreshing, very deep and calm, and the boys had a great time diving off the front of the boat. The swim was followed by lunch at a riverside cafeteria (included in the 20 lira price) – a large, open, covered tent filled with other tourists from other boats. There were a few of these restaurants along the river – clearly different boats have arrangements with different riverside eateries. Lunch was adequate – nothing to write home about, but just fine – various mezes (appetizers) and a choice of chicken, fish or meatballs (köfte).

The ruins of Kaunos were our next stop. The boat stopped at a tiny dock and somehow our tour guide managed to get across to us that we should walk up the road to the ruins, then down the opposite side and he would pick us up on the other side of the ruins in an hour. In retrospect, this was pretty risky business – we could easily have misunderstood and would have been stranded in the hot sun. The ruins were a long, hot, dusty walk up a hill. We drank all the water we brought on the way up, and unfortunately by the time we hiked to the ruins, there was little interest in seeing them. We poked around the main part of the site and sat in the theater for a while, but didn’t really explore most of the ruins. The macho males all attempted to climb up to the top of the hill where the fortress structure was, but the path didn’t go all the way up and they returned in defeat. It took a while to find the path that led down toward the river – another long and dusty road. When we finally got to the river the only boat we found wasn’t ours. That’s when we first realized we may have misunderstood Hassan’s instructions. But, no real adventure here – he was waiting for us around the next bend. We all took a quick dunk in the river to get off the dust and got back on the boat for the journey to our final stop – the Iztuzu (turtle) beach.

The beach itself is nothing to write home about – wet, fine sand that was more dirt-like than the sand we’re used to at home. The water was very warm – even warmer than the river – and shallow. We walked out very far, but never got far enough to be in over our heads. No waves, either – just peaceful, calm, clear waters. After about an hour on the beach we were sufficiently breaded and baked, and totally wiped out from the excursion. The trip back to Dalyan took about 20 minutes, and we staggered off the boat to our cars. It was about 6pm, and we had been out since 10 – a very fun and full day.

Grand Central Station

We’re now (as of July 31) at our rental house in Dalyan. It’s a villa just outside of the village amongst other rental villas, small hotels and apartments, and local residents. Some maps show Dalyan on the Aegean and others show it on the Mediterranean – it’s right about where the two meet, at the southeast corner of Turkey. Dalyan is on the Dalyan River, which winds its way a few kilometers from the sea to Koyceğiz Lake. The town itself is small and now tourism is its main business so there are many restaurants, villa sales and rental offices, tour operators and boats for hire. While this may not sound very appealing, the village is actually very pretty, clean and charming, with a street right along the river lined with restaurants and boats for hire.

Everywhere in Turkey the people have been extremely friendly, and Dalyan is no exception. In fact, on Saturday, our first full day at the villa, we had no fewer than 7 visitors! Each time we’d settle in for a quiet nap after the stressful work of shopping, cooking, eating and swimming, someone else would stroll up the walk.

Early in the morning, before most of us were up, the pool guy came to start up the filter. He was relatively unobtrusive, and most of us didn’t even know he’d come by. After that the cleaning women came to collect the towels they had left on the line the afternoon before, and to pick up the trash.

Later in the morning a guy from the rental company came by, presumably to give us information about Turkey, the villa, and the region. This was his opening to a sales pitch for the tours that the company offers. We listened politely and sent him on his way.

Next was Charlie’s friend Salim. Charles Bentley own the villa – he’s from England, as are many of the tourists and villa owners in the resort areas of Turkey. Salim told us he was like Charlie’s Turkish brother, and that he owned a restaurant in town should we want to go out for dinner. He first started chatting up Nick, who did a good job of chatting him up right back – he told him, “Sure, if we go out we’ll come by.”

The day before we arrived in Dalyan one of the renters of our villa was involved in a scooter accident. It was pretty serious, and she spent 2 days in the hospital. We had heard various versions of the accident story from the rental office and Charlie. Late in the afternoon a woman strolled up the path – none other than the “Accident Victim” herself. Apparently they left in a hurry, with her husband packing up the house for her and their family while she was in the hospital, and he had left a few things behind. “AV” was out of the hospital now and doing well, but she did have a big bandage on her neck. Her injury was pretty serious – she hit the accelerator instead of the brake and rammed into the back of a truck. Good ‘ole Charlie had helped them find a place to stay for a few days since they couldn’t leave when scheduled. Hearing about her accident cured us of any plans we might have had about renting scooters to get around.

Some time before dinner, the pool guy snuck in again, this time to turn off the filter.

We were laughing over dinner about all the social activity of our quiet day when the most unusual visitor of the day turned up. Dining ‘al fresco’, with some music playing and lots of chatter (we are a group of 15, so we tend to make a lot of noise), we were surprised when a thin, older man strolled up the walk. He spoke virtually no English, but managed to say that he was looking for “the party of his friend.” We explained that this wasn’t a party, but he seemed to want to hang around for a while. When we asked for his friend’s name, he said he didn’t know – at least that was his answer to the question, which we can only assume he didn’t understand. He finally left and we laughed for a very long time about his search for the party for his nameless friend.