Today is a story in three parts. Part one: the relaxing day long boat ride through the islands off the coast of beautiful and serene Gocek. Part two: the nightmarish drive from hell of 3 hours from Gocek to Bodrum. Part three: the crazy nightlife scene that is Bodrum.
Part One: We had that boat tour we found yesterday, which took us to dozens of Islands and stopped at 6 for us to swim in. After the third we ate fish and chicken grilled right on the boat, Jade and Jason jumped off of the upper deck into the warm Mediterranean, we swam in the clear waters, then relaxed on the top deck, sunning ourselves as the boat would sail from one swimming spot to the next. For the first time this trip, we were the only non-turkish tourists. There were really no foreigners in much of Gocek and none on our boat. What a relaxing way to spend our day after all of the running around and excitement of this trip.
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| Aerial view I found online of the islands we sailed |
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| Just before we left |
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| A sunken home, you can just make it out here |
Part Two: Our next hotel was in Bodrum, so when we returned from the boat at 6, we bought some water and some fruit to hold us over and headed right for Bodrum. We put it into our GPS and started off. We were on highway for about 30 minutes, which Jason flew on; then it had us turn left instead of follow the highway up around the mountain ahead of us. Going left meant driving along the mountainside along the coast, which was lovely, except that the roads were much narrower than the last coastal trip, and there were no guardrails! This means that when you take that hairpin turn around the edge of a mountain and cannot see if another car is coming for you on a road that barely fits two cars, if one of you is not alert, one of you will fall off the edge of this mountain into the beautiful water below. It was scary and beautiful at the same time. Jason is a great driver and has done drives like this before, so we weren’t too worried, until we realized that night was coming and we were going to be doing this in the dark and there are no streetlamps. No guardrail, high mountains, narrow roads, and no streetlamps. Just writing this is making my legs shake again. We weren’t along the coast the whole way, though, to make this a little scarier, for most of the night we were driving up and over the mountains in the same conditions. Jason turned his headlights off for a second and it was pitch black out there. Black except for our headlights. We saw hundreds of bats darting around us, stray dogs, foxes, and some other animal I couldn’t identify in the road only when our headlights reached them. If anything happened to us, I don’t think anyone would find our bodies. I was hanging on to the handles with both hands begging Jason to slow down. Did I mention the potholes? Oh yeah, there were also giant potholes and patches of nothing but gravel beneath us, making our attempt to stay on the road even more difficult. It took us 2 more hours of driving in those conditions before we came to Bodrum. Our hotel owners said they’ve been on that road only once, during the day, and would never do it again because it was scary. I needed a drink badly.
Part Three: When we finally arrived in Bodrum, we were hungry and in need of a drink, so even though it was 11pm, we headed into town for dinner. What a town. If you took Ocean Blvd out of Miami and put it into the Mediterranean, then added some Turkish music and lots of European and Turkish scantily clad 20-40 year olds, you would get Bodrum. It was bar after bar and nightclub after nightclub, with restaurants and shopping in between on our right. On our left was the sea with huge sailboats and yachts and sailboats all docked for the night and a castle out in the middle of the little harbor. The broad street was packed with party goers and people watchers and Jade was just shocked at all of it. We ate a mediocre, but expensive meal and just went home and crashed.
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| View from our hotel room (you can see the castle in the middle of the bay) |
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| Other view from our room |
I am writing this in the morning, while Jason and Jade sleep. I’m out on the balcony looking out at this peaceful blue bay. Once they wake up, we’ll have breakfast and see what we should do today. Our options are ferry to the Greek Islands (but we just did an Island boat tour), drive around the Bodrum peninsula (but we might be all out of driving patience), visit some ruins (but we are going to Efesus tomorrow). We’ll see what Jason’s up to today.
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