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.