So it begins

Lazy Days

Published Date : October 27, 2004

Today is another day on the lake.  We headed out early after a great breakfast of French toast with honey (if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a sucker for a great serving of French toast �� ). 

Back on the water again, we enjoyed the opportunity to see everything we had missed in the darkness last night.  About halfway across our captain stopped the boat and we all jumped in and enjoyed a cool swim.  By mid-morning, the temperature was already into the mid-twenties and promising to grow warmer.  Most found the water too chilly, Marika, Amy and I were enjoying ourselves.   

Getting underway again, we cruised down a river passed some Lycian tombs carved into the rock face.  The tombs are thought to have been carved around 400BC when the ancient trading city of Kaunos was prospering.  Once again, I find myself amazed by the ingenuity of our ancestors.  

Our final destination for the day was İztuzu beach, a 4.5km stretch of sand separating the Aegean Sea from the Dalyan River.  Salt water on one side and fresh water on the other.   The area is popular with both humans and turtles.  Wooden stakes were set out around the beach marking out turtle nesting sites.   

There were loads of German and English tourists about, making it a challenge to find a quiet patch of sand.  That didn’t detract from the day though.  It was nice and relaxing, sunbathing and swimming with the fishes.

We had a late lunch back on board our boat.  Apparently there was a wasp nest nearby though, because several of themselves decided to be a nuisance!  Making our way back up the river, we stopped at the mud baths again.  Into a freezing cold mud pool, then out to bake in the sun for half an hour before rinsing off in freezing cold water.  The experience is capped off with a final soak in a hot spring.  Very refreshing!  Apparently if you do it twice a day for a week it does great things for your skin.  Doing it once is just fun!

More beaches

Published Date : October 28, 2004

We started the day with another great breakfast at the hostel, then it was a four-hour drive through the mountains to Oludeniz in the Bay of Fethiye.  Oludeniz is a popular German/English package holiday destination, but our accommodation for the night is the campground.  The location is fantastic, right on a sandy lagoon with all the necessary facilities including a bar.

I wandered through town with Lisa and Becky looking for some sunscreen. I had forgotten to stock up before leaving London and have been hunting for it ever since!  You would think it would be a simple enough thing to pick up, but it has turned into quite the challenge.  I figured if anywhere was going to have sunscreen, it was going to be a holiday resort.  I finally found some selling for the ridiculous price of 25 million Lira ($25).  I really didn’t want to buy it at the price, but I needed some.  I couldn’t keep borrowing it from everybody else all trip. 

As for the town, it was…different.  A little patch of England in the middle of Turkey.  Everything in the town was English – English football, English breakfasts, English pubs.  The lack of local flavor was a bit off-putting, but it was a beautiful place.

Some of the group spent the afternoon paragliding, but most of us just chilled on the beach.  I rented a kayak for 7 million lira ($7) for one hour and had a good paddle around the lagoon and out to the main beach.  The water was crystal clear, and I spent an enjoyable afternoon watching the fish swimming around several metres below me.  Very cool.

I finished the night off in the bar, and stayed up late chatting with Tris, Ant and Tim.

Treehouses

Published Date : October 29, 2004

We had a very scenic drive along one of the dodgiest roads I’ve ever been on.  It was unpaved, narrow and still under construction.  At one point we got stuck with a cotton truck coming the other way and no room for either of us to pass.  Wayne drew the short straw and had to reverse up the windy road until we reached a point where the road widened enough for the truck to pass us!   

Our destination for the night is Saklikent Gorge Campground.  Saklikent means hidden valley and it definitely lives up to its name.  The valley just appears out of nowhere when you’re right on top of it.

Our accommodation for the night is treehouses.  They were simple, but effective, with the tree growing through the centre of each one.  I’m sharing with Ruth, Lisa, Becky, Adele and Sarah.  Ours was one of the lower buildings, but it had very steep stairs to access it.  Quite an adventure climbing up with our backpacks!

We spent the afternoon tubing down the river.  They provided each of us with a tube and a kayak paddle and sent us off down the rapids.  We started right from the campground where the river pours out of the gorge and made our way downstream.  What a fantastically fun time!  The water was freezing cold, the tubes were practically impossible to control and we were endlessly scraping our butts on submerged boulders, but it was well worth it just for the rush!

The drive back upstream was almost as much fun!  To start things off, one of the trucks got bogged in the sand, so the guys all had a hand at getting it unstuck.  Then it was the adventure of loading up two trucks with 25 people along with 25 tubes and paddles.  There were people sitting on top of the tubes, hanging off the side of the truck, and sitting on each other’s laps, but we all made it back in one piece!

The three people who had decided not to go tubing almost didn’t made it back though.  They had decided to explore up the gorge and ended up getting locked in when the gates closed at dusk!  Luckily they were all able to climb the fence otherwise it would have been a very long, cold night.