Day 6 (Thursday) – We woke up in the harbor near G?kçe and had an early breakfast. We were pulling out of the harbor by 8:45. It was a sign of the comfort in our routine that the big excitement of the day came quickly as it was discovered our boat’s anchor was entangled with a neighboring boat’s anchor chain. It didn’t seem all that unlikely considering how closely packed boats were in the harbor, and judging by the deftness with which our crew disentangled our anchor, it’s a situation they’ve addressed a few times before.
We had reached the easternmost point of our cruise and were heading back westward toward Bodrum. We followed the southern coast of the gulf for an hour and pulled into a large inlet dotted with a handful of islands. We heard the area might be known as “Seven Islands”, though with a crew whose command of English was limited, this was hard to verify, and besides, it didn’t really matter what it was called.
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| Captain Ey?p |
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| An Imposter on a Short-Lived Mutiny |
A bit inexplicably, the point marking the entry to one of the bays off the inlet was adorned with the statue of a mermaid much like the statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen. Our captain found us a nice, deserted cove where we dropped anchor. We, and most of the passengers, swam, and Brian–our intrepid Scotsman–climbed a high bluff for some superb pictures of the Halilaga (the picture gracing the top of our first blog in this series is his).
After lunch, at 1:45, we pulled anchor and were underway. For more than three hours we chugged westward and across the gulf, and just when we thought we might be pulling into Bodrum early, we stopped in a nice bay surrounded by Roman ruins. We were in for the night. The bees were bad, dinner was good (sigara borek and chicken), but conversation was best.
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| Breakfast on the Halilaga |
Day 7 (Friday) – We were up at 7:00 and out of bed by 7:30. After breakfast we enjoyed a swim: it would be our last. The Halilaga pulled out of the bay at 10:30 and headed for Bodrum. We’d be spending our last night on board in harbor.
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| The Halilaga Courtesy Brian Yates |
As we made our way back to Bodrum, I stood on the bow of our boat chatting with Brian. As travelers often do, we compared notes on places we’ve been and places we want to go. No better travel information can be gleaned other than from people who’ve been there or lived there. Lori can now blame Brian for putting certain beautiful countries in Southern Africa on our wish list.
Just outside the harbor, we dropped anchor in front of a resort. We had heard that the captain was concerned about getting a berth in Bodrum so wanted to return early: from our position just outside the harbor, it appeared convenient to dart into the harbor when the time came. After lunch, it seemed we were going to do just that when the captain fired up the engine and we chugged into the harbor. But after fifteen minutes or so of putting around in the middle of the harbor, we turned around and left. Seems Bodrum harbor required a little more coordination to secure a parking spot.
So we enjoyed another couple of hours anchored just outside of Bodrum harbor. When we did return to the harbor, it was for good: we berthed directly in front of the Tepeçik Mosque around 4:00pm.
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| Proof That We Did Get In The Water Courtesy Brian Yates |
We joined Karsten and Luna, Brian and Debbie, for what Karsten called “real coffee”. Fortunately, there was a Starbucks directly across the street. Yes, they literally are everywhere: we, in fact, have seen two Starbucks here in Bodrum. There’s also a McDonalds, Burger King, and a Domino’s Pizza. After coffee, Lori was in desperate need of ice cream, so we said “see you later” to our friends and grabbed a cone and went for a walk. We concluded our paseo with wine (Lori), beer (Chuck), and peanuts at the cafe across from the boat, the same one we began our cruise from.
After our last dinner on board the Halilaga, we enjoyed final conversations, took photos of all our new friends and the crew, and then set out for another ice cream (Chuck’s craving this time) and a long walk with our Danish and Scottish friends all the way to the eastern end of Bodrum’s shopping crescent. It was 10:45 that night when we returned to our boat and our last night aboard.
Day 8 (Saturday) – We woke to the call to prayer at 5:30. It was the beginning of the post-Ramadan festival called Eid al-Fitr, and the call was unusually long. We packed our bags, enjoyed a final breakfast, and said our goodbyes. We left the Halilaga at 9:40.
We’re already thinking of our return to the Turkish Aegean.
