Unusually everyone was up
promptly this morning and was breakfasted without delay. We all had a coach to
catch. We were going on a little trip.
We assembled outside the hotel’s
gate and were soon about the coach of “Basket
Travel”. Our tour guide Deniz told us all about Turkey
and the area and how the locals lived. Everything sounded to be so cheap, but
he did gloss over how low the local income was too. I suppose that everything
is relative.
After only fifteen minutes we
were in the town of Dalyan where the coach parked, and we took a two-minute
walk to the river where we all boarded boats. Our party was all together on
boat 101. Not all of our group had gone on the outing, but there was about
twenty of us along for the day. More than enough to outnumber the half-dozen
normal people who were on the boat with us.
We sailed up the Dalyan river
through some rather beautiful scenery, and after half an hour or so we moored
up at the mud baths.
One of my very few regrets of
the holiday was that I didn’t get photos at the mud baths. But being caked in
mud didn’t really lend itself to camera-brandishing.
On arrival at the mud baths we
stripped down to swimmies and flip-flops, and waded in to the mud pool. We then
smothered ourselves in mud, and once completely covered, we got out and stood
in the blazing sunshine until the mud dried. We then showered it off, and had a
soak in a bath fed from the sulphurous volcanic spring. It did stink!
Just as we got back into the
boat I quickly looked at the geo-map. Would you believe our boat was moored not
five yards from a geocache!
We sailed back down the river to
the Saeran restaurant. We moored on their jetty and had a rather good bit of
dinner. The highlight of the dinner for some of our party was watching the
local cats chasing a frog, but for me the best part was seeing the waiter drop
a tray of dinners. I hope I didn’t actually cheer.
As we ate we looked across the river
at the Lycean tombs carved into the sides of the cliffs overlooking the river.
They are over two thousand years old, and were rather spectacular.
From the restaurant we sailed
down the river to a crab farm where we looked at some rather aggressive crabs
in a tank, and (having failed to find
the geocache not twenty yards away) we piled back on
to the boat and sailed down the river to the coast and İztuzu Beach. We moored
up, and had two hours to do as we wanted. I spent twenty minutes hunting out
the three geocaches that were there and had an ice cream before joining the
rest of our gang. While some of our number sunbathed, others of us bobbed about
in the rather large waves washing in from the Mediterranean.
It was at this point that I was
inadvertently kicked in the balls by a passing German swimmer.
With half an hour to go we
walked out onto the jetty. We’d bought some crab meat at the crab farm as our
tour guide had told us that the turtles liked it. We were told that if we stood
on the jetty and threw scraps of crab meat into the water we’d attract turtles.
We attracted fish. Lots of fish. And seagulls. And suddenly there were turtles.
I was expecting to see creatures
which were about the size of dinner plates. These turtles were about the size
of dinner tables. They were “huge*.
With about five minutes before
we had to leave, the heavens opened. All afternoon we’d been watching the
storms rumbling in the hills around us, and when the rain started, it started
with a vengeance. It was at this point that the boat’s rain covers were pulled
down (I’d not noticed them before), and we sailed back to the coach singing a medley of various songs.
We got back to the coach; it was
only a short drive back to the hotel where we were again dropped at the gate. *Not* the entrance... As we’d driven
back, Deniz had told us that the coach wasn’t allowed through the hotel gate as
the hotel management doesn’t like the people who ran today’s excursion. We
wondered why. The answer was obvious really. We’d paid twenty pounds each for
today’s trip. The hotel themselves run exactly the same outing for forty-six pounds
each.
We went back to our rooms, washed
off the last of the mud, and went for dinner. As part of today being “trip day” we thought we
might miss the hotel’s main dining room and try their a la carte restaurant instead.
I’m glad we tried it, but (in all honesty) the hotel’s main
restaurant was far better.
After a busy day, and an even
busier one planned for tomorrow we thought an early night might be a good idea.
We went to bed just before midnight.
I took quite
a few photos today. And there’s even a video in there too.
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