Rixos Hotel Beldibi

... to Alanya, I opted to take the coach this time instead of hitch hiking. I got into the station at 6:30 and then took a city bus to get closer to the beach. I think I was pretty much in the wrong neighbourhood for cheap hotels but was able to negotiate a room down from 50 to 30 TL. The apartment had a living room, kitchen, dining area and bedroom!<br><br>Now for a walk-about town for the evening...

(English follows) <br>Nous avons fa&#305;t du raft&#305;ng dans la gorge de Kropulu. L'eau eta&#305;t bleue, bleue et bleue... et ple&#305;n de po&#305;ssons. Journee agreable passee en compagn&#305;e de nouveaux am&#305;s de Montreal, M&#305;chel et Suzanne avec qu&#305; on s'en va fa&#305;re ...

... nicht als Teil ein** Busladung **leben, hingekarrt und eingebunden. Die Üb**gabe des Autos am Flughafen klappt problemlos und schon befinden wir uns auf d** breiten, zur Ost**zeit wenig befahrenen vi**- bis sechsspurigen Küstenstrasse. Auf den 120 km in d** Küstenebene zwischen Antalya und Alanya hält sich kaum ein** an die offizielle Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung von 90 kmh. Die durchweg sehr guten Straßenv**hältnisse und d** dynamische, nicht an den ...

... there is about six hectares each and a supply of sea water and fresh water that is unlimited, it rains. When it rains, holidays are just a few letters different from horror days. Fortunately Tanja talked down the price of a room from 80 dollars to 20 Euro, so we are dry tonight, albeit a bit cold. The heater in the room runs overtime now, it has to heat some 40 metres cubed of concrete from 11 to a comfortable 20plus centigrade. We are coming out of Africa, you know.

... it would be the perfect place to spend the next three days. As it is it is chilly and overcast most of the time. The way our tour is set up we don't stay with the same group the whole time. We have bus tickets from point to point. Someone picks us up at the bus station and takes us to our hotel then a van picks us up and takes us on a tour. Then they take us back to our hotel and in the morning a van takes us to the bus station and we start over. But here, in Fethiye, we ...

... hours of the night. We've been doing most of our long distance travel overnight to save on accommodation costs and we are getting much better at sleeping on the bus. Devoted readers will recall our complaints about the overnight buses in Australia but we are getting much more used to them and an Australian Greyhound would feel like absolute luxury now. Our sleeping abilities are sorely tested here on Turkish night buses, particularly by the loud action movies ...

... were huge drops on these narrow parts where they had piled up sand to do the road at a later date. Damo's expert driving got us through and once we arrived in Alanya it was off for some drinks (only 2 each as $8 for a beer) before crashing at 2am. As it is really just a drinking place we didn't take any photos of Alanya. Alanya is a haven for Germans and Scandinavians ...

... We were able to even toast marshmallows over the flames. Everyone was jealous of our marshmallows as you can't get them in Turkey....our guide got them in Greece on her way. We have travelled down along a small section of the west coast before heading inland to a place called Pamukkale. An area of salt pools with thermal water running through them. After driving down to Oludeniz where we camped for 2 nights straight after a huge downpour where our ...

... pictures of people killed in the fighting. Nevertheless, they waved us out of south Cyprus with little more than a flick of the finger, after which we trudged through a narrow no man's land to the north Cyprus immigration control kiosk, where we received Turkish Cyprus stamps on separate pieces of paper (we hear Greece does not always accept people whose passports bear testimony to their time in North Cyprus). After being stamped in, we took a look around ...

... city in Turkey. I've been reading a really good book on the beach, "The Heartless Stone" by Tom Zoellner. It's about the diamond industry: mines, wars, the DeBeers cartel. Walking on the beachfront street today I passed a store called "DeBeer Jewelry." I guess the DeBeers marketing reach has reached every part of the globe.