Those who know me will realise
that (on special occasions) I will look for film pots hidden under rocks. According to the
geocaching map there were only four geocaches within two miles of our hotel. Back
home I wouldn’t hesitate to go for a little wander to find the lot. But with
the heat of the Turkish day being well over thirty degrees Celsius I wasn’t
wanting to walk far. So finding myself wide awake just as dawn was breaking I
thought I might walk half a mile down the road to see if I couldn’t find the
closest one while it was still cool.
"er indoors TM" wasn’t overly
keen on the early start, but it had to be done.
Even at quarter to six in the morning it was still hot. We checked
out with hotel security who seemed amazed that we were up so early, and it didn’t
take long for us to find a little plastic tube stashed in a rock which was only
a little way off of the road. Having done the secret geo-rituals (albeit in
English rather than in Turkish) we went back to the hotel and back to bed
for a couple of hours.
With a party of about thirty (I’m not sure how many of us there were – I kept losing
count) it wasn’t really practical to get everyone to do
everything together. This morning it was just me and "er indoors TM" for brekkie. Grilled
tomatoes, eggs benedict, crepes, omelette and pizza went down very well.
But for all that we’d had a fairly quiet brekkie we soon
found quite a few of our group at the pool where I spent the morning
alternately doing crossword puzzles and dozing.
I scoffed a chicken salad for lunch,
then together with "My
Boy TM", "er indoors TM" and I
took a taxi to the village. There was another geocache not a hundred yards from
the taxi rank. I thought I might go find it…
I eventually found it. It was up a rather steep hill. Some
might describe it as a cliff... it was a tad steep. And there wasn’t a path as
such. I just scrambled up as best I could. Perhaps flip-flops wasn’t the best
footwear for the job? I did tread on a particularly vicious thorn that went
straight through my flip-flop and drew blood.
To celebrate the find we went to the bar where we’d been
drinking gin the other day. I had an amaretto sour. It wasn’t long before we
met up with others in our group. "My Boy TM" and
Craig hired quad-bikes and went off on a mission – we later heard that they had
been stopped at the airport by the Turkish army.
We went on a little shopping mission with family. It was
mostly a good afternoon, but there was one rather irritating episode…
Have you ever been shopping in Turkey? Nothing there has a
price. When you ask how much something costs, the shopkeeper asks you to make
an offer. He then rudely insults your offer and insists his obviously fake
merchandise is worth its weight in gold. You then embark in a rather epic haggling
session and end up paying what you offered in the first place.
One haggler got a bit too keen and demanding with us. Turkish
shopping takes too much time. Back home you can go into a shop and buy what you
want in seconds. You can’t buy anything in less than twenty minutes in
Sarigerme.
We came back to the hotel, and I
sat by the pool doing crosswords until it got too hot. I was heading back to our
room when I met some of our number in the bar. I sat with Elliott for an hour or
so drinking cocktails.
We had a rather late dinner
today. As always the food selection was amazing, but on the stroke of nine o’clock
the entire lot was swept away. How could so much food be moved so quickly?
The ladies and children went off
to the resort’s amphitheatre where there was some children’s entertainment
going on. Craig (father of two of the
children) announced that he was going to do “man shit”. Several of us
went to do “man shit” with him, and "er indoors TM" came with us too.
In the end it turned out that “man shit” was bowling whilst accompanied
by far too much lager.
I’m rubbish at bowling. I just
watched.
With bowling bowled we then sat
on the balcony bar (a favourite place) drinking brandy until midnight.
I
took a few photos today as well…
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