Türkiye part 1
Bodrum
We are now back in Türkiye after 6 months in Greece. As a Norwegian sailor we can stay in Greece for 6 months, then we have to leave. And when we are in the eastern part of Greece it is easy to jump over to Türkiye. Our plan is to stay in Türkiye for a month and then go back to Greece for the winter.
We had an agent in Bodrum and through him it was easy to check in. But it was a bit of a chaos in the harbour with a lot of boats, and special the gulets (big Turkish touristboats) coming and going it was small space for other going to customs.
Last winter when we stayed in Marmaris we got to known Sharon and Geoff from Australia and they were also staying in Bodrum when we arrived there. It was so nice to see people you have met before!
They invited us over for dinner and I made an apple cake for dessert. (we also had icecream)
They made cæsar salad for dinner. It was soooo good 🙂 Thank you so much Sharon and Geoff!
They took a photo of our boat when the sun started to set. The anchorage in Bodrum is huge, but it is always possible to find a space!
Astor, Geoff and Sharon
Me, Astor and Geoff
A beautiful sunset in Bodrum
A calm morning
We went ashore to do some shopping. It is a lot of boat in the marina in Bodrum. It is so expensive to stay in the marina so we are always anchoring in Türkiye.
The prices is high in Bodrum, we only had one dinner ashore.
While Astor went to the boatshops (the second day) I went to a cafe to upload some youtube channels and writing blog. Had a small lunch while sitting there. A perfect place for this!
And I also got company of this beautiful kitten.
A video from our regatta and our stay in Bodrum:
After spending some days in Bodrum we sailed east to Konfilikt bay. A lovely quiet bay.
Only us and a couple of gulets.
Then we sailed to the south side of the Gokova bay, to Ayin Körfezi. In this area it is so many nice place to anchor so here we stayed for three nights. The first morning we took our kayak to explore a river in the innermost of this bay.
It was so beautiful! So calm and only a dog barking. It seems to have been a nice holiday destination once, but now it was only the buildings left.
This was a nice bay to stay in. We had two lines ashore. Some gulets came there but it was not busy.
A video from our kayak trip:
Ashore it was a restaurant, still open, but only for some days, they said.
We went there for lunch.
Astor waiting for his meal!
There was a dog at the restaurant and he was happy for a cuddle.
After lunch we wanted to do a hike in the area. We could see on google maps it was a lot of roads around. Well… it looks like a lot of roads…
The beginning was nice and we had a nice view to the bay.
But the problem is that many of theese “roads” are firegates… And you never know about the standard…
And when they make theese roads they don`t care about the terrain, just put the road up the hill!
But for exercising it is perfect! And when you are on the top of the hill you will also get a nice view!
First down the hill, and then up the next one! Can you see me in the bottom of the valley?
If I was tired?? Yepp!! We didn`t bring anything to eat or drink because we thought this was an easy and short hike.. haha… And it is steap as an alpine downhill!
Finally at the top of the last hill… I hope…
But the problem is – – – the firegate stopped in the middle of nowhere!! Here we can see down to our anchorage, and right after this the “road” stopped!! So.. we had two choises… walk back and find another way to the bay… – or climb through the sticky bushes down to the main road… (we saw the main road). We chose the last obtion… We saw something could look like a goat path, but after some meters it was gone… and when we came down to the road, the last part was so steap that we had to walk further on along the road, before climbing down (sorry we don`t have photos of this part) I was so dirty everywhere!! So I took a swim back to the boat, with all my clothes on! And actually, after 50 meters on the main road the dog from the restaurant came and welcomed us back!! So, once again; don`t use google maps for everything!
After this we had a plan to sail to Akyaka, because we thought it could be easy to take a bus from there to Marmaris. But after checking the timetable we realized that was a bad idea. The bus would have used over 1 hour for a distance of 30 km…. So we decided to sail to Marmaris. We had problem with our boiler, and since we bought it in Türkiye (Marmaris) last winter it was okay to go back there to get it fixed. And of course, it was more things we could fix when we first took the trip to Marmaris.
So we sailed out of the bay and headed to the northern side of the bay because of the wind. We sailed to Ören, because there it was possible to pump out, have water, and do shopping, if we needed.
Ören
Ören was a nice small town with a lovely promenade along the beach. We only stayed here for a night before we set sail south.
We did some shopping here, but we didn`t pump out or fill water, we could fix that in Marmaris.
Beautiful place with the mountains behind the town.
Knidos
I have had one thing on my bucketlist for this area in Türkiye, and that is the ruins of Knidos. The site is on Datca peninsula and a couple of hours from Marmaris, so we thought about going there last winter. Knidos was a port city 400 BC. The city had its brightest time during the Hellenistic era 300-30 BC.
If you like to read more about this place, check out this website:
https://turkishmuseums.com/museum/detail/2196-mugla-knidos-archaeological-site/2196/4
So many beautiful details.
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The old ancient amfi theater
Unfortunately after a few earthquake most of the place was destroid and the city was most probably completely abandoned after that.
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Some places it was easy to walk around, like here, but suddenly the trail could stop, and mostly no signs.
What a place to anchor!
We had a plan to walk to the lighthouse at the end of the peninsula (there is a discussion if this is an island or if it belongs to the mainland), but we thought we could do that on the way back here (today I know we won`t come back here… )
The old stair, watch your steps!
From our boat we had the view to the other ancient theatre.
A really amazing place to visit.
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The gate to the ancient theatre.
The view from our boat. There is a restaurant which is open through the summer season.
After visiting Knidos for a couple of hours we sailed further south. Our plan is now to sail to Marmaris, but on the way we have to cross Greece, or sail around. It is not allowed to cross the border, but we took a chance… so we sailed over to the southern part of Symi and anchored there for a night, we did not go ashore. The sunset on this part of Symi is always beautiful!
Here you can see the map of the area. If we should follow the rules we should sail north of Symi, it would almost double the distance.
Ciftlik
After a night on Symi we sailed further east and had a stop in a beautiful bay at the western part of the peninsula. After staying alone there for some hours 3 catamarans with men from Romania arrived and anchored next to us. (as close they could come….the bay is huge so that was not nessessary. load music.. ) So we decided to leave that bay and sailed to Ciftlik. That is a beautiful bay, but through the night it was too much swell coming in.
We made vaffels there, and the fun thing was when we opened the waffel iron the last waffel from last time we made waffels was still inside… We didn`t eat it….
I had an hour walk on my walkingpad…
Before I jumped into the water and had a lovely swim.
We also made bread in our bread baking machine, and it was sooo good!!
Absolutely a nice place to stop, but it is more windy and more swell than you can think of. And in summertime it is a lot of gulets in here.
Icmeler
After a roly night in Ciftlik we sailed into the bay of Marmaris. Because we were not in a hurry we sailed first to Icmeler to have a night there. We anchored and took the dinghy ashore. It was hard to find a place for the dinghy, we had to go up in the river and also there it was hard to find a place to go ashore.
A bit more people here now than last time we were here in February. A cozy place, mostly for tourists (Englishmen). We bought an icecream before we went back to the boat to have dinner.
Next time I will give you our second part of our stay in Türkiye, mostly in Marmaris. If you don`t have time to wait for it you can read about Marmaris in our post from last winter:
