Don't Rock The Boat

After 4 days of no internet, there is much fun and frivolity to catch up on.  

The next leg of our trip was to sail from Fethiye on the south coast of Turkey around to a little town near Olympos which is famous for its tree house hotels.  Fortunately Lu had been there before and due to the position of Olympos (inland), you are nowhere near a beach, there are no pools as Olympos is a national park and you're not allowed to build anything that is not out of wood..... but the killer for me was the story she told of how when you put food to your mouth it was black with flies.  No Thanks!  So we were ending out tour in Cirali, just nearby on the beach in a place with a massive pool.  

Anyway...... I'm starting with the end of our tour when you surely want to hear about it from the beginning.

 Our boat was Mavi Boncuk, a 25 metre wooden gulet that ran on sails if the wind was right, otherwise it would put along at 10 knots.  

She was captained by Moustafa, a laid back cruiser who is just living his dream sailing up and down the Turkish coast.  

We also had Vulcan, the 'gopher', who did everything and did it with a smile.  He laughed, played jokes and loved the 1,2,3, turn and flick photo opportunity!

and the third crewman was Suleyman, the chef. 

Vulcan and the captain spoke English, but the chef struggled with English at the same level we struggled with Turkish.  There was a lot of miming.

There were 15 of us on the boat.  

Our team of four

A group of five young, buff Aussies who were travelling around the world for 8 months.  They were good fun and should have been in a boy band.  

They called Lu "Mum"!

  

The last group was a bunch of young Aussies who were all living in London. They kept to themselves and made no effort to mix with anyone else other than their own group.

So there are no photos of them!

 As with most mixed groups, there were people that you would seek out to hang with and other you wanted to stab in the face!

It's a hard life on board.  There are big lounges to sit on and beers to drink

Music to listen to.  We fashioned out own surround sound stereo system out of 4 little travel speakers, so whilst all the young kids were up the front of the boat we could listen to our old people music.  

(Some of the more petulant children weren't impressed with the selection)

Ice creams to purchase from the floating Mr Whippy boat.

Gozleme to eat from the little old nana, who would come up to the boats with her son in one of the bays.  Sweet and savoury - Delish!

Flags to display and dance in front of.

Water sports to participate in - without fear of underwater creatures taking a limb!

Laughs to have.

Afternoon naps to have.

Sailing to enjoy.

Not to mention islands and small villages to visit.

This was the village of Kas which has a population of 700 in the winter and about 4000 in the summer.  It has sweet little cobble stone streets and lots of touristy shops.  
I bought a magnet.

It was about 1000 degrees and I was feeling it, so we stopped off at a restaurante' that had fans with spritzer water blowing out of them.  They are the ants pants and the cheap version of air conditioning.

We had our usual order of Efes, but Madds, a non beer drinker ordered this Blue Lagoon, as we'd just been there...... I'm not sure why she insists on ordering and drinking these concoctions - they are Turkish petrol with food colouring!

There were plenty of boats going the same route as we were, but there were also plenty of day trippers who were out to see the sunken city.  Apparently it was around BC, but an earthquake hit about 1AD and split the city in half, sinking one side and gouging a 90 metre trench between the two sides.

This sort of shows where there are buildings under the water.

However, this was our favourite sight of the day. These two were on a boat going past ...... Why would you?

This bay was also full of turtles!  Totally amazing!!

We swam in the water as usual and every 3-4 minutes you'd hear a little "Pffft" and a little head would pop out of the water, sometimes only 10 metres away from us.  It was a little scary when they got too close, I'm sure they'd give you good nip if given the chance.

This cove was called Smuggler's Cove and it has it's own pirate cave.  

Apparently at night, the rocks inside the cave light up.

Our Captain, O Captain let Rob have a little drive of the dinghy on the way back from the cave.

And not to be outdone.... I gave it a crack as well.

That night, our last night on the boat, The Smuggler's Inn holds an Ibizaesque party at their bar.  So I want you to imagine 200 18-20 year olds, drunk, wearing thongs, dropping glasses, one drop toilet with a broken door and lots of dickheads.

Lu, a dedicated nurse, was called to 5 separate glass in foot injuries.

On our way to the party

A bit of dancing before the crowd arrived!

It was clearly pirate themed, and some people came prepared.

To which some others took advantage of.  Rob perhaps should have put the patch over his other eye?

This pretty lady on the left was from Kyneton, where Lu is from...... a small country town in the middle of Victoria!!!  What are the odds?

I think you could probably call Rob a sort of a klutz........  here is a small montage of his time on the boat.

Rob forgot to peg his towel to the boat and overnight it flew overboard.  So it sat on the bottom  of the ocean before somebody dived down and got it for him the next morning.

Funny thing was, I did the same thing!  Der!

Vulcan didn't tie the dinghy to the boat and it started to float away, when the alert was sounded, Rob jumped to his feet, ran down to the back of the boat, down the gang plank and jumped to the dinghy, just missing it, but landing on the side.......

Spraining his knee!

And breaking his glasses!

There are few foods that Robbo doesn't like, so when he had them accidentally, he just threw them up!

I think this biscuit was ok though.

There were a few illnesses and sicknesses on the boat and luckily for them, they had us old ladies onboard with them.  Together we had a fully stocked apothecary and were handing out drugs hand over fist!

So that was our boat trip.  It did, however come to a fairly abrupt end and we were offloaded in a funny little port 

and we waiting in blazing heat for 1.5 hours before we were sardined into the smallest bus in history for another 1.5 hours.  

We finally got to our little town of Cirali, but we were taken to the wrong hotel...... tempers were becoming frayed.  The nice man, clearly aware of the feelings around the bus and our hotel was found.

And this is where we stayed for 2 days.