Degirmen Buku May 4, 2002 This is our second day in this secluded arm of Degirmen Buku, known as English Harbour because of its use by the Special Boat Squadron of Britain in 1944/45. We have just finished a dinghy ride around the buku (bay), and are spending a lazy afternoon, giving me a chance to catch up on my logs before we join the EMYR on May 6th in Bodrum. We enjoyed Kalkan. The town dock was quite secure and charged only 10,000,000 TL (about $12.00 Cdn), but that did not include any facilities, not even washrooms or showers which had to be paid for separately. However, the harbourmaster is not frequent in his collections and other yachts did not get charged if he didn’t show up. We left at 0545 April 24 for a 30 mile motor sail to Karacaoren Buku where we picked up a mooring from the local restaurant. To justify it we went to the restaurant for lunch and had an OK, but expensive meal (13,000,000 TL plus drinks each, a meal which would normally cost about 5,000,000 TL in a regular Turkish community). For future reference if we accept local mooring buoys at restaurants, we will only go in for a beer to patronize the establishment. We found it a rolly cove, even though it was well sheltered. The redeeming grace was its proximity to Gemiler Adasi, an ancient Byzantine religious community. The island is uninhabited except for a local fisherman/custodian who if around may charge 3,000,000 TL to wander the ruins. They are worth the price, although no one was there when I explored the island. It is a small hilly island only 1 km long, also known as St. Nicholas Island as the Byzantine cult there was devoted to his veneration. He was originally buried there in 340 AD, but the island, being a religious community, had no defensive walls and so was evacuated in the 7th century when the Arab invasions threatened the area. The relics of St. Nicholas were transferred to Myra at that time. He is also venerated in Greece and Russia, and in the Muslim world. This is the same St. Nicholas who is the patron saint of children, sailors and pirates, and who was adopted in northern Europe to replace Father Christmas, and became Nicholas (Claus), whom we now know as Santa Claus. There were four churches built on the island by the pilgrims and monks. One of the churches on a cliff at the east end of the island is linked to a second church at the summit by a stunning vaulted passage 300 metres along the upper spine of the limestone ridge. It permitted the monks and pilgrims to ascend in cool cavernous shade from one church to the other, or to follow through successive gates to another church on the west end, the remains of which are surrounded by cisterns, graves and sarcophagi, and other buildings. Along the north shoreline are remains of houses, docks, and tunnels for water and sewage systems. Additional uninhabited ruins were on Karacaoren Adasi, sheltering the cove where Veleda was moored off the restaurant. Leaving at a civilized time of 1100 next day as we were just going 20 miles around the peninsula up to Fethiye, we motored around the bay through the channel between Gemiler Adasi and the mainland, over to Bestas Limani. This is an interesting small sheltered bay with paths leading up to Kaya Koy, an abandoned Greek village, which we visited later from Fethiye. Before leaving the area we motored around to the scenic beach of Olu Deniz, behind which is a beautiful, almost land locked bay, but it is prohibited to boaters. We motored around the peninsula and headed northward towards Fethiye, being able to sail for a couple of hours for the first time with the Meltemi on our port beam instead of heading straight into it. We sailed around, right into Fethiye Bay before dropping sail and anchoring in the northwest cove across from the town (36 37.8 N, 029 05.7 E). The cove was protected not only by a small headland, but also by the capsized hulk of a 100 metre shipwreck. It proved to be a very quiet comfortable anchorage where we stayed for four days. There was another 10 metre sailboat, Quest, which had wintered there and said it was secure even in storm conditions that battered the local marinas. We were able to get water at the park ashore, which was inhabited by a couple of donkeys, a few chickens and turkeys, and periodically by a small herd of goats and some picnickers. Astern of us was a spiral fishing net tended each morning and evening by a local fisherman, Sebattin Ataman and his wife Selma. We had them over for tea one evening after tending their nets, and had a good conversation with them. They had reasonable success from what we saw, catching some good size barracuda each time. The fish foraged off the park during the day and would return to their home territory inside the wreck behind us in the evening. The net was laid between the two locations. They gave us gifts on two occasions of crab they caught in their nets. We had a few lovely blue crab meals for the next three days. These fresh crabs, steamed in overboard salt water with lemon and garlic produced a sumptuous delicacy that didn’t need additional garlic butter or seasoning of any type. Mmmmm! Because the anchorage was so secure we had no concerns about leaving Veleda unattended by day as we toured the area. One tour we took was to the rock tombs of the Dalyan River. The cost was not inexpensive, about 35,000,000 TL ($40.00 Cdn) each, but the guided tour included a comfortable minivan to take us through the mountains to Dalyan, where we boarded a river boat. It wended its way down river past cliffs etched with 2000 year old Lycian pillared rock tombs, and into a broad marshy delta which ended in a wide beach and sand spit where we strolled the dunes and salt ponds formed in this shifting shoreline. In the early afternoon we returned upstream to Dalyan for an extremely good meal (included) with copious servings of local flat bread. Judy went out to the kitchen to see how it was made so we can make it on board Veleda. After lunch we boarded the boat again to head up river to the western shore of the lake at Selimiye where we went for a MUD BATH. The location had a rustic bar/restaurant with some pictures of Dustin Hoffman enjoying their hospitality. Beyond the restaurant was a gazebo, a warm, clear, overflowing sulphur pool, and a larger rectangular mud pond. Beyond the mud pond was another bar area behind which were small semicircular rattan change shelters and an open pavilion with fresh water unheated shower nozzles. The procedure was to wallow in the mud bath for a while covering yourself with a glossy coating of liquid mud. People were advised to remove any silver jewelry as the sulphur would discolour it. Then getting out, we allowed ourselves, after laughing at our ridiculous appearance as if we were from the night of the living dead, and striking muddy statue poses, to dry out in the sun for about 45 minutes until the mud caked on our bodies. We felt the mud cracking on our skin as we moved about. Then back into the mud pond to “wash off” the mud before going to the showers for a fresh water rinse. Brrr! The next stage was a soak in the clear water of the warm sulphur pool. It felt good after the mud and cool shower. The sulphur smell was not overly strong. Our skin had a clean, smooth feel. We should have had another fresh water shower after the sulphur pool, but we didn’t want to chill ourselves down again. After a tea in the restaurant we boarded the boat again to return to Dalyan and the minivan. Returning, we took the English family who was sharing the tour with us to their hotel in Olu Deniz, the beach area we saw from Veleda a few days ago. The beach was a tourist strip of restaurants, shops, diving, boating and paragliding agencies. A part of the beach was used for the landing area of paragliders who jumped off a mountain up the valley. We arranged to do that next day. On our way back to Fethiye, we talked the guide into taking us through Kaya Koy, a deserted Greek town on a hillside between Olu Deniz and Fethiye. It was a Greek community of about 20,000 until the Greek-Turkish conflict in 1923. In an agreement between the Turkish and Greek governments, the inhabitants of this and one or two other Greek communities in Turkey were exchanged town for town with similar Turkish communities in Greece (a much better solution than “ethnic cleansing”). There were hardships for the displaced inhabitants. When the Turks came to Kaya Koy here in Turkey, they did not want to live in the Greek hillside houses, and instead set up farms and spread out in other valleys. They took the roofs, window frames, doors and woodwork from the Greek houses to build their new communities, and left Kaya Koy a deserted town with just the empty stone walled skeletons of the Greek houses standing in mute testimony to this period of ethnic exchange. More about our paragliding and dragging anchor at Knidos in my next log.
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