Leaving Turkey

We spent our last week in Turkey at a remote point on the Mediterranean called Gökkaya Bay. We stayed at a bar called Smuggler's Inn, spent our days sunbathing, swimming, sleeping, reading, learning Turkish, enjoying the Mediterranean playground on banana boat and biscuit rides, waterskis and jetskis. In the evenings I helped out at the bar.

Our last evening was a jubilant one. I worked, finding time for a few glasses of red here and there, while Ange kept me company and hung with the locals. Beth and Preeti were there, and also Ahmet (aka hot friend) and his sister Eda. Veli mashed up the sounds and we danced beneath the stars. Later Ilias, with Angela's help, created the most delicious dish I have ever tasted involving poached eggs and yoghurt, and we all sat and ate around the dining tables in the restaurant. Stories were exchanged and occasionally translated, meaning us yabancı could feel more involved.

I got to bed around half two, utterly shattered, and jerked awake not long after as my alarm went off just before six. I stumbled out of bed and gathered myself together. Kamil was already up, and he woke Ahmet while I found Ange. My contacts refused to adhere to my eyeballs, the clothes I had planned to wear were discarded, and we dragged ourselves and our belongings to the dock and onto İzmirli. Eda and Rocket were asleep on board, and they didn't wake up when Ahmet started the engine and pointed us out into Gökkaya Bay. Kamil stood at the dock and we waved goodbye to Smuggler's Inn.



It was a beautiful morning. The sun was not long up, and the sky was still tinted an orange pink. The water was calm, and the bay was populated with sleepy gulets.



With Ahmet at the rudder, we chugged across the bay and into the harbour at Myra. We passed by the dock and continued up a small river, before coming to rest near a restaurant. Here we met Sale and Barış, who were to escort us to Antalya. Our ride was a souped-up and lowered-out Mercedes, and we happily fell asleep in the backseat. We left Demre around 7am, and woke up in Antalya around 9:15am. We were supposed to be at the airport by 9am so we were mildly anxious, particularly since the airport has two terminals which are several kilometres apart, and we only had a vague guess as to which one to attempt.

We got to terminal 2, and went through metal detectors to enter the airport. We quickly found our check-in counter, to our great relief, and got our boarding passes. We were starving, but only had 10 YTL left between us. Ordinarily that would be plenty, but not so in an airport. A chicken sandwich was 11.50 YTL (pretty much NZ$11.50)! We decided to keep looking. Upstairs we were seduced by Burger King. How incongruous to our recent "it's nature" lifestyles. But we were determined, even when we got to the counter and saw that a whopper burger cost 20 YTL! We settled for double cheeseburgers, at 9.50 YTL each. Kind of gross but they hit the spot. After we got our food, I checked an info screen, and saw our flight was flashing "Last Call"! We were not in any state to be missing our flight so we ran ran ran down two escalators and found our gate, only to end up on a bus that took us to our plane.

Three hours later, including equal parts sleep and plotting ways to torture an obnoxiously happy small boy, we landed in Dresden. Being pretty new to travel, we were excited at the prospect of another stamp in our passports, and were most disappointed that the passport control counter was deserted. It's been a culture shock, arriving in Germany, staying in an apartment. Walls, doors, a road outside, a constant stream of cars, no ocean.