Married to the Sea

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  Olympos, Antalya, Turkey
Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The night before our four day cruise from Fethiye to Olympos, Kristen
looked out into the harbor full of boats and guessed that the beautiful
big boat that pulled in was probably ours...

It wasn't...

But
though at first we couldn't believe that the boat that looked so small
and common, like all the other boats in the harbor, would be big enough
to hold 12 people comfortably, it actually was. Get the Allaturka out
on the water and man, it was a great boat. There was enough room for
everyone to have their own cabin (in pairs) with an ensuite that was
relatively nice. About half the people slept in the cabin and about
half the people slept on the deck at night though, as the cabins were
somewhat cramped and hot, while the deck was open and cool. There were
matress like pads all over the deck.


So first, what is a Gulet?

A gulet, pronounced goo-let, not
gull-let or, as I like to say it, Robert Goulet, is a "hand-made"
Turkish sailing vessel with a mast...but it doesn't use sails, in fact
the mast is actually kind of pointless. It just uses a motor.


So at around 11:00 am we boarded the boat.

There were 11 of us.

Jennifer
and Catherine were traveling together and were friends from Melbourne.
Jennifer is a 2nd year resident in Melbourne, and a doctor at age 25.
I guess we have some doctors at 25 in the states, but jeez, these other
countries seem to have a much quicker path to becoming full-fledged
professionals that in the States would require years of post-Graduate
education. I think she was in a 6 year program, bu I'm not sure (and
yes, I know that there are some 6 year programs in the states, but it
is not the norm, the norm being 4 years of undergrad plus 4 years of
Med School, often with years in between). Catherine had spent the last
year and a half working as a secretary in London just to make money for
a big trip (and to get some time living abroad). She's going to be
traveling Europe for a while, and spending a month in France taking
French, after Turkey. In some ways Jennifer and Catherine kind of
parralleled Phoenix and Jess. Jennifer and Phoenix were both on 1
month holidays from the hospital. Catherine and Jess were both on 6
month oddessies. Either way, the Aussies seem to travel well. We got
along best with Jennifer and Catherine, they were great fun. As I said
in the last post, we just kept meeting pairs of Aussie girls!


Blake and Nick were travelling together. Two more Aussies. We
never really were sure how they were related, where they were coming
from exactly, or many other details, though I am pretty sure Nick had
just spent time living in London working as an electrition. They were
funny dudes. Well, Blake was a funny dude.


Esther was a 29 year old dental nurse traveling alone on holiday. Born and raised in England, she now lives in Edinborough.

Dusin
and Calvin were also Aussies, but they were both of Turkish descent and
spke fluent Turkish. I am pretty sure they were in their late 20s and
not married, but I didn't learn too much about them except that they
initially acted as an interesting bridge between the crew and
passangers, as they could actually speak Turkish. Calvin had come to
Turkey in 1997, but Dustin was making her first trip to the country of
her parents. Calvin was really excited to be getting on the gulet, he
said it was the first thing he had booked when they planned to get to
Turkey...poor Calvin... (you'll soon find out why...)


Geoffrey and Ruth were far and away the most interesting characters
on the boat... They were actually pretty nice and amicable...but they
were...interesting....

Geoffrey was a retired 55 year-old
adrenaline junkie. He had run or been in some sort of business
involving refridegerator repair. He was injured in his first big
accident in 1978. The car crash left the nerves completely gone in his
upper left arm. (Jennifer was a doctor, so she asked what had happened
and he told her and she told us.) The result was that all muscle had
just completely wasted away from the lifeless arm that hung at his
side. His arms together stood in a contrast like that between a polio
stricken leg and a healthy leg. When he was wearing a shirt and pands,
he would generally tuck his left hand into his pocket, keeping his arm
out of the way. Without his arm tucked away, his hand and arm seemed
to hang down almost too far, though when you checked on your own body
how far your hand reaches, you realized that skinny things just look
longer. Geoffrey didn't let his deformity slow him down one bit
though, nor was he shy about it...he pretty much spent the 4 days in a
speedo...much to the rest of our chagrin as he would often lie sideways
with one leg propped up and far more of a spread eagle than anyone
wearing a speedo should ever make in public...not that anyone should
ever wear a speedo in public. Given the extremely leather quality of
his body, it was clear he spends much of his time in a speedo.


Nor had Geoff let one arm take away from his adrenaline pursuits.
He still skiied avidly, had even been to Jackson Hole, and several
years ago was badly injured in a ski accident heli-skiing, needing a
facefull of stitches. He told us that when you die it's all over,
nothing happens, because last year he'd been in a high speed boating
accident and had been dead on the table for 10 minutes. Other hobbies
included racing antique Aston Martins, and he and Ruth were always
going to Monacco and other sights to watch the Grand Prix Forumla One
Races. He was not one to keep his somewhat strong opinions to himself,
or to crack dirty jokes that were just a little too realistic... He
declared that the key to a good life were to "Never have kids, marry a
woman who makes money, and buy real estate." Geoffrey reasoned that
kids were just a way for women to trap men, and therefore got a
vasectomy at 25...claiming he was the youngest person ever in New South
Wales to get a voluntary vasectomy. An added bonus, he saw, was that
he had so much more money because he'd never spent a cent on kids, part
of what allowed him to be retired at 55 and to travel for 2 to 3 months
every year. His response to the economic hardships of the poor:
"Everyone on social security should just be steralized." He wasn't
mean to us or a major grump or a big downer...but he certainly was
interesting...


Ruth was 47 and Geoffrey's fiance of 12 years... They said it was
financially better for them to stay apart. He had probosed to her in
the back of a car during a tourist test run on a great Formula 1
track. She too was, as Catherine put it, a "petrolhead." She looked
older than 47, but had the body of a younger woman... Too many hours
under the sun had left her body looking like bad bad leather...a body
which we saw too much of outside of her "too skimpy for a 47 year old"
bikini, that also suggested she'd had work done in multiple places... Her sunglasses
tan didn't make her look any younger despite whatever attempts might
have been made under the knife... She was in the business of giving out
mortgage loans, and apparently was very good at it, allowed to take 3
months off every year. Geoffrey and Ruth had a lifestyle that it was
hard not to envy...

Or was it?

Geoffrey and Ruth had sort of set out a course that seems like a dream...don't work much, travel a lot. But it was hard to understand what Geoffrey did all day, and his boredom seemed reflected in the fact that he appeared to try to kill himself repeatedly for fun. Someone had died in that boating accident...though we were never sure exactly who or how. Maybe not having kids had made him rich and allowed him to take vacations, but I'm sure there are plenty of poorer, but happier fathers out there. One wondered if Geoffrey never stopped talking because of how little time he actually got to spend with a family, as if a lack of human interaction in his day to day life had left him in desperate need of it the second it was there. The dream-like juvenile lifestyle probably kept Ruth in her skimpy bikinis, but also left her incredibly self-conscious about her age. She was more uncomfortable with being 47 than she should have been...the result was the off kilter look of a 55+ year old...which probably didn't help here self-effacing complex. Don't get me wrong, in some ways Geoffrey and Ruth were lovely, amicable people. Even the sterilization comment wasn't made so much out of malice as ut of a firebrand personality. But in others they screamed of desperation to be young and free, even as they were past their prime. An interesting life they led, for sure, but one that also made you fee like it wasn't such a bad aspiration to settle down, have a family, and care about that family and your job.

Aside from the 11 passengers, there were 3 crew members. Our captain was named Umut...something we learned after we had left the boat. For the duration of the cruise we wrongly thought him to be named Mahmoud... We never did learn the names of our deck hand and our cook, neither of whom spoke any English. Umut had a round belly and longish blond hair. His Englsih was not that good...well...it was bad enough for him to let us all think he was named Mahmoud for 4 days. He was 28, but looked 38...a life of sea cruises, complete with sun bathing and beer, had allowed him to age fast. He'd been in the business since he was 13. Our cook and Umut had worked together for 8 years. Our deck hand was younger, but probably not by much, he just looked younger. The boat life hadn't aged him quite as fast.

But anyway, perhaps that's enough on introductions. It's great to know the characters, more interesting to know their story.

When we set sail, so to speak, or not, given that there were no sails, at 11:00, I was distraught that I hadn't finished more of the blog the night before in Fethiye. Given that my posts have been so long (sorry folks) and my handwriting so big and bad, I didn't want to use my entire journal to write one post, so I had taken various brochures from the local tourist office. In the margins of a brochure on various hotsprings around Turkey, I went to work by hand on a post about Gallipoli while sitting at the table at the back of the boat. I was only about halfway done when we stopped for lunch around 1:30.

The food on the boat was fantastic. It was light and seemingly healthy, mostly vegetables and beans and rice for lunch. I say seemingly healthy, because of course it was all bathed in oil, which was what made it so delicious. But it was, I suspect, food chosen because, hopefully, it wouldn't make you too sick.

Oh poor Nick...well sort of...we hardly even met him until day 2 as he spent that first voyage below deck. Enormous hangovers and the motion of the ocean are not a good mix...or so I am told.

After lunch we got a taste of what the cruise was all about...It did follow a pretty simple formula: 1. Go to a pretty spot. 2. Swim, if you want, in said pretty spot. 3. Be sure to use the side hose to wash off the incredible salt deposits of pretty spot before lying on sun deck mattresses (or be reminded harshly by the crew). 4. Sit around drying off (or just tanning if you never got into the water) at said pretty spot until Umut had had either A: a sufficient nap or B: a sufficient swim or C. Both, to send you on your way. 5. Repeat.

It's a tough life...most people say that sarcastically...I say it semi-sarcastically. No, it was not difficult...but it was not action packed either. Lets just say, after 4 days I was very happy to be on dry land.

Actually though, there were minor variations each day that did involve land excursions...and, unfortunately for my credibility, day one was in some ways our most active off land day. After our initial swim we did go for a land excursion to the "Butterfly Valley," a cove and gorge said to have many many big and beautiful butterflies in it.

I saw one butterfly. I saw many many big, and some would say beautiful, marijuana plants.

There is a waterfall you can walk to up in the butterfly valley about a kilometer in from the sea. On land we found a big time Turkish hippie community, complete with flowerchild signs and slogans and pot plants. The people of the butterfly valley were more than willing to extend peace and love to all who offer them 6 lira at the gate.

Kristen and I departed the ship with Jennifer, Blake and Nick (trying to walk off the sickness), Esther,, and Geoffrey and Ruth. Geoff went with the plain speedo and sneakers look, which, if your wondering, is just as bad as the speedo and sandals look and the speedo and barefeet look, though perhaps funnier...

The signs walking up the valey to the waterfall were pretty darn funny. "Quiet...loud noises kill the butterflies" was my favorite, probably devised after a few too many joints. The walk up to the waterfall was more difficult than we had expected, but rewarding. There was actually not much of a waterfall there, and we simply ran out of more rocks to scramble up (which is what made it a little difficult). But the view back through the valley from the high point was quite goo, and it was a cool little gorge. My well worn sandles, the ones that had actually broken and had to be fixed in the middle of Cairo, did not help the ascent, and made me a little nervous about the descent. .

You know where this story is going...

On the way back down I was ahead of the group. It was hotter than Hades, I had completely sweat through my brand new "burburry" collared shirt, and I just wanted to get back and have a swim. After sccessfully navigating my way down the rocks in my fragile thong sandle, I was happy to be walking on level ground. Then I took a step and my left sandle broke. The Egyptian cobbler had done well, his repair held...but the other sandle was kaputz.

The situtation worsened when I completely lost the trail and soon found myself walking, one foot with a sandle on, one foot barefoot through brush up to my face. I had stayed on a trail for a bit, and then it had ended, only for me to find another trail, walk on it for a bit, and have it end, only to do that about three times before I found a long black pipe. I followed the black pipe, which had about two inches of bruch cleared on each side, but that didn't help me with the other brush up to my ears. I knew which way to go directionally, it was pretty easy to see where the sea was, but it was not a good feeling to be lost. Finally I reached a fence, completely hidden and covered by the brush such that I almost walked into it... I hopped that and thankfully didn't break it. When everything finally started to clear, I found myself walking in smelly mud, and finally past a number of places the Earth loving hippies had chosen to turn into garbage dumps. Finally I made it back to a gate, which was thankfully unlocked. I walked through the gate to see a confused guy on the other side, wondering where the hell I had come from. I booked it for the sea to find Kristen sitting alone on the beach.

Of the 8 of us who had gone to the waterfall, Kristen was the only one who made it back unscathed. I was confused to see her sitting there alone. She had found the right path. I sadly threw my wonderfully beautiful, though I guess not that functional, Sanjuk sandles in a trash bin on the beach, chucked off my shirt and dove in. Oh man, it felt good after a hot bruch walk.

10 minutes later the rest arrived. Apparently they had run into guys who had hacked them a path with machetes... The hippies can be more violent than you would think.

Jennifer offered a funny portrait after the fact of Geoffrey the adrenaline junkie, who had speedo, sneakers, and all simply charged right into the bush without a care in the world, determined to lead them back to the beach. I found it uncomfortable in a t-shirt and shorts...he really was a wild dude of sorts.

Of course, after the butterfly valley it was my turn to get the adrenaline flowing.

We headed back to the sight of Kristen and my adventure from a day before, Oludeniz beach and the Blue Lagoon. The top of the mountain we jumped off of was barely visible, and there weren't 45 gliders in the air as there had been the other day. We parked the boat outside of the lagoon and had some free time for a swim.

About 300 meters off the beach on the "non-lagoon" side of the beach, there is another minor peninsula. The boats dock outside that spot. The little "peninsula" really consists of one big hill of rocks and cliffs coming down to a narrow crossway and then joining up with the hat of the "T" that utimatly helps form the lagoon. The big rock hill forms a cliff that is roughly 10 meters high, and certainly no less, but hopefully more.

Because....

I jumped off it!

When we got there a guy about my age had just done a jump. It was easy enough to scramble up there and he had survived, though I thought, "Why the heck not?" Kristen stayed behind on the boat and readied the camera... Dustin and Calvin pulled out their video camera as well.

The first jumper's girlfriend was in front of me and he was cheering her on. Together they had swum out from Oludeniz beach with snorkels and surveyed the landing, deeming it to be more than deep enough. He had taken the plunge. Now it was her turn.

She wasn't ready.

After 3 minutes of watching her not be ready, I was.

I get really scared before big jumps. Really scared. In New Zealand there was a 7 meter jump on my white water rafting trip which I loved so much I did 3 times...each time I froze for roughly a minute at the top.

But with the whole crowd watching, my boat and others, I was able to jump less than 10 seconds after landing at the launching spot, thanks to the scared girlfriend who allowed me to get my butterflies out during her own moment of freak out.

I don't know what is best about the two mid air pictures Kristen got.

1. Is it that the scared girlfriend is up on the rocks smiling throughout the jump?

2. Is it that immediately after take off my right wrist is incredibly limp...?

3. Is it that about 3 meters from the water, I have a look of sheer terror on my face?

4. Or is it that for whatever reason I thought I could actually fly and extended my arms like wings?

Number 4 really eally really hurt.

I also landed in more of a seated position than straight. For lack of a better way of putting it, man that hurts your butt...

My new resolution is that I need to find some 5 meter or less jumps and practice my landing. Then I can jump back up t the 10 meter plus mondo cliff and it won't hurt so much.

At least it entertained the crowd. And Dustin and Calvin said they had the whole thing on tape and hat they would send it to me, which was exciting.

I felt bad for the girlfriend of the first jumper. She was up there a good 30 minutes before her boyfriend would finally let her come down. In the mean time we got to hang out in the cool blue Mediterranean, and I even got to try my hand at snorkeling. I saw not a single fish...but at least I didn't roast on top of a rock while scared out of my wits...

After our swim we had our 5 o'clock tea, which consisted of coffee or tea, all you could drink, and biscuits, all you could eat. Boating is just an excuse to eat and drink as far as I am concerned.

After tea we were ready to move to our final resting spot of the day, a calm bay where the boat would dock for the night. To our slight surpise, it was actually just the bay behind the T of the Blue Lagoon, in between an island and the coast. You can see the spot in all of my paragliding photos actually.

It was there that Umut pulled out his map and gave us somewhat of an idea of where we were going all the way to Demere, where we would get off.

The boat cruise from Fethiye to Olympos was actually a cruise from Fethiye to Demere and an hour and a half "free transfer" by van to Olympos. In the tourism industry trips are never what they seem.

The next day we would set sail at quarter to 5, it was our big travel day and the boat would be in motion until breakfast. We needed to get to Kas, a little fishing village where we would be given some time on land, and where thankfully I would get to the internet. Writing in the margins of a brochure wasn't doing it for me. Even if I'd written and filled my whole journal though, I don't think it would have done it for me...I am of a new generation where thoughts flow into keyboards much more smoothly than pens...

We found that Calvin and Dustin were good people to have around on that first day, as they were the only ones really able to fully communicate with the crew. They were both quite excited by their position and excited to be in Turkey, the country of their heritage that they had learned so much about but that had always been so distant in reality. They loved how people thinking them to be unsuspecting "tourists," which they admittedly were, would attempt to rip them off, only to have them snap off a few Turkish phrases and put them in their place.

We sat around the table talking a bit about Turkey and what we had seen and experienced since arriving. It was so large and so interesting. And it was great to talk aobut how amazingly rich its short history as a republic was. The thing most stunning about Turkish history is that before Attaturk its language was written in Arabic like script. More or less overnight Attaturk came to power and "reformed" the society, abadoning the old script for a more modern and Westernized version, with only a few variations. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but it is exactly what baffles any group of foreigners talking or thinking about Turkish history. It is also a sign of how quickly and drastically Turkey was changed and transformed with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Mustafa Kemal was called Attaturk because he literally was "father Turk." He practically defined and created the identity. Seeing how truly modern and successful much of the country is was a great source of pride for Calvin. Just as in China Mao had managed to take an incredibly oppulent and innefficient empire and turn it into an efficient and in many ways modern society, so to had Attaturk really brought Turkey into the 20th century, and today much of Turkey is as Western European as Britain or France.

Of course, a major stipulation of that modernization had also been to do away with the Islamic nature of the Ottoman Empire. Secularization was treated as akin to modernization. The seperation of Church and State, a major change from Ottoman days, is written into Attaturk's constitution, and the secularization of the government is protected by the army and Attaturk's legacy, which is, of course, a source of tension in a big country with rising Islamist tides and factions, many of which have been squashed. I discussed some of those tensions with Calvin, whose family incidentally is all from Istanbul, arguably the most Western European of Turkey's Western European areas.

"I mean what he did to bring us to where we are today was just incredible," Calvin explained, no doubt reciting much of what he learned in "Turkish school" on Saturdays while growing up. "I mean, we could have been Iran you know. If he hadn't done what he did, we'd just be another Iran, and would we want that?"

It was obviously an oversimplification. It was interesting to hear the perspective of a thoroughly westernized Turk, who wasn't even really a Turk, he was an Aussie, because it assumed that Islam was the root of Iran's problems. What about the problems created within any oligarchy or dictatorship? And to what degree are those problems ignored by those on the side of those in power, such that even the most brutal and repressive of regimes will always have power. The beloved Attaturk ut in lace a republic in which it is illegal to criticize the government and illegal to even mention the G word--genocide--that occured during World War I and after the fall of the Ottoman Empire (some of which was likely carried out with Attaturk's blessing, as seen by the fact that his war of independence involved the conquer of many lands that had been carved out for Armenians. I would later learn that Canadians pay more for their visas just because their country has officially recognized the Armenian Genocide. Outside historians are not all in agreement as to whether or not it should be called "genocide" because it was not soley ordained and specifically monitored by a government, but they are in agreement that hundreds of thousands died in multiple massacres perpetrated due to ethnic hatred. Historians and journalists have been thrown in jail for mentioning it, or for any criticism of the government, which is illegal in the Turkish Republic. And as much as Turkey wants to become a part of the EU (it's in the newspapers daily) the repression of freedom of speech seems to be as big an obstacle to admission as the country's Muslim majority.

Then again, the biggest opposition to the admittance of Turkey is coming from France...where arguments about the wearing of the veil among Muslim immigrants are a daily occurrence. In Turkey, girls are not allowed to wear the veil to school or public universities... I guess that is a form of cultural oppression that is acceptable in the Western world though....

Anyway, it was interesting to see the rigid formula of the "modern" "Attaturk" disciple: Islamic state = bad. Repression or state control to ensure that the Islamic state would never occur = good. One wonders if some day Turkey will actually become another Iran due to the rigidness of that formula...

Of course, I didn't say anything about that to Calvin, in part because I hadn't come to those thoughts yet and done enough reasearch. But I did point out that while the majority of Turks remain faithful to their heroic founder, it is easy to spot the tensions that must exist in Turkey. Istanbul is the most populous city at around 13 million, and the most modern, and Western, and it's easy to think of that as "real Turkey," and it is. But it's just as easy to imagine that to a Turk living in the Eastern Anatolian countryside, having grown up in a traditional village and culture, the constant pressure to move towards the West is not only frustrating, but almost scary. Anyone who follows American politics closely by now should realize that many people will hold onto their "culture" and "values" far more strongly than one might think, even voting contrary to their economic interests in favor of their social interests.

(It's the brilliance of the Reagan Era Republican Party's tent platform, as Professor Michael MacDonald once told me. The "business wing" of the party supports the expansion of markets and the "business of business" as an economic strategy. This strategy also leads to a reallignment of values and a breakdown of culture [money trumps tradition]. But then, in the turmoil of the de-culturation [or whatever the word would be] of America that the markets they support aid, the Republicans step in to proclaim themselves the defenders of tradition and the extreme supporters of the old guard.)

The next day on the boat, I was flipping through Catherine's Lonely Planet. The first section that offered a bit of Turkish history and information about Turkey's culture was all about the divide I have just described. Of course it was also annoying in that ultimately as a sign of the divide it cited the use of the Western style toilet in Western Turkey and the squat toilet in Eastern Anatolia...

Calvin's responses were interesting though in their total acceptance of the securlar state and Attaturk's greatness at all costs because they parralleled the feeling you got in China surrounding Mao and the communist government. Jennifer's boyfriend is from Shanghai, so our conversations about China were often about how he just accepted everything the government did without question. Was Calvin at that stage? Not quite, but Turkey is a place where despite its democracy acceptance of the government is legally ordained.

Then again, in the Bush years you could be unofficially blacklisted for criticism of the American president (see the Dixie Chicks), so maybe I'm really not one to talk...

Anyway, after our interesting conversation in the pleasant bay, Umut told us that we could go over to the Island and see a spectacular sunset. The Island we were parked near had ruins of an old Greek settlement officially abandoned during the Turkish War of Independence, but probably older than even the United States. It was 6 lira to get in...we began to figure out that the spots along the edge were perfectly set up to cater to various boats. That was also clear when the Ice Cream man came around to our boat to offer us Ice Cream. Calvin actually went jet skiing as well, but I missed out on that unfortunately.

The Island featured a hill that was probably 150 meters high, and Umut was right, the sunset was spectacular from up there. What he judged wrong, and what we didn't correct him on, was when the sunset would actually occur. For whatever reason, he sent us over to the island about an hour and a half too early.

Not that our spot at the top was unpleasant. It wasn't. I got some good jumping photos, which have become my past time more or less, including one of me jumping right in front of the paragliding mountain. Sweet!

It was Catherine, Jennifer, Ruth, Geoff, Kristen and I up top. MNost of the conversation was centered on Geoffrey's pain killers, as unfortunately his arm leaves him in pretty tough shape much of the time. For whatever reason, even though I know there are 25 (well I think she's not yet 25) year old doctors out there in the States, it felt weird to be hearing form a doctor so young, and jennifer was having much of the discussion about painkillers. We also talked about why the heck we were up there so early! Haha, I guess that is typical when you are traveling...bitching about inefficient usages of time, even in the prettiest of spots. We also heard the story of how unlike the rest of us Geoffrey and Rose had gotten onto the boat at the very last minute, with Geoffrey driving like a bat out of hell along the coast from Kas to Fethiye that morning. Geoff went on and on and on about how that road was his favorite road in the world, going perfectly along the Meditteranean...We would hear about his love for that road about 5 times away for the rest of the trip...

I ran into a father and son who had gone to Stanford up top, so that was cool. They wanted to hear all about paragliding, which I proudly described. I also met a guy from St. Louis who confirmed what my dad always claims: When someone from St. Louis asks where you went to school they are asking about high school not college. He went to a rival of my dad's alma mater John Burroughs today, but not its biggest rival traditionally, Country Day, where his father went.

The sunset came and went in about 2 minutes...A long time waiting, but worth the wait indeed.

Back on the boat we had a fantastic grilled fish dinner. The food was really a high light of the boat.

I said that boating was really just an excuse to eat and drink. Convinced I would have trouble falling asleep, I wasn't afraid to use that as an excuse to have a few beers.

Having Dustin and Calvin on the boat allowed us to make immediate contact with the crew despite all language barriers. While I wouldn't call our boat a total "party boat," we were not like the Australians Umut told us about who said "Don't even bother making breakfast for us, we aren't getting up until 12:00 and don't bother taking us anywhere, we intend to get drunk for 4 days" (as if you couldn't do that in Australia...), we did have a knack for having post dinner fun on the back of the ship.

The crew, obviously thrilled to have some passengers they could relate to, really got into it that first night, breaking out all of their Turkish pop and dance club CD mixes. Like in so many non-Western countries (well, Turkey's half-non-Western) it seems, the guys were just as likely to drag other guys out there to dance as girls. In Nepal, for instance, the porters always pulled up the guys in our group, and Soam, our beloved assistant guide, would always want to dance with me. I know I'm a great dancer...for a white guy I'm terrific!... but if I were a man and I were given the choice I'd take dancing with Kristen over dancing with another me any day! I'm convinced that the reason goes beyond just the cultural division of the sexes, but also relates to the lack of outed amnd accepted homosexuality in such places. I mean as the ever reliable Mahmoud Ahmedinijad explained "There are no gay people in Iran." Actually a better example is the reaction of Jasminda, the main character in the movie surrounding an Indian Londoner's soccer dreams "Bend It Like Beckham" to her best male friend's coming out. "What?! But you're Indian!" The result as I see it is a lack of American-style homophobia, or perhaps intercultural homophobia (why be afraid of something that doesn't exist?), and thus a total lack of cultural self-conciousness about grooving with someone of the same sex. I just like to dance, so it doesn't bother me...but I think I'll keep asking the ladies to dance...its more my style.

Calvin and Umut and our deck hand were getting down! I've noticed Turkish men dance in two major styles to their pop music. One is hands raised high above the head, moving with the music side to side with the hands not completely motionless, but always up. The other is just the opposite, hands always down at the side. The movement of hands up and down we might see in American dancing isn't really there.

Umut did dance a bit with Catherine though, spinning her round and round and teaching her the hands held high dance style, which she said was really quite fun.

Asked to do some dance solos, I was more or less at a loss for a bit before pulling out the worm. When it comes to dance solos...well...I'm a one trick pony.

Kristen went to bed early, as usual...but she didn't totally miss the party...our cabin was right under the dance floor. When I went to bed I excitedly told her about my perfect worm... "I know...I heard it...3 times!"

The crew really liked this Turkish song "Dudu" by Tarkan... whenever they were in charge of the music...which was all the time...it played about every 4th song. They also liked "I Will Survive" and "Like a Prayer," those were played a lot. Another favoite was a dance hit I still don't know the name to surrounding the phrase in the chorus, "Life is Nice, Na na na na na." Or was it "Life is good," or was it "life is great?" Still not sure. With so many Aussies on the boat they were sure to play "I Come from the Land Down Under" quite often. I personall asked that Hotel California be played about once an hour. The music on the boat was pretty good.

Really it was just fun to dance and socialize with our all Turkish crew, despite language barriers. Jennifer, Catherine, and I were the only non-Turkish speakers up that night. Dustin and Calvin, well, mostly Calvin, seemed to be having a great time. Dustin had the video camera out filming all the dancing...including my worm.

I collapsed in our cabin and slept a few hours...

It's not easy to sleep on a boat, even in the calmest of waters it rocks.

It's much harder to sleep on a moving boat...

Especially when the engine is loud in your cabin...and while there aren't fumes flowing in I don't think...it really smells.

So when the boat started up at 4:45 I was startled awake and crawled above deck to try and get some sleep in the cool air up top.

It was an incredibly pleasant morning, and incredibly pleasant to be out on the water early...Unfortunately that didn't mean that I could sleep...

I picked out Gabrial Garcia Marquez's "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" from the book kitty on the boat. It said that Marquez won the nobel prize in literature. Not for that short piece of crap. The title should have dissuaded me...but I didn't have Shantaram to read...and it was only a hundred pages. I was done by sunrise.

I got to watch the sunrise twice, which was pretty cool. We were in a bay with mountains coming down and the sun rising just over them when I first saw it rise...but then we kept moving and the sun was blocked once again...so I watched it rise again.

Two sunrises didn't make me any less tired.

So I got about 4 hours of sleep that first night...at the most. That was pretty typical...maybe that's why our "relaxing" boat trip was so damned exhausting.

Our 9:45 breakfast couldn't come too soon. We finally stopped for a bit of a feast in a nice little cove. Everybody was surprised that Kristen and I only ate the egg whites of our hard boiled eggs (the Turkish breakfast is essentially Feta Cheese, cucumbers, tomatos, bread, and a hard boiled egg). Seems like such an easy way to cut calories though...With 4 days of sitting on a boat, I needed to cut calories any way possible.

I did have a nice swim. I did some very poorly executed flips that were a great source of entertainment for our fellow passengers off the jumping in point on the side of the boat. But in some ways there is nothing worse than being tired and exhausted and unable to sleep. I have always had trouble sleeping. My mind always races and I find it impossible to shut down. It makes me a light sleeper, though I don't think anyone else slept much that first night on the boat...

I was also agitated about being away from a computer and desperately wanting to type up and finish my blog post... I related my desire to reach the internet in front of the others. "Why do you need a computer so bad?" Geoffrey asked. "Are you missing your porn?"

"No," I replied, with an awkward laugh at Geoffrey's poor attempt at humor.

"Because I sure am!" he cut in almost before I finished "no" with not a hint of sarcasm or humor whatsoever...which only made things more awkward...

It was over 3 more hours of moving to Kas where I would finally get to go on my beloved internet...

Setting foot on land after being on a boat for awhile is a strange strange experience... The land doesn't rock...but you do. I mean seriously, you still move with the ocean and oh man, it kind of makes you sick.

Of course, priority number one, even before internet, surprisingly, was to get some new sandals. I went for non-thong flip flops...I've been longing to get rid of that thing between my toes for awhile. Unfortunately though, despite being a little more uncomfortable, that little thing really does hold the shoe in place... I got non-thong flip flops and they were nearly a disaster...but oh well, they were also the only sandals in the shop that were my size (in the only affordable shop in Kas).

Kas is a quaint little fishing village not too much unlike Fethiye. I didn't see much of it...I was in the internet cafe...oh the price we pay to write.

At Kas we picked up two more passengers, two Korean guys who more or less kept to theirselves and didn't speak much English.

After Kas we sailed for a while more before arriving at a bay filled with other gulets, including 3 more from the same company as us. It was like the bay the night before, where an Ice Cream boat came around and stuff. Somehow Blake managed to get an ice cream while swimming...we later found out he had a few coins in his swim trunks.

But when we got there some people were conspicuously absent. I'd been wondering where Dustin and Calvin were for a while, but I assumed they were sleeping or having private time or something below deck. But no, actually they had just left. They had gotten off and in a flash were gone. I wasn't too dissappointed that they had left, it's not like we'd been the best of friends or anything, I'd known them for all of 28 hours. But It was strange because they'd been so personable...or at least Calvin had been...and had been video taping everything and offering to send us videos and basically doing things or making comments or offers they didn't have to make. So leaving without a word or anything was just bizarre.

But it was also so representative of what I have been talking about and thinking about with respect to traveling. There is a lot of meeting people and enjoying each other and having fun and yada yada yada, but it always ends so abruptly.

Whatever, it was just kind of bizarre. We think that Dustin and Calvin got in a fight. The captain made a comment about how he and Dustin had a bit of a row, and Geoff was certain the couple had fought, mainly because Calvin kept going on and on about how the Gulet was just exactly what he wanted to do in Turkey. He certainly seemed to be having more fun than she was. We all felt a little bad.

So we would always get to the bay around 6:00 or earlier...and then there would be a lot of down time...and then dinner... and yeah, well... there was a lot of down time.

Our dinner conversation was, in my mind, excellent. Of course it made others uncomfortable. I say excellent as in fun. Basically we spent a long time discussing the comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen, the brilliant Cambridge educated creator of Da Ali G Show, Borat, and soon Bruno. Basically, Cohen has said in an excellent interview with Terry Gross that the goal of his characters is to expose how silly and stupid other people are in that they actually take the characters somewhat seriously. With Ali G, the point is "How could anyone ever think that young people really act that way?" With Borat it's "How could anyone think that foreigners really act that way?" and with Bruno it's "How could anyone really think that this is the typical gay Austrian?" There is definitely a degree of manipulation in Cohen's work, he tricks people and makes the people think that they are talking to the real thing and not a character. That's the point.

In Borat, he boards a camper van with several frat boy students of the University of South Carolina. With cameras rolling, they proceed to discuss the world, with the students making extremely inflamatory and bigoted statements, thinking they are simply talking to a dumb, impressionable foreigner who really is stupid enough to think that all Jews have hidden horns.

The students sued, claiming that they had been manipulated and used.

The argument was essentially over whether or not we should care about those students. Yes they were used...they were used to expose bigotry for the idiocy that it really is, at least that's what Cohen would argue, as well as arguing that it's damn funny to watch them make fools out of themselves. He would also say that the comedy of it is in part what exposes the bigotry. I agree with Cohen. I ultimately don't really give a hoot about the racist, sexist, anti-semitic idiots who said everything that they now claims "defamed" them on camera without being forced to. Nick took a different line, arguing that the kids had essentially been set up, that Cohen had played them and that that was ultimately wrong. They'd been made to look like fools. I disagreed, bigotry is bigotry, they made fools of themselves, and that wasn't Cohen or his camera man's doing. Nick said that we all harbor certain prejudices and deficiencies that can be drawn out by any skilled manipulator, and that no matter how poltically correct and not prejudiced we all try to be and think ourselves to be, there is a way to bring those thoughts out, Cohen did that, and thus the foolishness (or, as I kept saying, bigotry) was ultimately drawn out by him. Therefore, he made fools out of them, which was wrong, by skillfully leading them make fools out of themselves, it was Cohen's fault and his responsability for completely ruining the lives of these students, and he should be held accountable.

Certainly Cohen played a role, and he did "play" the students, that is, of course, his very job and his purpose whenever he gets into character. But I don't think its fair to heap the blame on him, because his whole point is we can laugh at the bigots because they reveal themselves to be so stupid! By extenstion, bigotry is worse than just wrong, its stupid also. When there are cameras rolling, you have to watch what you say, no matter what.

I think though, in a way the simpleness of that fact, that when cameras are rolling you are in a public setting and you have to watch what you say and do, is what makes Cohen's comedy more powerful and of a greater social impact than simply making us laugh. I think there are few people out there who have absolutely spot on perfect records when it comes to following that rule. We've all said or done something silly in a public setting that we look back on and just go "man, that was dumb." The idiots exposed in Cohen's comedy are in all too many ways far too much like everyone else. Cohen is showing us that racism, agism, homophobia, etc. all exist, they're out there among "regular" individuals all over the place (especially in America as Borat shows). Cohen tells us we can laugh at its stupidity and take away its power, but we also need to recognize that it is there, and that it is something we always have to work as a society to make better.

As usual, I loved the philosophical/political heated argument while some of our boatmates were a little uncomfortable... All I can say is, while I am still terrified...I can't wait for law school!

It turns out that the bay we were staying in was actually supposed to be our resting spot for the final night, but the bay we'd hoped to stay in for night 2 had been too crowded. Not a big deal, but we were all thinking, "Hmm...how come this cruise isn't going farther?"

That night we were taken by boat to the Pirate's Cove Bar, a "secret" bar/club on land where you can "party in secret like the pirates once did," or something like that. Despite the fact there were many boats in our bay, for whatever reason the bar was pretty much people from our boat and crew members from the surrounding boats. Like every bar in every non-English speaking, non-Western (or should I say somewhat-non-Western) country we have been there were Bob Marley posters everywhere. There was also a big Jimi Hendrix poster. Of course when I requested that they play a Jimi Hendrix song...they had none... And I asked for Bob Marley, they took forever to play "No Woman No Cry" (one of my favorite songs ever) and then they faded out in the middle of the guitar solo...the second greatest guitar solo of all time...after Hendrix's solo during "All Along the Watchtower," which they didn't play at all...because they didn't have any Hendrix music!

If you are going to put a poster of a music icon up in the bar, you better have that music to play when requested!

Ugg, the bar was a little dissappointing, a lot less cool than in the brochure photos up on the walls of our boat...but that is becoming typical, haha.

The next day we cruised around a bit...it was a cruise after all....of course I had had trouble sleeping...again...so I was quite tired. First we went to an old Ottoman castle. Kristen and I took the opportunity to get on dry land again, no matter how much we were rocking, but it was hotter than heck, so we didn't pay the extra 6 lira to go into the castle, just walked up the hill for a good view out over the water with Catherine and Jennifer and then hung out. From there we took the boat past the "Sunken City," an old Greek city that is now for the most part under water, though to be honest it wasn't nearly as impressive as in the post cards... It never is...haha. The sunken city is protected so you aren't allowed to stop there or swim. It all went by pretty quickly.

Our major hang out spot for the day was a secluded little bay that was very pretty and when we got there very empty. There was a stream coming down into the ocean of very very cold glacier water, making the bay very cold, which was pretty cool. Amazing to be in the hot sun of the Meditterranean thinking about cold cold water flowing all the way down from a high mountain glacier.

Geoff kept going on and on about how ridiculous that no one else was in the bay. "This is just...fantastic...there is no one here. Wow!"

Of course, after he said that the bay filled up with other boats.

We were there for over 3 hours. I got a little bored, though by then I was reading another book from the book kitty, Mike Gayle's "My Legendary Girlfriend." No Shantaram, but much better than Marquez's novella. I don't know though, I just can't really sit in one spot for three hours, but swimming never keeps me occupied for too long either.

Perhaps one of the highlights of the trip did occer while we were sitting in the bay though. I made a lot of comments in China about Asian tourists loving to throw up the peace sign or V for victory in every one of their photos and how funny it is.

Well Eastern European women, from what I've seen, love to pose. They do not take a straight picture. They pose and mimic the models in magazines.

While we were sitting in the bay a boat pulled up about 100 yards away full of what looked like Eastern European women, though to be fair we couldn't really see faces. One by one they took turns walking to the front of the boat and posing for pictures. They had a line going. Ruth, Jennifer, Kristen and I couldn't stop laughing. There was the leg up hair flowing model shot (with many hair fixes). There was the stick out the rear and look over your shoulder shot. It was just too funny. The best was probably a very overweight woman who straddled the front strip of the boat, leaned forward and did her best to show off her cleavage. They were ridiculous, and at least as funny as the Asian peace sign pictures.

Finally, or so it seemed finally, we got moving again. Only it turned out we were actually only about 10 minutes away from our bay where we'd slept the night before...

There was a rock I tried jumping off of, but I worried on the top spot that I wouldn't be able to get far enough out over the water...but then the lower spot was probably lower than the jump into the water from the boat, so it was kind of a waste.

For dinner we had Kofte, which are Turkish lamb meatballs. I introduced Blake, Nick and the others to what the lineman of the Williams football team liked to call "Man-Sauce:" the mixture of ketschup and mayonaise that is just phenomenal. Oh how I miss being able to pig out all the time and not feel guilty about it...

Dinner conversation was mostly about mortgages, as Ruth's job is essentially to give them out and Jennifer had just bought her first place, a one-bedroom apartment in Melbourne. I don't understand how something can be so complex and confusing AND boring at the same time...

We had a great last night. Period. There was dancing and music and partying and everything until quite late. At least that night we were "the party boat." We didn't bother going back to the underwhelming pirate bar. Instead we started out by taking turns playing songs on Blake and Nick's Ipod with their docking station.

It's fun to sit around and discuss and share favorite songs, especially with people from other countries/cultures, etc.  Nick and Blake loved my candidness in discussing what songs I liked and didn't.  As I've said many times, there are two kinds of music: good and bad.

After the Ipod, the dance music kicked in and the crew got into it. We all got into it. A lot of Rolling Stones songs played, which I was quite happy with.  The crew started making moves too...which was oh so funny.

Best overheard line: "I have a boyfirend.  I have a partner...do you know what a partner is?"  The deck hand had less successful than the captain...

Jennifer had the fantastic idea of jumping into the Mediterranean at night.  Ok, so it wasn't necessarily the most exciting thing to think about after the fact, but it was just so fun at the time and the stars were amazing, really spectactular, as was the moon.  One of the best parts about jumping in in the near dark is not knowing when you are going to hit the water...Then you hit and it's freezing and hilarious.

More and more dancing led to a second jump around 2:45.  The deck hand followed us in, confused as to why it was fun or funny...but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.  His thought process was probably, "She's cute...oh man the water's cold."

I thought it was all a blast.

The next day we woke up and laughed about our evening of dancing the night before in which I somehow had managed to escape having to do the worm.

Geoff, who had slept on the deck right next to the landing to get back onto the boat after a swim made the scumy old man comment of the morning.  He explained that "The highlight of my night was watching young Jennifer shower" after swimming...sounding completely serious.

We started moving...and all of the sudden...about 25 minutes later...we were in a big harbor.  On the way we had had a 3 minute swim stop at the "pirate's cove" that we'd heard about upon arrival into our sleeping spot several nights ago... It was about 10 O Clock...we anchored...with a perfect view of the other boats... and of the buses set to take us to Olympos...

The water was fairly disgusting in that harbor, even though we were anchored off shore...whenever all the boats are in one calm spot the water is oily and awful.  I was, like everyone, exhausted, and I all wanted to do was get on dry land...but no, we were going to wait for lunch...

The only thing that got us through this period were the laughs to be had surrounding the captain's discussion with the lovely lady he'd shared a moment with the night before...  Blake kept joking that as they sat at the front of the boat he kept telling her, "I'm sorry babe, but I'm married to the sea.  It's a tough lonely job in this ocean of love, but someone has to do it..."

Later we found out that that is more or less exactly what he had said...and had showed her his ring...which had an anchor on it!  He had also said, "Even though we love each other, it's just not to be."  He was pretty intense, but she was amused.  He tracked her down at the hostel later that night...well sort of...a guy came over to our table and asked for her with a message that "A member of the crew is waiting to hear from you."  Ahh, text messaging, spreading love around the world.

"Married to the sea," it was a good line.

3 hours of frustrated waiting and we finally got off...

There are a lot of times on tours and stuff where you just think to yourself, who came up with this? 

Had we stopped in a nice spot around the corner no one would have cared... but instead we were all just tired and angry.

Then, we got off in Demere, actual home to St. Nicholas...because everything...even Santa Claus...comes from Turkey...walked around town for a half hour per our van driver's request...and drove an hour and a half to Olympos...

It was a much longer process than it should have been.

It left a bad taste in your mouth...we got to Olympos around 4, we'd been ready to be there much earlier...and day 4 of our cruise had been just being on a boat in a harbor...not really cruising. 

We got to Olympos, exhausted, at about 4:00.

There is really nothing about Olympos that feels Turkish...

It is a beach town where there are hotels with tree houses.  Well...the hotels are tree houses.

There are ruins of the ancient Greek City of Olympos by the beach...there are ruins everywhere.

The whole place feels quite issolated and insular.  But what's kind of funny is that for a place that doesn't feel Turkish at all, it has actually become quite popular with Turkish tourists. 

Kristen and I stayed at Bayrums in a "bungalow" which was actually pretty nice with good airconditioning.  There was a nice little courtyard to hang out in and stuff.

Within about 10 minutes of arriving I ran into Jess and Phoenix coming back from the beach, which was really pretty funny.  Small world.  Their boat trip sounded much more chill than ours, but they had had fun too.  They did not like Olympos much though and were more than ready to be hopping on the Fez bus with us the next morning.

We walked around the ruins at the beach.  Really the nice part was a high point with a great view of the sea and surrounding mountains.  It was a nice spot.

But we were tired!

We opted not to go see the Chimera flames, this place on top of Mt. Olympos (not the Greek Gods one) where there are permanent flames...too tired and it cost money.

Dinner was included with the room,w hich was nice and we had a big buffet/family style meal...food...yum.

One thing we hadn't known when we got back the boat was that there was no BYO allowed, so Catherine, Jennifer, Kristen and I enjoyed our bottles of weak fruit wine.  They weren't quite as good warm...but they still tasted great.  The fruit wine of Sirinche can take down the real wine of Italy or Napa or whereever any day as far as I'm concerned.

We decided to explore town a bit, only to find out from an annoyingly "full on" South African (as Catherine put it) named Nick who had been to Olympos every holiday for 7 years that nothing was happening at Kadir's, the traditional party spot, and that we'd have to check out the Orange Bar...

We walked in at about 12 and the bar was actually pretty cool.  It was open air with a big courtyard with a dance floor and tables and stuff and a DJ spinning a mix of English music and Turkish pop.

Of course, it was empty!

We saw Nick on the way out who admonished us for not sticking around.  "Come on, it'll get going by like 2:30 or 3:00...don't go home, have some fun guys."

I had fun finally getting some sleep...key word some before our 9:00 Am bus.  I couldn't sleep because I was rocking too much.  That wasn't the fruit wine, I promise.  Since being back on dry land I just couldn't stand it...I rocked back and forth constantly as if to the motion of the ocean... 10 days on a sailboat will be interesting.

Honestly, I don't get the go out at 2:30 thing...what do you do before then?  It just seems so boring...

Of course in the States I don't understand why people wait until 10 or 11:00 or later... it makes no sense.

I guess I'm just not hip enough for Olympos.  It's ok though, I'm happy with being different...no problems for me not fitting in in the Meditteranean...after all I'm not married to the sea.

The partying on the boat had been fun though, I will say that.  What was funnier to me perhaps was experiencing what I can only refer to as a "Post-Shantaram contemplative period."  Everything I thought about, every last thing I wanted to write down...most of which I didn't get around to.

On our last night, after too many beers, I stared up at our useless mast without sails, making a perfect cross on the stary night sky.  Ruth asked me what I was doing, hanging off the boat for the best look.

"Oh, I don't know...I was just thinking how I wish I'd been raised a Christian so I could look up at that beautiful cross against the sky and have some sort of epiphany or something...Instead I just think how beautiful it all is but how amazing that an amazingly simple symbol changed the whole world...and perhaps drives it today."

Ruth was a bit shocked.

"Oh Jimmy, you're too serious! You're being too deep!  Haha!"

"I'm not being too deep," I told her, "I'm just a writer..."

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