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Part III

We took another bus ride (eleven hours) to Antalya on the Mediterranean coast. We had prearranged to take a private sailboat from there to Kas, stopping at several ports along the way. The trip was supposed to take four days and three nights.

The boat was a huge disappointment. The only working instrument was a magnetic compass - no radio or other safety features we've come to take for granted.

On the good side, there were many great ports along the way and the water and scenery were beautiful. We would have never seen these had we been on land.

At one port, we saw the ruins of Myra, which included ancient Lycian rock tombs. The Lycians settled in the area in the 15th century B.C. St. Nicholas (Santa Claus) settled here more recently and was bishop of Myra in the 5th century AD.

We got off the boat in Kas and found they had a French restaurant. This would be the first time on the trip that we would eat anything other than cucumber, olives, feta cheese, kebabs, eggplant or eggs. The Turkish diet is amazingly non-diverse.

Snack food can be bought at tourist stores. Unfortunately, they've "improved" on our old-favorites. We've had peanut butter flavored Cheetos (yes, Cheetos as in CHEEse) as well as beef and catsup flavored potato chips.

Don't look for these on your grocery store shelves anytime soon. I imagine that these were all horrible marketing ideas that were first test-distributed in Boise, then the whole lot was quickly shipped to Turkey.

From Kas, we went to Oludinez which is also on the Coast. Oludinez had so many visiting Brits that it should be a British colony. The town catered to them, which means we got more non-Turkish food (yea!).

Oludinez is a pretty spot, but Oludinez businesses had a tendency to horribly over-promote sites and sometimes outright lied. There was a "Blue Cave" that wasn't. A "Butterfly Valley" without the winged creatures. Our afternoon boat excursion was supposed to take us to the Blue Lagoon, but it turns out this is impossible. It was actually pretty amusing after the fact.

The boat excursion reminded us of the extreme efforts we take to promote safety (and avoid lawsuits) in the U.S. There were several boats that all went on the same route. In the morning, they would back towards the beach and drop anchor just offshore.

When it was time to board, an extremely long gangway was lowered onto the sand from the rear of the boat. Passengers had to walk up the gangway, but the waves caused it to rise several feet into the air and slam down on the sand in barely predictable cycles.

There were children and old people attempting this feat. Lots of people got very wet. Someone on our boat got a horrible cut. Someone on a neighboring boat broke her leg. Every place we stopped on the excursion, the process was repeated. The D-day invasion was only slightly more hazardous.