Fethiye and the Boat Trip

Ok, so it has been a while since I’ve chucked anything new on the blog, so I will do my best to get it up to date ASAP again. I will get all the Blue Cruise blogs up, and then I will continue on from there.

Today was a good day. It was a hot day. It was a Thursday.
I will resume my travels where I left off, which was going to bed in Fethiye.

Lapzang, Doolittle and I all arose and packed our bags, but we did so a little later than we were expecting, and didn’t leave ourselves a lot of time to have breakfast and get some snackies for our boat trip. After all, spending 4 days on a boat meant that we would be at the mercy of the crew to feed us if we didn’t bring anything with us.
As we were heading down for breakfast at about 9.40, Doolittle realized that she had left her hat and sunglasses at our drinking venue last night. Cursing, she headed down to try to find them, while Lapzang and I managed to eat a quick breakfast, and put a few little bits and pieces in a napkin and tied them up for her. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a stick for her to sling it over her shoulder, but she was still appreciative for all that.

We headed down to the V-Go office, who we had booked our Blue Cruise through. They had told us to arrive about 10.15-10.30, so that we would have plenty of time to go through the initial paperwork and crap, and leave sometime between 11 and 12.
As we arrived in the office, we checked our names off the list, and looked at the other people that were sitting there. There was one girl sleeping on the couch, and three other girls, all whining about the other people in their group not being back from the shops yet. Yep, you guessed it. All Poms! Lapzang, Doolittle and I all shared a look with each other, and quickly headed out of the office to pick up some snacks, as we were told that we had about an hour before the boat would leave.
As we were walking to one of the bank-o-mats (they don’t have ATMs) nearby, we passed 4 people, who were obviously the ones that the Poms in the office had been whining about. This group were also whining, although they were complaining about not having enough alcohol for the trip, would they have enough snacks, would the others be happy with what they had bought… Another look was shared between Lapzang, Doolittle and I; I almost got down on my knees and started praying.

We wandered and bought some snacks and supplies for the cruise, I bought a Panama-style hat, as my other one was starting to look a bit the-worse-for-wear. Heading back to the V-Go office, we saw all of the Poms heading out with their bags, and along the nearby wharf. We hurried back into the office, asking if we needed to grab our bags and join them. No, we were told. Sit down, there are more people coming.
Oh – ok. It was about 10.50 by this stage.
We sat down and waited… and waited… and waited… It got to about 11.20, and nobody else had arrived, so we were a bit concerned that if that was our boat, they would have left without us. Lapzang went over and asked the lady behind the counter, who told us that we weren’t on the boat with the Poms, we were on a different boat. Whew! That was a relief.
Shortly after this point, people started rocking up, and putting their bags down out the front. After 8 people had arrived, I headed out to say G’day, and see if they were on our boat.
It turned out they were… and all of these people were Aussies. As was the next car load of 4 people… all Aussies. Admittedly, one of the girls had been living in England for about 10 years, and 6 of the others had been over there for a year or so, but you know what they say. You can take the Aussie out of Australia, but you can’t take the Australia out of the Aussie.
The people basically fit into a couple of cliques to start with – there was a group of 3, a brother and sister and a traveling companion they’d met in Istanbul; a group of 8, six of whom had been living together in London for the past year and two others that had come over from Australia; Kate, the girl that had been living in the UK for 10 years; and then Lapzang, Doolittle and I.
I had the chance to chat to everybody briefly, and got talking with the other trio, who had been canyoning the previous day. The brother, Adam, had been traveling for a while, and had asked his sister, Ebony, to bring him a football from home when she joined him. He took this opportunity to run to the local football (aka soccer) store, and got them to pump it up for him. Unfortunately, while he was away, we were told to start making our way to the boat, as it was now ready after our long wait. Having my trundle suitcase, I did the gentlemanly thing and slung his backpack onto my back and wheeled my suitcase behind. Just as I was getting onto the boat (I was the last one), he came running back, and managed to make it on with the rest of us.
Unfortunately, we had to wait some more. Apparently there were two other people that were supposed to get onto the boat, but hadn’t shown up yet. We waited another half an hour for them, and then the call was made to ‘fuck em’, and we set sail.
The Baba Vali was a 50 foot gullet, a style of sailing ship popular in Turkish waters. One of the V-Go staff members went through the rules with us – no shoes on the boat, no alcohol on the rooms, we could sleep on the deck, and if we made ‘jiggy jiggy’ to be respectful as it was a small ship.
Everybody on the boat was then shown to their rooms. Some rooms had a double bed and a bunk, some had just double beds. I was fortunate to have a double bed room all to myself – and so my room was dubbed the ‘jiggy jiggy’ room. I told everybody that they were welcome to use my room for ‘jiggy jiggy’, just make sure they put a sock on the door handle first.
After being shown our rooms, we had lunch served for us by the crew, and we got to know each other. Adam suggested that we go around the group and say our name and a disease starting with the same first letter as our name. This idea was received, well, let’s just say less than enthusiastically. It was decided that we’d name a sport, rather than a disease. We all caught each other’s names, but it took the next couple of hours for us to remember them all.

The boat cruised on, and our first stop was Butterfly valley, where there were apparently huge numbers of butterflies breeding. As the boat didn’t pull up to the shore, we all dove off the side and swam to the shore. Adam and the third member of their trio, Jason, headed off down the beach, as they had seen a spot that looked like it could be a good one to jump off rocks.
About six of us headed inland to go and check out these butterflies. We passed a number of stalls selling items, and signs that proclaimed that this was an environmentally sustainable area, and all respect needed to be taken in the vicinity. Unfortunately, we didn’t get too far inland as there was a fellow sitting at a table, charging 5 lira for people to go and see the butterflies and a supposedly beautiful waterfall. Bloody hippies.
The group split up at that point, and a few of us headed down to where Adam and Jason had gone. They had located a great rock on the cliff wall that you could climb up onto and leap out into the ocean. Adam headed back as soon as we got there, though, as he had been savaged by a sea urchin on the rocks. He asked if they were poisonous. I told him that Doolittle had been stung on the foot in Greece, and she was still with us… but she didn’t have her toe anymore. Hehe.

We spent about an hour at Butterfly valley before getting back on the boat and cruising to our next destination, Oludeniz. It is a beautiful beach, and somebody told me that it was the Turkish equivalent to Pei Pei in Thailand. At first, I misunderstood what they were saying (isn’t pee pee the same no matter where you go?), but finally the penny dropped. The boat moored just out from the beach, near a large rock rearing up out of the water. Adam and Jason decided they wanted to jump off the top, and after being waved off from the first and second places they wanted to jump, found a spot they could leap out into the water from about 8 metres up. It looked fun, but as I was on camera duty, I couldn’t partake myself.
After a paddle there we headed to Saint Nicholas island, where there were ruins of an ancient settlement. It was 8 lira to go onto the island and look at the ruins, so we raided the snorkels and swam around, looking at the swarms of fish and the ruins that had been submerged. One of the girls, Rachelle, was worried that there would be sharks in the water, but we convinced her that it was safe.
We had a very tasty dinner on the boat, and I was informed that the El Capitan was a good teacher of Backgammon by Kate, who had been playing the El Capitan all afternoon. I asked the El Capitan to teach me to play, and out of the 3 games we played that night, I won 2. I suspect the El Capitan was going easy on me (after all, he would say “No!” when I made a bad move, and make the move for me).
Somebody broke out the cards, and we played Arsehole (or President or Warlords and Scumbags, depending on what school of thought you’re from). It was quite difficult with a large group, but still a lot of fun.
You were able to buy alcohol on the boat, but it wasn’t super cheap (5 lira for a 500ml beer), and Lapzang and I realized that he had better go easy on it, as I drank 8 beers and he had 10. Funnily enough, most of the other people didn’t have that much to drink (according to the honesty ledger), yet they seemed to be getting quite drunk. Hmmm. I wonder how that could be.
We wrapped up the night with a chat on the front of the boat, and I decided to try sleeping in the hammock on the bow. It was a beautiful night – a nice cool breeze was blowing, and the rocking of the hammock was extremely relaxing, although the ropes bit into me a bit, so after a couple of hours of lying there, I decided to sleep in my cabin, which has cooled down from the stinking heat earlier on.