At home in Finike....

Sunflower in her winter berth. (ignore neighbours red dinghy)

 We have been settled in Sunflowers winter home for over a week now. Our friends have returned to Australia and life has resumed it's usual calm pace. We have spent the past week exploring Finike which is a lovely Turkish agricultural town with nary a tourist in sight!

The beautiful beach at Olympos

The marina is centrally located so all shops and services are within easy walking distance. Well they are once you get out of the marina, which is huge! A far cry from our last winter marina in Cyprus! There is a large breakwater around the marina and those cruisers that have been returning for many years, say that there is barely a ripple in the marina during winter storms. It should be a safe place to leave Sunflower for the winter.

Ducks on the freshwater stream in front of waterfront property

Before our friends left we hired a car for a couple of days to explore the local area. On the first day we drove to Olympos (no, not the Greek one!:) Which is a very ancient settlement (dates back over 3000 years) at the foot of the mountains. The location is stunning as a freshwater stream runs right thought the ancient town almost right on to the beach. So there was a harbour out to sea and a good supply of fresh water and the most glorious setting surrounded by sheer rock faces and the Taurus mountains. Many of the buildings are now in ruins, but it was still possible to get a sense of the place and there were still some sarcophagi and tombs mainly intact (apart for the holes made by tomb robbers centuries ago) 

Lycian Sarcophagus

The freshwater stream at Olympos

The ancients certainly selected a magnificent spot for their town and fortunately the setting remains as it was all those millennia ago, as the only buildings allowed near the site have to be made of timber and are only granted 5 year leases by the government. This has led to the unique development of 'tree house' hotels (although many of them are actually built on the ground:) There are no high rise hotels or permanent structures to mar the beauty of the place.

Although our trip to Olympos was dogged by the threat of rain and thunder storms the day remained clear and bright. We weren't so lucky the next day when we drove to Myra to see more ancient ruins, an amphitheatre and more rock tombs. The drive was interesting along a twisting coast road as were the local drivers overtaking techniques! Double unbroken lines in the centre. What lanes? They happily overtook on blind hairpin bends while we all held our collective breath! No surprise that Turkey has one of the highest rates of road traffic accidents in Europe! Sadly it began to rain half way there, then it started to pour and then plain bucketed down! The streets were awash in water as the drains failed to cope with the sudden torrent of water, so even getting out of the car was impossible. We did manage a glimpse of the ruins through high speed wipers and decided to call it a day and head back to the boat to curl up and read our books!.

Ruins getting some help with gravity

Naturally the next day and the trip to the airport was glorious! We stopped at the half way point in a town called Kemer. We were interested to see this place as there is also a marina there and we had heard good things about it. However we were really shocked at the amount of development in this once small fishing village and for once it was not signs in pounds and offers of a full English breakfast! The signs were all in Russian and rubles accepted everywhere!We decided we were glad we weren't spending winter there!

I don't thinks it's an elephant foot?.....

After we dropped John and Christine at the airport we did a bit of exploring. Antalya is the capital of this region and one of the biggest cities we have visited for a long time. It is home to a million people, high rise hotels and blocks of flats , motorways and dual carriage ways, traffic lights and traffic jams. All quite novel!

Lycian Lintel

We also discovered several huge shopping malls. First stop was the first big mall we came to for a loo and coffee break. It was an outlet mall complete with cinema and food hall. We appreciated the novelty for an hour or two, had coffee followed by a mooch, followed by lunch (very expensive compared to the local restaurants we had become used to!) then off to find the one store we really wanted to look at. It's called Koctas and is part of the British B&Q hardware/ homewares chain. It was located in an even bigger mall!! We had a good look around took notes and photos of things we might need for the villa and then decided we were shopped out and headed back to the marina.

Another lovely if slightly hairy drive back through the mountain roads back to Finike where we said goodbye to the car and have now been on Sunflower for over a week, trying to get revved up to start the varnishing project!

We really need to get this done before we move into the villa. Our military clearance came through a month early so we are now free to finalise the villa purchase. However we did a 'buy forward' deal with a currency trader to fix the rate of exchange (we didn't want any nasty surprises!) and fixed the transaction date for mid November. This was inline with the original estimate of the date the clearance should come through and also suited us as it gave us time to sort out Sunflower. Now however I am itching to move in and survey our new domain:)

Still we can't neglect poor Sunflower and I am sure once we start the varnishing the time will pass very quickly. All we have to do is get started.....!

Now back to Cruising.......for a while!

Sunflower tidy and ready for visitors

My goodness it's been a really busy month. We are still getting over the excitement of buying a villa in Turkey and after a frenzy of looking at furniture shops and second hand cars, have managed to calm down long enough to get Sunflower ready for visitors.

John and Christine visit a carpet shop

A floating shop has everything that you need in the bay.

We went for a drive in the mountains

However we have managed a couple of extra sneak peaks at 'our villa'. With guests arriving and not having had visitors for so long, the V berth and Sunflower generally were getting very full of 'stuff'. So we asked if the villa owner would mind if we stored some things in the basement. She happily agreed ( the sale of her other property, a small apartment had recently fallen through and I think she felt we were more committed if we had our belongings in her house:) So we got all the spare sails and boaty bits together and took them up to the villa to store them (and have another look around!)

While we were there we asked the tenant if we could bring our visitors up for a look as well, so we managed another visit with John and Christine. Luckily we still love it as much as when we first saw it. After agonising about names for it we have decided on Yelkenli Villa, which means sailboat in Turkish. There were several Sunflower Villas in the area already and this way we can have a slight nautical theme going on.

Well that's enough about real estate. Our Aussie friends John and Christine arrived in Fethiye a few weeks ago, we are the end of a huge trip they are doing. They spent 3.5 months in Canada before arriving here and travelled all over the west coast including Alaska, then taking a train to Halifax on the east coast and then flying to Istanbul. It is their 3^rd visit to Sunflower, so they know the ropes.

Babadag from about 20kms, just over 2000m high.

We left Fethiye after a couple of busy days including taking John to our favourite dentist! His filling came out for the 3^rd time just before they arrived so we knew just who to take him to:) John was so impressed he also got a quote on some major work he needs to have done including dental implants and numerous crowns. He may return to Turkey next year to have the work done, as even flying here and back it still very much cheaper than having the work done in Australia.

Jumping off the top of Babadag.

Shopping was on the list for both Christine and I so we dragged the guys along to our friend Mustafa who owns a carpet shop! John and Christine bought a lovely one to hang on the wall and we bought 3 small floor rugs and a one for the wall. (the shopping spree has started!)

We went back out in the Bay for a week or so, enjoying some lovely autumn weather, warm sunny days and cool comfy nights. We even managed to sail most of the way! We returned to Fethiye at the end of the month to meet up with our English friend Trudi who joined her husband Simon on his boat in the big marina there. We managed one evening all together and went for dinner to the top of one of the highest mountains around, called Babadag (pronounced Babadaa) We were met at the marina and driven for an hour to the top of the 2000 meter summit. There are plans to build a cable car, but until then the drive is up a tortuous gravel road which hugs the mountain side with no safety barrier and barely enough room for two cars to pass. Usually the only people to make the trip are the loonies who like to jump off mountain tops and para-glide down to the beach at Ouldeniz. We're told the trip down takes about 45 minutes!

Simon, Christine,Trudi, Dee and John

We arrived at sunset, and luckily it was a lovely clear evening. The views along the coastline and the sunset were stunning. We watched the last of the paragliders take off into the orange sunset and then dinner was served. It was standard Turkish fare, mixed mezze and a mixed grill, but very nice. They then bought out lovely new snugly wraps as everyone was a bit chilly and lit a an open fire we could sit around. It was a really fabulous evening, and we will definitely be going again.

Then it was time to start wending our way east. First stop Kas which is a lovely little town and picturesque harbour. We went into the new marina there and experienced our first storm this year! We had 35 knots on the beam and poor Sunflower was getting blown back onto the dock, so we were all out sorting lines out and trying to get our big canopy down. Not much rest that night!

The para glider flight takes  25 - 40 mins

It got cold after sunset.

We are now in Kekova Roads another very picturesque spot and will spend our last few days of 'freedom' here before going into our winter marina, in a very non-tourist town called Finike, on Saturday. We will get settled in and celebrate John's birthday before hiring a car for a few days to explore some of the numerous ancient sites nearby and then dropping John and Christine at the airport in Antalya.

Then it will be all hands to the varnish brush to get Sunflower sorted before we move into our villa for the winter and start renovations of a different sort!