Week 18 , Orhaniye, Turkey

Dear Ethel, Family and Friends,
It has been a quiet week news wise as we have settled into the village lifestyle here in Orhaniye and not done too much at all. The weather is still really hot, but fortunately our small apartment is high enough to catch the breeze. However we did go to the supermarket in Marmaris to buy an electric fan.

Most of the week I have been down at the marina helping Terry work on his boat, he has a charter in a few weeks time so a deadline is approaching. I’ve been enjoying it and it’s good to feel useful for a change even if I have felt like I have done a full weeks work. Friday night was the 08/08/08 party at the marina, starting with a BBQ followed by a belly dancer and lots of dancing till late, so that was a fun night.

Our biggest piece of news is that we have booked our return journey to Asia, leaving here 19th September. We had planned to go up to Germany and Scotland on our way back, but it has worked out too expensive to do it that way, so we are flying out of Istanbul direct to Bangkok. I’ll stay in Asia and look for some teaching work while Louise will fly back to Australia to see her mum and take care of some business and join me a couple of weeks later. We will be doing some travelling around Turkey before we leave.

Our future plans still include visiting Scotland and Germany, buying or hiring a campervan and travelling through the western Mediterranean. But first we will stop back in Asia and find a 6 or 9 month contract and return to Europe next year.

All the best for now
Ric & Louise

Week 17 , Orhaniye, Turkey

Dear Ethel, Family and Friends,
Sad to say our Flotilla sailing trip is over, we sailed into the small village of Orhaniye that has a reasonable size marina. I’m happy to say we all arrived back in port safely and no damage and a great time was had by all. We had a final dinner together before our English friends had to depart back to England the following morning. They were all very generous passing on their supplies of food and beverages that they hadn’t used over the week. We have also organised some accommodation here in Orhaniye as well.

Orhaniye is a small rural village in a tranquil lush bay with a mountain range surrounding it. The marina lies at the mouth of the bay and provides work for most of the locals. The marina is also the main focal point for tourism in the area apart from one restaurant that attracts jeeps safari tours, so it is peaceful most of the time. Every house has a produce garden as well as goats, sheep, chickens and cows. So fresh eggs, butter, cheese, apricots for jam, olives, vegetables and bread is baked next door to where we live. Seafood is plentiful and cheap, 12 lire for a whole fish in a local restaurant. There are small local buses to catch into Marmaris if you need to, once a week to shop maybe.

On our second night here, we were having dinner in the local restaurant and a group of expats came in. We heard the Australian accent first. An Aussie, 3 from the UK and a South African. They invited us to the marina the following night for a music recital in an old Greek Church ruin with fabulous acoustics, a trio playing a number of popular classical pieces very surreal. The following night we had dinner on Terry’s (the Aussie) boat. Terry and his girlfriend Christina hosted dinner on board Kontiki and following that we went to the bar where a Latin American band was performing.

As it turns out, Christina has a one bedroom apartment in the village, but is now staying on board the boat with Terry, leaving her apartment empty....one thing leads to another, so we are now staying in Christina’s apartment and I’m helping Terry with some work on his boat in preparation for a trip to Sumi in Greece next week some time. It was market day yesterday so we got to stock up on the fresh produce for the week Last night at sunset we all took the tender dinghies out to the Byzantine Island fort in the middle of the bay for a BBQ dinner.

We feel we will be happy here for a month as we will do some day trips around and plan for what’s coming next.

We have posted our photos from the Flotilla week on the internet
http://picasaweb.google.com/ethelink

All the best for now
Ric & Louise