Land Travel In Cappadocia

What happens when a group of like minded yachties goes on a little land travel? A very good time is likely and that was the end result from 2100km of travel from Marmaris into Cappadocia and return.

The gang, Americans, English, Australians and Germans.

One of the long term live-aboard ladies here in Marmaris is an organizing enthusiast and has been putting together yachtie tour groups for years. We had wanted to see some of interior Turkey and planned on renting a car and doing it ourselves. At the last minute she threw together a tour and we jumped at the chance to go traveling with some friends on what was a very good deal both from content and cost. We had a nice Mercedes bus, a great tour guide and driver and a good plan. We were off!

Taz, our tour guide and a friend.

Off into very rugged mountainous terrain that was much more alpine and beautiful than we expected. The Taurus Mountains rise almost directly out of the sea to around 13000'. The tree line seems to be about 6-8000'. There's still plenty of snow in April and May and to see these mountains above the southern coast of Turkey is spectacular.

Tauras Mountains

The travel went smoothly, the roads are generally very good, and we stopped frequently enough at scenic spots. Once in the interior mountains it feels very much like the central Sierra of California or the Snowy's of Wyoming. It's lovely country, thinly populated with small villages and some grazing of goats and sheep. There are big high altitude lakes. It was also cool to the point of being chilly but sunny and high-altitude crisp. We stopped for an afternoon at Sagalassos, an ancient Roman city at about 6000' with a fantastic setting on a mountain side over looking the main trade route through the valley far below. The ruins of the highest Roman amphitheater in the world over look the what remains of the city, a beautiful place I'd never heard of before.

Amphitheater at Sagalassos

The Library

 And that's pretty much how it went. I could write a long blow-by-blow description of the entire trip and bore the hell out of everyone but I'll try to avoid that temptation. Suffice to say we descended down into the central plains of Anatolia and on to Cappadocia.

Interior of the mosque at Beyshir

 We visited the very good 12th century Esrefoglu wooden mosque in Beyshir. This place,  despite the much smaller scale than Hagia Sophia or the Blue Mosque of Istanbul, impressed me much more in its mystic beauty.  The local Imam gave us a tour and he was a very modern, kind and respectable gentleman. Definitely a good guy.

Cappadocian scene

We visited under ground cities.We toured scenic valleys with amazing erosion formations. We toured churches built into earthen teepee formations. We hiked all over the place. It was not a really lazy tour. The highlight of the trip was a great early morning balloon ride over the Imagination Valley and the area near Avanos. Janet got another animal fix with a camel ride. We did most all the stuff you're supposed to do in Cappadocia and had a great time.

Great balloon ride.

Janet harassing the local fauna.

Eventually we headed back over the mountains to the coast at Antalya which is a big, big tourist destination for Russians and eastern Europeans. It's a lovely setting but far to developed for us and I wouldn't want to be anywhere near during the height of the season. Then it was back through the coastal mountains and down into Marmaris. A great trip!

Not what you think of as the Southern Med.

So we spent six days with very nice people and a great tour guide. I highly recommend that if you have time in Turkey to get out of the coastal scene that you do something similar. The interior is often very beautiful and always interesting. Tourism is a factor at the major sites but you will see much of the real Turkey going about its business.  Everyone we met was extremely friendly and helpful. It is not a difficult country to travel in however you decide to go.

Imagination Valley

 Now we hope we're in the final stages of getting out of Marmaris. Its been fun and very social but its time to move on. With a little luck our sails will be done today and the new inverter will arrive. We'll get final provisions aboard and be gone day after tomorrow, heading to the southwest along the coast.

Love to all,
Bill and Janet
SV Airstream

Marina Rats In Marmaris

We seem to be natural marina rats. Although hanging out in marinas is not why we're out here a good marina does have its allure. And Marmaris Yacht Marina, in some ways, is a fantastic marina. The shear number of boats is amazing. There are probably 1500 boats on the hard and another 1000 in the water.

Marmaris Yacht Marina

 There are super yachts, power and sail, everywhere we look. The place has a "control tower" at the end of every dock just to keep track of things. There are at least three travel lifts, the largest being 550 tons, the largest I've ever seen. There are all the amenities one would expect and the usual services. In general the quality seems high and the cost of the marina is reasonable even by North American standards. By Mediterranean standards its very cheap.

Dawn off load in the rain

Obviously our ship did come in, just a day late. However, the timing coincided perfectly with the arrival of some heavy weather and 40 knot winds made unloading impossible for a couple more days. Finally we got a call from our Turkish agent at one o'clock in the morning to "come to ship in 15 minutes, we unload you in 30 minutes". So we staggered around and got dressed, it was still raining, and then thought about it a little. Hmmm, off load from a strange ship to a strange port a boat which hasn't been started or had systems checked in a month and proceed across a strange bay to a strange marina without charts at night in the wind and rain. Sounds like some flight operations I've heard proposed by people who weren't doing the flying. So I called them back and told them we'd be available when it got light. Thank you. Come morning it was still raining but we got the boat off the ship without undue difficulty, just the usual worries, and made our way the few miles over to Marmaris Yacht Marina.  Deed done.

Wanna buy some Jerry cans?

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Sevenstar Yacht Transport to anyone contemplating shipping their boat. . They were honest and responsible and their load masters we're very concerned about taking good care of the boats on board. No one we know has had any problem with Sevenstar and there are  real horror stories  about some other shippers.

Marmaris sunset

So we're here getting things sorted out for the cruising season to come. The weather is generally lovely with sunny days in the seventies and cool nights. We're actually sleeping under blankets, not something we've done on the boat in years. We've had a few days of rain, it is springtime in the Med, but its very nice. We have several good friends from past years who are here getting ready for their season and the yachtie community is as friendly as ever. The social scene is great fun. We're  getting to know Marmaris and liking it.

Local veggie chow

Boat systems took a little hit after being secured on a ship in the heat of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. The exterior was dirty but not as completely grungy as I had expected. Our refrigeration and inverter died on the first day. The fridge just needed coolant added, we hadn't had to touch it in six years, now it's working fine. The inverter may or may not be fixable. Maybe we'll find out today. We had developed a leak around the mast deck seal but the massive use of silicone sealer has prevailed and the leak seems to have been defeated. Our sails are in at the very nice UK Sails loft getting a going over. I have constructed an amazingly cool passerell (a boarding plank and the symbol of the Mediterranean based boat) to get on and off the boat when we're Med tied, which is always the case in these parts. 

Janet's nemesis, the passerell

 

We've got a few more jobs to do but things are proceeding well. So for now we take a shuttle bus into town and prowl Marmaris. We eat local. We are never short of baklava. We listen to soulful Turkish music on FM and we have a happy hour with friends almost every evening. It's all very nice and,  although we are not yet "cruising", the fun has begun!

Love to all,

Bill & Janet

Asia Again, First Impressions of Turkey.

It's the 4th  of April and where's our boat? Delayed a day is 'where' and we're not really surprised. We're in Marmaris, Turkey and this is not another hardship post. Marmaris sits nestled deep in a picturesque Mediterranean bay, almost completely enclosed by mountainous terrain. The town stretches along a beach for several miles.

Ataturk statue on the Marmaris waterfront

  We're told the resident population is about thirty five thousand but at the height of the "season" its about three hundred thousand! This time of year, before the temperatures rise and the tourist hordes arrive, it is a lovely place. There are three marinas in the bay and two of them are the largest I've ever seen. There are supposed to be over five thousand yachts based out of Marmaris at any given time. As a result just about any yachting need can be accommodated. If they don't have it in the shops they can make it or order it. In general things are very well organized. We've been here three days and have some of the lay of the city. I had picked our hotel hoping it would be a good location and it was even better in that the shuttle buses to the marinas are within a two minute walk and the best hardware store in town is across the street.

Infinite variations on Baklava

There is good baklava on every corner and a wonderful fruit and veggie market a few blocks away. We have very good yachtie friends from previous years here and we've already met others. This is shaping up very well.

The trip over was typical non-rev travel. We caught an 0600 flight from Arcata to SFO and then couldn't get on any flights up to SEA. So we took a taxi over to Oakland where an Alaska Airlines flight had seats available to SEA. We spent a nice night  with Rod and Terri Fisher at their beautiful home  in Gig Harbor. 

Rod, Terri and two old dogs.

Got into World Business Class (yippee) to Amsterdam on DL, and had a bit of a struggle finding a standby seat on any flight out of AMS to Istanbul. But we got lucky and the last KLM flight, which was overbooked by three, got us on and we arrived in Istanbul about 0200. Tired but happy, as they say. 

The Bosphorus from Topkapi Palace

 Istanbul, Constantinople, Byzantium, are there  names for any other  city that conjure up as much history? The Bosphorus strait divides the city and separates Europe and Asia. Hagia Sophia was built by Justinian in the 6th century, on the grandest possible scale, to be the greatest church in Christendom. It became a mosque with the Ottoman conquest in the 15th century and a museum with the coming of Ataturk and the secular state of Turkey in the 20th century.  

Hagia Sophia

The Blue Mosque

Dome of the Blue Mosque

Our hotel was in Sultanahmet, the oldest part of the city, within a few hundred yards of the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace, the major-major tourist sights in town. So we did all those places and the usual tourist stuff, which in a city like Istanbul, really does have to be done. We each had great Turkish baths. We did a Bosphorus ferry tour and walked the streets of Sultanahmet and the Bazaar district.

A Huge Bazaar

Our Street

Old Sultanahmet

  These parts of the city are amazingly active and the streets are full of people. I think only Hong Kong, in my experience, has seemed as busy once the day gets going. We ate a lot of good basic food, almost always followed by tea and baklava. To finish off the stay we had a lovely rooftop dinner overlooking the Bosphorus with a very affectionate but demanding cat under the table.  The restaurant cats of Sultanahmet  fare very well.

The trip down to Marmaris was simple enough. We had tickets as "real people" on Pegasus Airlines to Dalaman and we used an A2B shuttle for the 100K ride over to Marmaris. So now, after a week,  we're over the jet lag and about as "back to normal" as we ever get.

Waterfront Marmaris

 Our initial impressions of Turkey and the Turks are very positive. Everyone has been very friendly and helpful. English is common. Istanbul is modern and very busy. Ataturk and Sabiha Gokcen airports are sparkling new. Marmaris is equally bustling  and there is construction everywhere. The quality of work is far above what we've become accustomed to seeing in most of SE Asia. Turkey seems to be booming economically and the Turks are very industrious.  I will say we've seen only a little of the country so far but  I would be surprised if this is not born out further. Again, from what we've seen so far, there is almost no evidence of fundamentalist Islamic cultural pressure. People seem very much oriented towards the west.

Veggie market in Marmaris

 The Turks themselves are an impressive people. The men are big and hearty  and most of them, at whatever age, never seem to have lost a hair off their heads (sigh…). The younger generation of women are very attractive and casually western dressed. They tend to have dark hair and eyes but there are plenty of blue eyes mixed in for a little surprise. People are look heathy and active and there's little obesity. They do smoke those cigarettes, though. Janet is delighted to see so many cats. And the cats are almost all very sleek and healthy looking. They're also very tame and willing to let a stranger be friendly. Janet can get her cat 'fix' and these cats are obviously not abused by anybody. Speaks well for the people and culture when  the animals are well cared for.

Another cat gets love.

So the boat is supposed to be here tomorrow, the 5th. We may get unloaded late in the day but I have doubts about that, more likely the 6th. We'll take it over to Marmaris Yacht Marina and get to work on the red Sahara Desert sand that we're told will have coated everything coming up through Suez.

 

 6th of March

………..the ship got in about 1730 the 5th and there was no time to begin unloading. This morning they got two boats off but the wind built up to over twenty five knots directly on the beam and "operations were suspended". Fair enough because the last boat to come off did have problems. The wind is forecast to build up to forty knots tomorrow. If so we won't get off then either. Patience is a virtue, people have told me that all my life. Oh well…..

Our Ship Comes In...

 

 

 

 

.....with Airstream still aboard.

Love to all,
Bill & Janet
Photos: As always, photos by Janet

On to Turkey

Airstream was last seen in Singapore securely strapped down to the hatches of the M/V Thorco Svendborg bound for Marmaris, Turkey.  We're home waiting for one more position update before making our final travel plans to meet the ship and off-load.  The ship was scheduled to have departed Phuket, Thailand yesterday, where it picked up sixteen more yachts, and is supposed to arrive in Marmaris the 2nd of April. We'll see!

M/V Thorco Svendborg at Jurong Port

Shipping the boat was the last alternative after exhausting other options if we want to go west after two years in SE Asia. We made two attempts at the route to South Africa outlined in previous blog entrees. I explored the alternatives of getting my own weapons to the boat and going across the Arabian Sea with some capable  friends. This proved impossible due to an impenetrable international bureaucracy. We talked with several security companies about putting two guys on board with additional weapons for a friend and me. No problem, but at $1000 per day per man, for three weeks,  this was even more expensive than shipping, not to mention the other costs of the voyage. So we shipped the boat using Sevenstar Yacht Transport.

Janet at "Cloud Forest" Singapore

We flew into Singapore, on the way spent a night at the Radisson Narita in Japan to see old friends, and took ground transport to the boat across the Strait of Johor in Malaysia. The boat was in excellent condition, the guy I had looking after it was very good, and even all the electronics worked.

Wonders of Japan. Heated, electronically controlled toilet seat at the Radisson. Don't even think about pressing those buttons! Manual reversion only.

  This is not a given after leaving a boat for six months in the tropics. We moved the boat back to Singapore at One15Marina and waited for the ship. One15Marina is not exactly a hardship post, actually its rather posh, so we lazed around the pool, did a little tourist stuff in Singapore, ate some good Indian food and made something of the last time we ever plan on being in that part of the world. 

Marina Bay Sands from Gardens by the Bay

 Low and behold, the ship showed up in Singapore as scheduled. We took on the pilot, required by the port of Singapore, and followed the safety boat, required by the port of Singapore, into the deep inner reaches of Singapore Jurong Port where the ship was at a wharf. Sevenstar's loadmasters proved to be very professional and the ship's crew very capable. The loading was quite a process but all was well and the boat went on board undamaged.

Positioning the hoist

The anxious skipper

If as the shipping company says, AGW WP, which means "all goes well, weather permitting", the ship will arrive in Marmaris and we'll be there to off-load. We'll fly DL to Amsterdam, KLM to Istanbul, Pegasus Airlines down to Dalaman, Turkey and ground transport to Marmaris. Since neither of us has been to Istanbul we'll plan on a few days there enroute, everybody says its a great city.

Up she goes

So, AGW WP, we're looking forward to a great six months in Greek and Turkish waters. Please stay tuned, the next update should be from Marmaris, Turkey and we're excited about the season to come.

Love to all,

Bill & Janet