june 2 2006 : suez canal, egypt, africa
Yet another 5 a.m. wake up call yesterday morning so we could get things ready for day two of the Suez transit. We had called our agent the night before and he assured us that the pilot would arrive between 6 and 7. A little after 7 I gave him a call and he assured me he’d be there by 8. A little after 8 I called him and he assured me ten o’clock for sure. At ten o’clock we saw another boat leave with their pilot and I called again. This was good news he said, the pilot would be there any moment. At 10:30 another pilot arrived, but for a different boat again. At eleven our agent said he had spoken to the transit authority and the pilot was on his way. Meanwhile the “officials” around the dock were saying we wouldn’t go until tomorrow. At 11:30 the other boat had engine problems and realized they wouldn’t be able to transit so their pilot was finally handed over to us and we left, after half a dozen phone calls and lies, and just five hours late.

Our pilot was a good guy. He was a Muslim who repeatedly performed his ablutions, cleansing his arms, hands, and face in our bathroom before coming out on deck to wash his feet with a glass of water and say his prayers. As far as piloting, he took his job a little too seriously, insisting on sitting next to me for hours on end. The only time he left me was for prayer. Praise Allah for those breaks.

The day passed utterly uneventfully. The Suez Canal is an awfully boring place to motor through. There is nothing to look at other than the next channel marker a quarter mile away, all day, for forty-five miles. Because we left so late the currents were against us nearly the entire way. We finally rolled into Port Said at eight o’clock, just as the sun was disappearing. That’s when things got interesting.

Port Said is an absolutely filthy shipping port. The waterfront is littered with rusting buoys and boats, while the channel is clogged with cargo ships, ferries, and pilot launches. We asked our pilot where we could anchor but he assured us there was no place to go other than the yacht club. The yacht club was just a small break in the middle of the general congestion where we could drop the anchor and tie up two stern lines to a decrepit wall. Though at this point, with dark setting in, we didn’t have much choice.

A boat arrived to pick up our pilot just as we were trying to maneuver into position to drop our anchor. We handed our pilot a bag with a couple t-shirts, a cap, and ten bucks. He grabbed it and immediately started sifting through it. He must have been happy because he didn’t ask for more. Nor did he bother to say thank you, something we had long ago given up hearing in Egypt. Then, like a little kid on Halloween he snuck off to the side of the boat, opposite where the pilot boat that was picking him up was. Hidden, he started stuffing his goods into his empty briefcase which had been brought along specifically for that purpose.

Meanwhile Ali and I were scrambling around trying to keep our boat from bashing into giant steel moorings and the pilot boat. We finally yelled to our pilot to get off our boat and he responded by asking for baksheesh for the pilot boat guys. As if they had done us some giant favor. By this point we were yelling at the pilot boat to come get him off, which they finally did while simultaneously asking for baksheesh themselves. Our boats continued to bounce in the wake just inches away from each other. They finally left empty handed, allowing us to finish getting anchored and tied off to the wall. We only wanted to spend the night there and leave by five a.m. The reason being that it is illegal to arrive in Israel at night, which is what would have happened if we left right then.

As soon as we were tied up a guy who had helped with our lines told us that we would need a pilot the next day to take us the rest of the way out of the harbor, approximately a half mile. Cost, twenty-six dollars. Fine, whatever, we just wanted to go to bed. Then he told us the “marina” fee was fifteen dollars for the night. That would make this crappy, filthy, cockroach infested cement wall the most expensive “marina” in all of Egypt. We told him no way, we would pay him eight, and we would want a receipt. He told us he would get his boss then.

In the meantime, I dropped our dinghy down into the water because it had sprung a massive leak earlier in the day. It was obvious that a new seam had opened up because there wasn’t a breath of air inside of it. When it is that flat it is impossible to keep it tied up tightly and it swings wildly, which then makes the dinghy davits that hold it crack even worse than they already are.

Just as I set about fixing that the boss came over. He asked how long we were, and I told him ten meters. He thought for a minute and then said, “The cost is $1.50 per meter, so $15.” Amazing that was exactly the same cost the kid had come up with without even knowing the length of the boat. He was saying we must pay this and the $26 pilot fee to him right away or else we must leave. We asked, “If we leave now we don’t need a pilot?” And he said he wouldn’t even report that we had stopped there. They were all kind of snickering, thinking that they had us screwed over because it was so dark now that there was no way we would leave. But we said, “Okay we’re out of here then, thanks for all your help.”

Now it’s pitch black except for the lights of the city and there are still ships all over the place, but none of them seemed to be moving any longer. We had a quick look at the charts and thought we spotted a basin that we’d be able to anchor in, however when we got close we found that there was a huge ship in it and someone on deck yelling at us to get the hell away from them.

Back to the charts we realized that if we went outside Port Said into the open ocean the water was still shallow enough to anchor. We followed the channel out and motored another half mile or so before turning outside the shipping channel into the shallow Mediterranean water. We made sure to get far enough away that we wouldn’t be run over in the middle of the night. Fortunately the wind had died and there was just a little bit of swell rolling through. By ten o’clock our anchor was down and I went back to work on the dinghy, managing to quickly find the new leak and get it super glued in the dark. Ali whipped up our first meal of the day, peanut butter toast, and we fell into bed exhausted at midnight.

june 3 2006 : herzliya, israel
Considering where we were anchored it was a miracle that we had such a great night of sleep. The wind stayed calm, and once the ships stopped moving around, the sea went flat. For about the tenth morning in a row we were up at the crack of dawn and on our way, sailing in the Mediterranean Sea at last. We had nice downwind sailing all day until dark when the wind died away completely, leaving us to motor through the night towards Israel.

Israel has some strict security precautions in place, which for us meant that we were required to call them on the VHF upon arriving within fifty miles of their coast. We didn’t make contact at fifty miles, or forty miles for that matter, but around thirty-five miles out we started to hear back from them. Our connection was terrible though and we spent pretty much the entire morning trying to hear and understand each other. We know that our VHF doesn’t work very well, it never has, but we use it so rarely that we have never bothered to try and fix it. Now for the first time it was a real pain in the ass.

After a few hours we thought things were pretty well squared away. Right up until a Navy patrol boat came roaring towards us from out of nowhere. They kept their big guns trained directly on us while we once again relayed all of our information. They told us to call yet another station to report the same information a third time. We never really did get through to that station however and eventually just gave up.

When the Navy boat was alongside of us they yelled over in their loudspeaker, “How are you?” Not having any other way to reply, we gave them the thumbs up. Then, not five minutes later, Ali was reading our guidebook which said, “Any gesture in which the thumb is extended is considered offensive, so avoid giving thumbs up.” Not even on land yet and we’d already committed a faux pas.

At noon we arrived in Tel-Aviv Marina. We were met by two guys from Israeli Security who poked around on the boat a bit before handing over control to the lady in charge. She came aboard and sat us down for an interview. She poured through our passports, asking if we had any family in any of the Middle Eastern countries we’d recently visited, or if anybody could have gotten aboard and planted a bomb while we were away from the boat. After the interview it was her turn to poke around inside and swipe some bomb/drug detectors all over everything. She sent those away and then asked us to show her our Israel guidebook. That request surprised us, but she seemed satisfied when she saw that we had a bunch of stuff highlighted, thus proving that we planned to do a little touring and not just blow ourselves up on a crowded bus.

Our drug screen came back negative and we were handed over to one last police lady who had us fill out our visas. She then asked if we wanted our passports stamped. We regretfully declined, since we weren’t sure where our travels might end up taking us. A few Muslim countries refuse admittance to anybody with an Israeli stamp in their passport.

Anyway, I make light of the security screening but they’ve obviously got good reason for it. They were all very friendly during the whole thing and were really happy to welcome us to their country. Best of all, not a penny exchanged hands.

We had originally planned to stay in the Tel-Aviv Marina but once we saw how ridiculously crowded it was we decided to head five miles farther up the coast to Herzliya where there is a huge new marina. By law we have to stay in a marina while here in Israel.

On our sail over there we were shocked by the amount of garbage in the water. Actually not garbage, just plastic bags. For some reason I don’t understand, plastic bags fill up in the water and then float about four feet down for eternity. At any one time we could see a hundred white blobs in the water in front of us. It was impossible to even attempt to avoid them, all you could do was hope you didn’t end up with a half dozen of them wrapped around your propeller. It was far and away the worst we’d seen anywhere in the world.

After arriving in the new marina, Ali and I went straight to work washing the boat of tons of African sand. It felt like a brand new home once that was done. We celebrated by walking the hundred meters to the Macca’s in the shopping mall that is surrounding the marina. This is where we got our first taste of Mediterranean/Europe prices. Big Mac combo, nearly eight bucks. A few celebratory drinks after dinner and we ended a very long couple of days.

june 4 2006 : herzliya
We have mixed feelings about being in the Med. It seems to surprise a lot of people but the leg between Oman and Egypt was our favorite part of this trip so far. It was so much more interesting than anywhere else we’ve been. We got to meet people that are so unlike ourselves, but at the same time so alike. It amazed us how generous people were everywhere we went. They invited us into their homes, made sure our buses got us where we needed to go, and helped us find the things we needed to continue on. “Ahhhmereeeka! Welcome to our country!” we must have heard that a thousand times in the last few months, after being asked where we were from. Where were all the angry shaking of fists and stone throwing?

It was so much fun to travel in a place where we stood out as being different. In the South Pacific we were generally treated as just another tourist to the locals. In New Zealand and Australia we were no different until we opened our mouths to speak. And in SE Asia there seemed to be little interest in us. But from the moment we stepped foot in the Middle East we were a novelty.

Most people were so amazed that we were in their country that all they wanted to do was make sure we had the best experience we could, so that we’d walk away with a good impression of their home. We went into that area of the world not sure what to expect, the media certainly didn’t give us a good impression, but we came out of each country blown away by the incredible people we met along the way. The Red Sea region has definitely become the highlight of our journey.

june 5 2006 : herzliya
Today we hopped on the bus to Tel-Aviv just a few minutes down the road. I’m pretty sure these are the only bus drivers we’ve ever seen packing handguns on their hips. Delivered safe and sound our first stop was to the Jordanian Embassy to pick up visa’s for our trip across the border to Petra. They were great and despite the fact that we had forgotten to bring passport photos along they issued them to us in under an hour.

After that we took a cab over to Dizengoff Square where we spent the rest of the day. Dizengoff Street runs right through downtown but feels more like a Chicago neighborhood than a city. The streets were lined with all sorts of different shops, ritzy cafés, scrubby little falafel restaurants, kosher hot dog stands, used book stores, you name it. We did some shopping and were finally able to begin replenishing our sad looking closets. We also caught a movie, had a couple slices of pizza, and stopped in at Macca’s for some ice cream. Catching up on things we haven’t seen a whole lot of lately.

june 9 2006 : jerusalem, israel
We took it easy on the boat for a couple of more days getting some small boat projects taken care of and just relaxing. One night we went out with one of our longest running Bum follower friends, his daughter and her boyfriend. We had a great time and hung out in Tel-Aviv until midnight, though the streetside cafés and ice cream shops were still overflowing with people. Considering it was the middle of the week it was surprising how happening the city was.

A convoy of cruisers have arrived over the last couple days. It never ceases to amaze me the insatiable appetite cruisers have for information. Almost before they were done docking they began asking questions. What are the showers like? Is there laundry? How do you get downtown? Is the food safe to eat? Where is a good restaurant?

My favorite was when they started questioning us about an ATM. Remember, we are in Israel, in a marina that has a shopping mall towering over it. I think most people would conclude that there would be an ATM somewhere in the mall. “How do you get money here?” “Uhhh, ATM.” “Oh, really, where is that?” “In that big shopping mall right there in front of you.” “Oh, really, where inside the mall?” And on and on and on. Before this trip I thought cruisers were much more independent people, but the truth we’ve found is that they really like to stick together in groups, and that they need to have as much information as possible before doing anything at all on their own.

Here in Israel they speak Hebrew, but just about everybody speaks English as well. We also aren’t obviously foreigners so we often have people start rattling off something to us in Hebrew before we mumble something in English and they smile and switch over for us. About the only people who don’t speak good English are the bus drivers, but that seems to be pretty common, even in the U.S.

So yesterday we set off on our little inland adventure. First stop was Jerusalem. We went out to the catch the same bus we had taken to Tel-Aviv a couple of days earlier. We sat there and waited and waited while dozens of other buses came and went. We kept asking them if bus 90 came by here and they all said yes, but it never showed and we eventually just jumped on a different bus and took that to a nearby train station. From there we took a train into Tel-Aviv where we transferred to another train to Jerusalem. The whole thing would have taken under two hours if we had known our bus would never show up.

In Jerusalem we jumped on another bus which was soon overflowing with people. At the front of the bus was a uniformed girl with a machine gun, who got out at each stop and looked people over before they got on. That bus dropped us off sort of near where we were going but we still had to grab a cab the rest of the way to Damascus Gate at the edge of the Old City. We thought the days of getting screwed over by cabbies was done with but these guys try their best as well. You have to tell them to turn on the meter, which always turns out to give you a much cheaper price than they try to get you to believe. So after five legs of our journey we arrived at our destination.

Our hostel was just inside the Gate and right smack dab in the middle of the bustling “souq” market in the Muslim Quarter. The Old City section of Jerusalem is surrounded by fortified walls and inside is delineated into pretty specific quarters. There is the Muslim Quarter, Jewish Quarter, Christian Quarter, and Armenian Quarter. Being old friends with the Muslims by now we thought we’d stay in their neighborhood.

The entire area is a labyrinth of narrow streets with small shops, restaurants, churches, mosques, synagogues, and still plenty of local homes. The streets are packed full of people, locals, shop owners, and lots of tourists on their religious pilgrimage. Ali and I set out on a pilgrimage of our own, finding a good little local place to relax with a beer and watch the world stroll by. We found a perfectly filthy little place full of local men drinking hard. We always draw a little attention as we walk in but within a minute or two everybody pretty much forgets about us and goes back to their drinking. After a few drinks it was off to find some food. Surprisingly the Old City didn’t have a ton of options as far as food was concerned. There were dozens of places serving pizza, and dozens more making falafel, but not a whole lot else, which was just fine by me. We stopped off for one of each in the Muslim Quarter and headed back to the hotel for the night.

Later on that night there were some fireworks being shot off near the hotel so we went down to check out what was going on. Turned out there was going to be a wedding the next day but tonight there was just a big party in the street as all the family and friends came to town to celebrate. There was a slightly weird vibe in the air at night though and we didn’t stay out too much longer.

Today we went to Yad Va-Shem, the Holocaust Museum, which was amazing. It’s a beautiful museum that is extremely well presented and we really learned a lot. No matter how many movies and documentaries you see on the subject, nothing compares to the words of the survivors themselves, and the thousands of pictures and documents lining the walls here. We spent the entire morning there before catching the bus back to town. Getting back in the early afternoon we found the Damascus Gate was a virtual wall of people, all trying to squeeze in or out of the narrow entrance. We basically wedged ourselves in and were carried along before finally being spit out near our hotel where things opened up a bit. We headed to the Jewish Quarter for yet another pizza, this time without meat since it is forbidden by Jewish religious law to mix meat and dairy products, and then made our way to the Wailing Wall.

Not being religious ourselves we were there simply as observers and stayed well back from the wall itself where hundreds of people stood and prayed. It was interesting to watch the goings on. Orthodox Jews formed the majority of the men there. Watching them pray it seemed almost as if they went into a trance and it is obvious they feel a very direct connection with God there. On the other hand there were other Orthodox Jews standing around approaching, begging, and harassing every single person who entered the prayer area. They stood around on their cell phones chatting away and then would pounce on anybody who walked in. There were signs everywhere declaring that there was no cell phones or begging allowed in the area of the Wall, but it was pretty widely disregarded. We felt bad for the tourists who were obviously here on some sort of once in a lifetime pilgrimage and couldn’t even pray in peace. And then of course there is the other thing that we just can’t get our heads around, and that is the separation of men and women. There are two sections of the wall cordoned off by a high wall. One large section for men and a tiny sliver of wall for women. Funny thing is that the women’s side was far busier than the men’s. But whatever, it was a very interesting place to visit nonetheless.

After that stop we wandered back into the Muslim Quarter and over towards the Dome of the Rock where again we hoped to just sort of stand back, have a look, and observe. This is the third holiest Muslim site and probably the most obvious landmark in the Old City. However, we were turned back by armed guards who informed us that only Muslims were allowed in the area on Friday, their holy day. We then went to the internet café to check email. There are so many different religions sights and types of people in the Old City that even checking email can be a religious experience. Right outside the door of the internet café is the 8th Station of the Cross. The Stations of the Cross mark the path that Jesus took on his final walk as a mortal and is a huge deal for believers who file by in large groups all day long stopping to pray and sing hymns as they go along, while young kids play computer games and adults surf the web. When we were paying for internet we got shortchanged. I caught the “mistake” and wouldn’t have thought much of it except that it was the second time it had happened that day. Seems to me that these guys are used to tourists not being very familiar with their shekels.

One thing that we really like about Israel is the fact that once again we are around people who love animals. They let dogs walk around in the shopping malls downtown, and people actually bend over and pet cats instead of trying to kick them. How nice.

june 10 2006 : jerusalem
Today we basically covered every inch of the Old City and a bit of West Jerusalem as well. We started out by walking along the top of the Old City’s walls which are about 500 years old and run around the city for about two miles. There were some nice views and best of all there were no people at all, we were just able to wander around all by ourselves up above the crowds. We tried to get in to see the Dome of the Rock again but were once again turned away at the gate by the armed guards. I thought it would be kind of funny to tell them that we were in fact Muslims, but didn’t think they’d buy it, or find it very funny, so we just moved on instead. We strolled around the Armenian Quarter and poked around some of the ceramics shops that they are famous for. Then it was outside the walls to West Jerusalem where we found that everything except a couple of pubs watching soccer was closed for Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath.

june 11 2006 : petra, jordan
We left early this morning headed for a new country, Jordan. Just outside the gates of the Old City we tracked down our first bus of the day. This one took us to a nearby town where we got off and waited around for about a half an hour for five more people to show up headed for Jericho in the West Bank. Jericho was the nearest town to the border crossing at the Allenby Bridge. Once there we negotiated with our cab driver to take us to the bridge. Instead he drove about five blocks to a bus station and told us we had to take the bus from there. The bus station employees confirmed that and we paid for the bus. We then offered our cabbie 5 shekels instead of the 20 we had agreed on for him to take us all the way. He acted really offended at first and started yelling and stomping around, but then he couldn’t help himself and he laughed. After that he had to accept the five.

Up to that point things were going pretty smoothly, but that soon changed. As we were about to board the bus the driver stopped us and wouldn’t let us on. We were in Palestinian territory now and there was plenty of Arabic being spoken but not a lot of English and we couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Eventually the police sort of explained to us that tourists couldn’t bring luggage on to the Palestinian buses and that we had to take a taxi. We argued and made a big fuss about getting our money back for the bus ride and they eventually gave in and told the driver he had to take us. They told us however that at the Israeli checkpoint if we were asked we would have to tell them that the bag was ours. Seeing as how the bag was ours we agreed that that wouldn’t be a problem and boarded the bus.

We then drove about 100 yards before stopping and having some Palestinian officer come aboard and take everybody’s passports. He came back, herded one family off the bus and we moved on, about 300 yards this time, to the Israeli checkpoint. We now got off of the Palestinian bus, went through a metal detector, and boarded the Israeli bus. This one drove about a quarter mile before pulling up in front of yet another checkpoint where we sat with all of our new Palestinian friends watching tour bus after tour bus and taxi after taxi drive through the gate in front of us. Once the traffic stopped it was our turn to drive through the final 100 yards to the border patrol building. Off the bus again, this time we were separated from the Palestinians and directed to a special tourists section. Here we passed through more security and then got to pay $30 each for the honor of leaving the country. I really love those exit fees. On yet another bus now we crossed over into Jordan where we were stopped to have our passports taken away from us again while we sat and waited. Finally, the last stop was the bus station in Jordan. That three mile stretch of road took us roughly 3½ hours and cost us a small fortune.

By now the prospect of another 4 to 5 hours of bus riding wasn’t sounding very appealing so we walked across the street and rented a car instead. Driving was easy enough, they drove on the right and we took the road that followed the Dead Sea instead of the main highway so there was hardly any traffic. The only problem was the checkpoints. At the very first one we were stopped and questioned. When we told him we were going to Petra he told us we had to stop at the intelligence office to receive permission to cross some bridge farther down the road. He pointed out the intelligence building about 500 yards down the road and we took off. When we got to the turn off to the building the sign said Private Drive and we were suddenly a little unsure if it was the right building or if it was the big police building on the other side of the street. We decided it was the police building and continued down the road to find a place to turn around. There was no place for about a mile and by that time we were starting to have second thoughts about checking in with the intelligence office. We decided to pull off at a scenic overlook and see if any army trucks came roaring after us. None did, so we just continued on.

At the bridge we figured we might have to talk ourselves out of a little trouble, but instead the guard looked at our passports and asked us if we were Armenian or American. We confirmed that those were indeed American passports in his hand and were passed through. There were quite a few checkpoints so we started greeting the officers by saying “Marhaba” (hello) before they could say anything. This always threw them off and they would ask, “You speak Arabic?” But it always seemed to get us quickly through the gate.

The drive along the Dead Sea was beautiful. Mountains ran right down to the waters edge and there was hardly any buildings or homes anywhere. Eventually we turned off and headed up into the mountains where the scenery became even better. The road just went up and up forever and there were amazing rock formations everywhere. Near the top the road started to flatten out and they even managed to grow a couple of small fields of crops. There were no road signs for Petra anywhere and a few times the road became so narrow we thought it was just going to end, but we finally made it anyway. We found a hotel right away. Once again we were the only people staying in the place, apparently there isn’t a real high demand for hotels in the desert in June.

june 12 2006 : petra
Today we visited the lost-city of Petra. Kind of funny since when the Swiss explorer Burkhardt “discovered” Petra in 1812 it was filled with local Bedouin’s who had been living there for centuries. The city is absolutely incredible. It was carved completely out of the rock about 2300 years ago by the Nabateans and there are still a whole bunch of buildings nearly perfectly preserved alongside thousands of little homes carved into the cliffs. After walking about a mile through low hills you come to the siq, which is essentially a washed out fissure in the rock between 5 and 20 feet wide and hundreds of feet high. You wind your way through this for a while before suddenly seeing a building at the end where things open up into a valley full of mountains with a city carved into them. The mountains had millions of shades of red in them and depending on how the sun was hitting things it looked different everywhere you looked. It was a great place to wander around and be amazed. We spent pretty much the entire day exploring the place and were filthy and exhausted by the time we got done. Petra was our sole reason for visiting Jordan and it was well worth it.

june 13 2006 : jerusalem, israel
On the road by eight today we were heading back to Israel. After a few wrong turns getting out of Petra we were finally pointed in the right direction and on our way to see some Crusader castles which there were signs for everywhere in Jordan. The first one we came across was a total surprise. We expected to find a crumbling pile of stones but instead found an identifiable castle. It was perched, as all good castles are, at the top of a mountain valley with steep 1000 foot drops on three sides and a somewhat smaller 250 foot drop on the fourth. All around it in the surrounding hills were the remains of the village and the farmers homes. At least we think that’s what it all was, we didn’t stop at the visitors center and instead just drove the car up the little one lane road up to the service entrance of the castle.

The car had to be back by two, so we were on a strictly driving tour today. An hour or so later we came across another castle, actually this one we couldn’t really find the castle, but again there were the remains of the village which still had people living in them. With the smell and the sound of roosters it could have easily been medieval times. The view here was astounding and probably more than made up for the lack of plumbing. And finally we came to Karnak. This seemed to be the most popular castle judging by the number of signs for it. When we came to the town of Karnak we saw the castle right away. Again the walls of the castle were very much intact, but the place didn’t have much appeal because it was completely surrounded by apartment buildings. It was huge though, stretching all the way across the top of the mountaintop it must have been a couple of miles around the walls.

The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful. We passed through a bunch of checkpoints without any problems, got totally lost and drove all over dirt roads through a Bedouin village which consisted of nothing but homes made up of garbage and bits of tent, and then finally on to the border crossing. At the border Ali and I were congratulating each other on the fact that we returned with only two Jordanian dinars left over. It’s always a game to see how little extra foreign currency we can end up with. So of course when we got to customs they demanded a 10 dinar ($14 USD) exit fee. I can’t tell you how much exit fees irk me, nothing frustrates me more.

After about an hour we were finally on the bus and headed into Israel again. Once on the Israeli side we found the most hectic and confusing border crossing we’ve ever seen. It felt like we were in some crazy third world country again with people shoving and yelling and jostling for position. We made it through after another hour or so and were spit out onto the sidewalk where we could find ourselves a ride back to Jerusalem. Here we found a shuttle bus that runs straight from the border to Jerusalem for less money than it cost us the other day when we took bus after bus through the West Bank. Would have been awfully nice to know about that before.

Back in Jerusalem we found a place to stay in West Jerusalem which is more of the shopping/bar/restaurant section of town. Everything here costs twice what it does anywhere else in the city but it felt good to just sit at an outdoor bar with a beer and people watch again. There is a little bit of everything here, including some sort of ultra religious Jews that park a van on the sidewalk with music blasting while they dance on the roof and try to drum up new converts out of the tourists who don’t have a clue what they are doing and join in to dance around the van themselves. We also discovered the shwarmas in a tortilla shell that we were able to trick ourselves into believing was a big Mexican burrito.

june 14 2006 : dead sea, israel
Today we rented a car in Jerusalem and headed straight out of town. There isn’t a lot of main roads in Israel and you’d think it would be pretty easy to navigate your way around but for some reason they don’t number their highways, except on maps. So driving down a road at 50 mph you are suddenly confronted with a sign listing half a dozen cities you’ve never heard of. Generally I would choose to go right just as Ali would find the town on the map and say to go left. It wasn’t bad once you finally managed to get out of the city though and it is actually pretty amazing that within ten minutes you are in the desert with absolutely nothing around. We took one side road off into the dirt hills. There was no sign of life at all yet there was still a huge mosque standing out in the middle of the sand.

Along the Dead Sea road we got stuck behind a military transport vehicle and had a line of cars behind us, so we pulled into a gas station to let them all go on ahead. After a minute I pulled back out onto the road again and was immediately told to pull over at the police checkpoint. The police officer was pretty mad at me for driving into the gas station through the exit. He even got snotty and asked me if the EXIT ONLY sign was too big for me. Good humor. You gotta love those traffic cops.

A little bit down the road we stopped at Qumran to see where they discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. We didn’t know much about them but figured it would be worth a stop. Essentially what we learned there was that the people who wrote the scrolls were a hardcore religious bunch who felt that everybody but themselves were evil and would be killed when the day of judgment came. So they spent their lives bathing with other men twice a day, eating with other men twice a day, and writing scrolls with other men the rest of the day, all the while waiting for that day of judgment which never came. Good news for us but a bummer for them.

The road along the Dead Sea is much less scenic than on the Jordan side. Here they’ve got mile after mile of barbed wire fence with giant warning signs not to go off the road. When we finally did come to the “beach” we found a lot more fence which herded us like cattle across the barren landscape to a section of water about 100 feet wide. Fifty miles of beach and we get 100 feet of rocky shoreline with fences running straight into the water at either end. Not exactly on the top ten list of most beautiful beaches. The draw of course isn’t the beaches though, it’s the water. The saltiest sea on earth. It is so salty that you just lay in the water like you are on an air mattress. I had shaved six hours earlier and my neck was feeling the pain because of it, but we had fun floating around and acting goofy for a while.

june 17 2006 : driving around israel
Our Dead Sea hostel was one of the nicest we’ve ever stayed in even though it felt just like a maximum security prison. The whole thing had tall fences around it, a heavy duty security gate, and even the basketball court had barbed wire fencing surrounding it. As soon as we dropped off our bags we headed for the beautiful pool that we could see from the lobby. We followed the signs past the prison cells to the pool and found it was also fenced off and locked up. We trudged back to reception to ask about it and were told that it was only ever open if somebody reserved it. It was ten to five so we tried to reserve it for five o’clock, but apparently that isn’t exactly what she meant. So we resigned ourselves to not being able to swim at the pool in the middle of the desert and asked about the internet café that they had signs posted all over for. Nope, they don’t have that either. “Okay, what time does that cafeteria open then?” “Actually, it doesn’t, there is a set meal at 7:30 though.” At that point we were pretty sure we had overpaid for our two bunk cell but it was the desert so what were we going to do?

In the morning we took the cable car up to the top of Masada, a mountaintop fortress overlooking the Dead Sea. The mountain has a lot of significance for the Jewish people because of what happened there. In 70 CE a group of 967 Jewish Zealots’ held off 15,000 Romans for over five months before the Romans were able to break through the fortress by building a huge ramp to the top of the mountain. The night before they broke through the Zealots’ decided it was better to die as free men than to be enslaved by the Romans, so they chose ten men to kill them all, then one man killed the other 9 before finally killing himself. Some of the ruins were in okay shape but for the most part you had to use your imagination. With a whole lot of Europe still to cover we think we better slow down on the visiting of ruins for a while.

From the Dead Sea we drove north again. We drove pretty much all day long, nice and slow, along relatively deserted roads running through Palestinian Territory. We got to Tiberias on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, which is really just a medium sized lake by my standards. It’s claimed that Jesus walked on water here, but we don’t believe it. Not because he couldn’t walk on water if he wanted to but because it is actually impossible to reach the water through all of the fences and private hotel owned waterfront. I’m sure it hasn’t changed at all in the last 2000 years. Ali and I never got within 50 feet of the water but she did step in a puddle on the sidewalk and I’d swear she didn’t get wet. Tiberias was an okay town in a rundown 60’s New Jersey seaside resort sort of way. There were a couple of main streets with plenty of falafel stands and overpriced tourist restaurants. We knocked back a couple of beers and some more giant shwarmas and called it a day.

The next morning we set out to drive even farther north through the Golan Heights district along the Syrian border. At one point we pulled off the main road and drove up into the hills along a little road that was more the size of a bike trail. We wound our way back into the hills a couple of miles with barbed wire fences on each side of us and signs everywhere warning that there were land mines behind those fences. A couple miles in we came around a bend and saw a military complex on the hill in front of us and decided we had probably gone about as far as we should. We managed to get turned around and were driving back out when I drifted off the little road, banged over a rock, and got a flat tire. Before this trip I’d never had a flat tire in my life and now, when I’m supposed to be sailing a boat, I’ve managed two of them. Fortunately the rental car actually had a spare and all the necessary tools to change it and I got to work. After a few minutes a United Nations truck came roaring along and asked us if we were okay. We were, and we drove off shortly afterwards. Later on we found another dirt track that led up to an abandoned Israeli bunker looking out across a valley to Syria. We thought we were pretty cool finding this little spot until three carloads of Israeli’s pulled up right behind us.

Ever since New Zealand we haven’t really had any fun adventure type activities to do so when I read that we could go cliff rappelling at Manara Cliff that’s where we headed. When we got there we found the place didn’t have rapelling but they did have a luge/rollercoaster type of ride so we did that instead. We rode down together and on our first run we were flying along when we came around a corner and found the guy who had left like five minutes before us inching along at a snails pace scared to death. With our momentum gone we finished the track in slow motion. At the bottom we complained to the guy running the ride and he agreed  to let us go again. This time we managed to run the whole track without once touching the brake. I was laughing the whole way because as we went into each corner out of control at full speed Ali would scream, “Pat!!!”, then laugh, then go quiet, then scream it again at the next corner. Not exactly adrenaline sports, but a fun break in the days drive.

In the evening we made it to our friends home near Nazareth where he had invited us to spend the night. He has four twenty-something-ish kids who were all home to visit for the weekend and it was really nice for Ali and I to sit down to a normal family dinner again. Later on we went out to their local pub for drinks and had to laugh at how much it felt like anyplace back home. When we walked in there were a couple of guys sitting at the bar looking like misfits from the 80’s with their long hair and Metallica t-shirts, Rick Springfield was playing on the radio, and groups of girls were at one end of the bar while groups of guys hung out at the other.

This morning we rolled out of bed and made our way to the community swimming pool right up the road. We hung out there for a while before going back to the house for yet another excellent home cooked meal and saying our goodbyes. It was a lot of fun for us and it was really great to meet so many nice people as well as to learn from them what life is really like here.

june 18 2006 : herzliya, israel
Getting ready to leave. We spent the morning at the grocery store and surprisingly didn’t buy one package of cookies. We did however load up on Skippy and are now looking forward to a passage filled with peanut butter toast. Drop off the rental car, wash the boat, fill the water tanks, hang up the dinghy, and pay the marina bill. Eat one last pizza with no meat, I’m starting to miss meat, see a movie, and we are officially ready to cast off.

june 20 2006 : en route to turkey
Underway again. We used to daydream about having a furling mainsail and imagine what great sailors we would be if we had one. No more of us being too lazy to raise the main. No sir, we’d be flying along harnessing the power of the wind. But after the last few thousand miles we realize that what this boat really needs are bigger engines. Man if only we had 40 horses on each side instead of 20, yes sir, we’d be happy then, no more bitching and complaining coming from our mouths.

The point is that we never actually sail our sailboat. We spent the afternoon moaning about our slow progress, motorsailing at three knots with just enough wind on the nose to chop up the water, but not enough to actually sail. Fortunately after nightfall the wind died away and left us to motor in peace. The upside is that we are in the Mediterranean, and when we look at the chart it seems as if in just one sluggish day we’ve crossed half an ocean. Normally after a day like this we would look at the chart, of the Indian Ocean for instance, and it would seem like we hadn’t moved at all. Now we look at the computer screen and we’re practically in Turkey. We’ve decided to give Cyprus a miss. We heard it’s beautiful, but it’s got no natural harbors and we’d be stuck right back in a marina again. Seems sort of lame to sail from one country to another never seeing anything from the boat but the inside of a marina.

june 22 2006 : en route
As has become our custom we have now been motoring for 48 hours straight. We get a little bit of wind in the afternoon, always on the nose, that we are able to motorsail with, but other than that it is just light winds and slow motoring. We haven’t seen a dolphin, a flying fish, or even a bird since we left Israel and are starting to wonder if the two of us are the last living things in the world. We’ll find out in another day or two.

About the only thing interesting that’s happened on this passage is that we ran out of propane. We knew we were running low so weren’t that surprised when on our first night out Ali went to cook dinner and the tank was empty. We still had a little four pound tank that would easily last us a couple of weeks so I completely emptied the chain locker, climbed in, disconnected the twenty pound tank and hooked us back up. Then this morning I wake up and Ali informs me that we’ll be eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the rest of this trip because we are now completely out of gas. Amazingly the last time we filled the tanks (2 x 20#, and 1 x 4#) was in Australia back in October, about 9 months ago. I remember then the guy telling me he had trouble filling the 4# tank which helps explain why it is empty already. Of course in Egypt we were asked twice if we would like our propane tanks filled but we declined, not really feeling like going through the hassle at the time. Then in Israel we asked about getting them filled and were told we’d have to go to Tel-Aviv, which sounded like a pain in the butt, so we decided to wait for Turkey. Nothing like waiting until the last minute. Actually, past the last minute.

june 23 2006 : kas, turkey
That was quite possibly the least eventful passage ever. Four days and three nights of steady motoring, except for one two hour period early on. But hey, we’re here and the boat is in one piece so who am I to complain?

Kas is our first truly Mediterranean stop and it is exactly what we had envisioned. The little harbor is absolutely packed full of boats. We pulled in and motored carefully along the quay until we found a perfect opening. We dropped anchor and Med moored, backing our way in. Within one minute of getting our lines tied off, another boat pulled in and began backing in next to us. The space looked big enough for a twelve foot dinghy, but this fifty-two footer just backed in and started pushing boats out of the way until we were all packed in nice and tight. Definitely something that is going to take some getting used to, but it works.

Shortly after settling in the harbor master came along to collect fees. Thirty-two bucks a night for our little chunk of wall, and that is probably cheap compared to things to come. Next came the daily diesel truck which quoted me a price of $103 for 15 gallons. $6.87 a gallon! Part of the markup was because we didn’t have Turkish lira yet so we told him to come back tomorrow instead. We then asked him about propane and after having a look at our tanks he said we couldn’t fill them in Turkey. This was confirmed by four other guys who had gathered around to have a look and flirt with Ali. We still hadn’t checked into the country so I asked the harbor master what I needed to do. He told me that customs was closed for the day and that tomorrow was Saturday so it would cost me overtime of about triple price. He asked how long we were going to stay and where we were going next and then told me that I should just take down our Q flag and check in at our next port. Of course he said, “But you didn’t hear that from me.” We agreed with that piece of advice and set off to wander around town.

We got asked another strange cruiser question today. This is one that we’ve probably heard a hundred times in the last couple of years, which ranks it second behind only, So how long have you been out? But we think this question may be even more rude. We had just helped this guy get his boat settled in next to us, said hello, and then he blurts out, “So is that your boat?” The implication being that we must be crew and the seventy-year-old owner of the boat must be inside having a glass of red wine. We just can’t understand how ownership of a boat is the least bit important to anyone. We didn’t ask him if that was his boat he had just sailed here in. And let’s face it, it’s not like we’re out here on a million dollar mega yacht, at least I could understand that drawing some questions, but a 35 foot fiberglass catamaran? Back on land you don’t have people walk up to you while you are washing your car and ask, “So is that your Toyota?” Cruisers, they just make us shake our heads, over and over and over again.

The town of Kas begins right at the yacht quay where there are dozens of restaurants, a little pedestrian mall area, and some souvenir shops. We walked up the main street, got some cash, and stopped in at a gas cylinder shop we spotted. They weren’t sure if they could help us or not so we said we’d bring a tank in the next day. The town feels so stereotypically European. Narrow streets lined with little shops and two story flats with old ladies hanging laundry on the balconies while the men sit at the restaurants downstairs drinking tea and playing backgammon.

After walking around a bit we headed back for the waterfront to pick a restaurant for dinner. On our way a couple of guys from the propane place came up on their scooter and asked to have a look at our tanks. So we went back to the boat and after inspecting the fitting they decided they couldn’t fill them either. It’s that whole U.S. versus the world in the battle over the metric system problem again. While showing the tanks to these guys another guy came up to us and said he knew where we could get it done. He told me to hop on his motorcycle with him and we roared off with me hanging precariously on the back with a twenty pound gas cylinder in my arms. He took me to yet another gas dealership right around the corner and after having a nice chat with the owner informed me that I was still out of luck. The main distributor made his weekly stop yesterday, but they said I shouldn’t have any problem in Fathiye which is the next major town about 50 miles up the coast from here. What that means of course is no hot water for Ali’s coffee or tea for another week. She couldn’t care less about the food we’ll have to throw away because we can’t cook it, but man is she upset about that coffee. Looks like we may have procrastinated just a little too long this time.

With the propane issue finally put to bed we went to dinner. From reading the guidebook I knew we were going to like Turkish food and I wasn’t let down. Ali ordered up a Turkish pizza and I got the meatball casserole. Huge meatballs soaking in melted cheese and surrounded by onions, peppers, and mushrooms, what’s not to love about that? Washed down with a few Turkish Efes beers and we were feeling pretty damn good about life.

june 25 2006 : kas
Kas is a great place, the perfect start to our Turkish cruising. Yesterday we had a full day that started out early with a walk around town looking for coffee. There are probably close to 100 restaurants in town and yet at nine a.m. not one of them was open. Mediterranean time is much different than we are used to. We settled for iced coffee from the grocery store. After that Ali displayed her OCD by putting us to work washing the boat. If there is a freshwater tap within 100 feet of the boat then we must wash, already clean or not. In truth though nothing feels better than a clean cockpit to lounge around in without getting salt all over yourself. After that it was time for a cool down and we walked right down the street to the beach. There actually aren’t any beaches but they have built terraces in the rocks around one area of the harbor and roped it off as a swimming only area. It’s all owned by different restaurants and they have hundreds of chairs and umbrellas laid out all over the cliffs, yet amazingly they don’t bother you to buy anything. If you do great, if not, enjoy your swim.

Next up we were back in town to do some shopping. We ended up getting a little carried away while still trying to replenish our closets after the Red Sea clothing massacre. And there are tons of little craft stores where we seem to have bought one of everything. Our friends on those little monohulls always come on our boat and stare in amazement when they see that we’ve actually got half of a hull filled with nothing but souvenirs from our trip, the highlight being our second bathroom/horse stall, yet we just keep packing the stuff in.

Just a couple of hundred yards outside of town is a 2100 year old theatre that is in excellent condition and has great views of the town and over the water. We hung out there for a while and enjoyed the breeze at the top before walking back through town and going for another swim. Finally time for dinner we tried to get away from the waterfront eateries and walked up the road into the heart of town where we found a little place packed with locals. The food was okay, but nothing compared to the night before, and it cost nearly the same. Looks like the added competition along the water makes for better and cheaper food.

Anyway, we’re really enjoying Turkey so far. The people have been great, going out of their way to help us out and even store employees and restaurant waiters seem to take pride in doing a good job which is something we’re not necessarily used to seeing everywhere. Then early this morning a guy came tooling along on his scooter throwing bags of fresh bread into each of the yachts along the quay. Ali was awake and he just handed her a bag with a smile and a nod. Of course there was a restaurant business card in the bag, but why be cynical?

june 26 2006 : mediterranean coast, turkey
We figured we’d better leave Kas before a customs agent noticed us and asked why we hadn’t cleared in yet, so we took off for a nearby anchorage. Our first anchorage in a long time. It was a beautiful day and we motored over in calm seas for three hours before coming around the corner into our bay for the night. Our guidebook for Turkey is from 1989, which I think qualifies it as an antique, making it a tad bit out of date. The sketch charts are still handy enough but the descriptions of the different areas don’t exactly hold true 17 years later. This particular bay had been described as deserted, but times have changed and now there were dozens of boats lining the shore and anchored out in the middle.

Here in Turkey they love to anchor and then back up close to land and tie a stern line to shore. It’s a good idea and certainly makes it possible for a lot more boats to fit into a small bay but we weren’t too comfortable with the idea here and anchored out in the middle with a couple of others. We dropped anchor three times and each time we dragged. Finally I decided to switch out the anchors and put on the CQR, which I personally hate, but the Bruce obviously wasn’t working. After going through that hassle we still dragged. This time I dived in to see what the problem was and could see our anchor 30 feet down just laying on top of the grass. I dove down and jammed it in by hand while Ali backed down on it and we finally got a somewhat decent hold. I was wondering how all the other boats seemed to just pull right in, drop anchor once and be done, when I noticed that they were all using the old school fisherman anchor. The kind you see tattooed on sailors arms. I suppose they just skid along the bottom until they hit a patch of grass and then get tangled up in that.

While we were anchoring and I was swimming around under the boat I noticed some prop issues again. First off was the port prop which had a half dozen plastic bags wrapped up in it. I removed the prop and cleaned that out, no big deal. Then there was the starboard prop, the one we had lost previously. When the engine was running in neutral the prop was really vibrating heavily. When I looked closer I noticed that the zinc had vibrated so badly that the holes that the screws go through had completely worn away and the zinc was just spinning loose. It was also so worn out that it was only about half the width that a new one is. With all this extra space the prop had an extra half inch or so of slippage and was bouncing around forward and backward on the saildrive. I had a replacement zinc, so I fixed that, but I’m sure it isn’t going to last long. It seems to me like the engine mounting might be a little bit off causing everything to vibrate more than it should. I don’t know.

Not enjoying this busy anchorage with bad holding, we decided to head off first thing in the morning for our next stop 30 miles farther up the coast. We had our first strong winds on the nose in a while but they quickly died down and we had a nice motor to Gemiler Adasi. About two miles from the anchorage a small boat came racing up to us and offered to sell us, of all things, ice cream. Ali was all over that and we forked over the exorbitant price for our first ever ice cream bar underway.

Gemiler Adasi is a small island separated by just 100 yards or so from the mainland. The island is covered from top to bottom and one end to the other with Byzantine ruins. You can’t really tell what most of them are but from the water it looks like it was once a thriving little city. We dropped anchor in the middle of the channel and backed in towards shore where I jumped in with a line and tied us off right onto the ruins. There were only a couple of boats when we got there but by late afternoon there were dozens of boats packed in side by side along the entire length of the island. The majority of the boats are these big wooden cruisers that Turkish families rent out for a week with a full crew onboard to take care of things. It’s quite a different cruising experience for us to not be able to find a space of our own, but I guess that is what the Med is all about. The days of deserted anchorages are behind us.

Something we’ve noticed recently that we find strange is the European bathing suit situation. Not the fact that the men wear tiny speedos, though that is strange, but the fact that both men and women carry two suits with them at all times. They go for a swim and then immediately after getting out of the water they wrap a towel around themselves and change into their dry suit. Then thirty minutes later they’ll switch back again and go for another swim. Not sure what that’s all about but I don’t think Ali would appreciate me doubling our laundry pile.

june 27 2006 : fethiye, turkey
Up and at ’em again this morning we untied our lines and motored on towards Fethiye. After three hours of puttering up the beautiful coastline we dropped anchor just outside the marina. I quickly dropped the dinghy in and headed to shore to get us cleared in. Turkey has quite the bureaucracy. I started out in the marina office where I purchased the cruising log which we need to have filled out at every port we call into, then I went to customs. He pointed me to the doctor across the street. He signed off and sent me to the police, who shuffled me across the road to customs once again. After purchasing our visa’s there I went back to the police again for a stamp. They then pointed me down the road to the harbor master where I finally finished up. In the end it cost us 241 lira to clear in (about $145 USD). Quite an expensive country.

Next up was propane. It turns out our gas situation has turned into a full on dilemma. It truly does appear to be impossible to fill a tank in Turkey. It seems that there is one central gas filling factory somewhere out in the middle of the country who distributes new gas tanks and exchanges them for the empties. Nobody has their own tanks that need filling, and especially nobody with non-metric fittings. We’ve now spoken to four different gas distributors who have all told us the same thing, “Impossible, you must buy a Turkish tank.” That would be all fine and dandy if it were really that simple, but if we buy their tank then I also would have to replace the fitting on our line that actually runs from the tank to the stove. That isn’t going to work. Yet there are about 1 million American boats here in this harbor and I’m guessing somebody else has already solved this problem, so we’ll just wait and see. No kidding about one million American boats either, it appears that this is actually the place that old American cruisers come to die. And we’d always heard it was the Caribbean.

june 28 2006 : fethiye
Yesterday we actually got rained on for the first time since Eritrea, and that was only for ten minutes. So we thought, Oh cool, rain. Today when it rained all afternoon again we thought, Man this sucks it’s always raining. When we had a chance between showers we walked through the tourist section of town and back up through the hills and homes to the ruins of an old fort. A thousand years from now archaeologists are going to uncover this area and probably come to the conclusion that the fort was a beer bottling factory. The area had a great view over the city and the harbor and it was obviously a good place to have a beer and take it all in judging by the amount of bottles littering the site.

Something I can’t understand about Turkey is why they dislike their own currency so much. If you ask the price of something they give it to you in euros, pounds, U.S. dollars, Mexican pesos, anything but Turkish lira. Today we walked by one sign that advertised the special of the day for £5. At first I thought what a great deal, about $3 dollars for a good meal. Then it dawned on me and I asked the waiter standing out front if that was 5 lira and he said that no, it was 5 English pounds. A Turkish restaurant advertising its special of the day in English pounds of all things. How many people outside of England have ever even seen an English pound? Would we get our change back in pence?

We did go rental car shopping today. There are about fifty places along the waterfront with cars for hire so we stopped in at three of them. We just want to make a quick trip into the mountains to see a couple of the sights and only wanted to be away from the boat for a night so we were trying to score a car for a day and a half rental. Nobody rents a car for a half day, but the power of competition took over and we found one guy who was willing to accommodate us. Price for 36 hours? 40 euros, of course.

Oh, and last night we had some strange things happening in the anchorage. Throughout the day there was a nice little breeze and everybody’s boats, though a bit crowded, were floating in nice formation. Then suddenly we were sitting there and a squall whipped through and suddenly boats were banging into each other all over the place. Not because they were dragging but because we were all packed in so close together that anybody with a different amount of chain out on their anchor would cause havoc. Our neighbors boat ended up awfully close to ours as well but we seemed to be okay. Then the wind disappeared completely and things really got goofy. Now boats were floating every direction and just bouncing off one another in slow motion. Of course now it was well after dark and nobody felt like trying to move so in our little corner Ali ended up spending most of the night in the cockpit keeping an eye on our neighbors and they ended up sleeping in their cockpit as well. It was pretty ridiculous having no wind at all and having to worry about your boat getting bashed up by another boat. First thing in the morning we moved to the outside of the group and thought we had solved the problem. Then the Coast Guard came out and told us we had to move because we were in a restricted area. They wanted to keep all the anchored boats in this huge bay smooshed together into one tiny section of it. We finally upped anchor and drove a half a mile across the bay to an area much farther from the marina and town but also far away from everyone else.

june 30 2006 : driving around turkey
Early yesterday we took off on our mini road trip. We were headed for Antalya, which is a large city about 150 miles away from Fethiye. Actually our main destination was Termessos, a 2500 year old ruined city located high up in the mountains. There were two ways to get there, one inland, and one along the coast. We chose the inland route for day one. I was a little concerned that the drive would end up taking us forever with the roads winding up and over countless mountain ranges, but in fact the road weaved along mainly through the valleys, only occasionally climbing the mountains.

Along the way we drove through a lot of tiny little towns whose sole means of survival seemed to be the restaurant business. It seemed that there was at least one restaurant per family. We stopped for a tea at one in order to get our two lira circulating through the local restaurant economy. By the end of the day that two lira had probably been through seventeen different cash registers. Then we came along a section of road that had a whole bunch of huge hoses streaming water straight up into the air. We couldn’t figure out what they were for at first but then we saw a car parked underneath one with his windshield wipers on. They were free car washes. We had a bug on our windshield so we pulled in underneath one for a good shower. We thought it’d be funny if Ali put on a bikini and started washing the car down. Well, I thought it’d be funny, Ali not so much.

A little farther along we were cruising through a mountain pass when we started seeing little shacks along the side of the road with nothing but a pot sitting on top of a small fire. There were dozens of them along about a three mile section of road and again we couldn’t figure out what they were selling until we finally saw somebody munching a piece of corn on the cob. We quickly pulled over for a snack. The guy spoke a little English so I asked him if they grew the corn themselves and he told me that no, in fact it came from a town a couple hundred miles away. Yet for some reason this small section of road was the corn on the cob capital of Turkey. We didn’t see it again after that.

Around noon we rolled on into Termessos. We paid our dues and continued straight up the mountain another 10km before finally reaching the car park. The ruins were another 20 minute climb before you suddenly come around a corner and see the theatre. Lonely Planet calls it the most dramatically sited ever, and it probably is. It was incredible. There are a bunch of ruins at the site, but the theatre sits perched on the edge of a cliff that drops straight down 1000 feet, behind it a few hundred yards looms another towering mountain, and off to the side of that are mountain range after mountain range stretching as far as you can see. And the coolest part was that we had the place all to ourselves. We climbed all over the place for an hour without seeing another person.

One of our favorite parts about this particular ruin was that it has just been left alone. They haven’t done any restoration and the blocks and columns just lie where they fell. A lot of the sites we’ve seen have been cleaned and put back together which makes it feel more like Disneyland than an ancient site. Anyway, after acting out Romeo and Juliet we climbed down from the theatre and finished our drive into Antalya.

We hadn’t really read about Antalya and were surprised when we got there and found that it was a big sprawling city. But along the waterfront is yet another Roman fort and ancient city and that area has been preserved and is now chalk full of little mom and pop pensions (sort of a mini hotel b&b). We found a place outside the fort to park the car for the night and then walked through the gates and into the narrow winding streets looking for a place to stay. We checked a couple of places before finding a nice one with a rooftop room overlooking the bay. The place was run by a little old lady called Mama who gave us a big hug and kiss before sitting us down for a Turkish coffee to look through her family pictures.

We wandered around the city for a while. Inside the fort area were tons of crappy souvenir shops with their typically annoying owners who feign disbelief when you decline their offer of having tea with them in their carpet shop. But outside the fort and just across the road were the real city streets and with it being the Muslims weekend the place was hopping. Turkey is another Muslim country, but it is by far the least religious and most liberal one we have visited. It’s so nice to see entire families out enjoying themselves again instead of just the men and the boys. We sat down outside a little restaurant and just watched life go by in a foreign language for a while before calling it a night.

For today’s drive we hit the coast road. The scenery was beautiful and the roads were fun to drive along. We stopped in Finike to see some friends who were there on their boat and then walked through the market. The market didn’t have much except cheesy clothing and name brand knockoffs so we didn’t linger there long before moving on. Next stop was in Kas again for lunch and we finally decided to buy this lamp that we had looked at a couple of times while we were there before. The guy wasn’t much fun to bargain with though and would only knock 10% off his original asking price so we gave up on that idea and drove on. We drove more or less non-stop the rest of the day and just barely made it back in time to drop the car off. The drive along the coast had taken about three times as long as the drive inland. All in all a quick trip but the scenery was well worth it.

Best of all, we got back from our little trip and found our two 20-pound propane tanks filled. Some friends of ours knew some people, who knew some people, who knew some people, and they ended up linking an American fitting to a hose with a European fitting on the other end. They then connect our tank to a full Euro tank and tip the Euro tank upside down above ours and let gravity do its thing. Within fifteen minutes of getting our hands on those Ali was once again relaxing in the cockpit with a coffee in hand.

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