We had originally planned to not overwinter anywhere at all, but keep roving around as people do in the Caribbean – but changed our minds because it would mean moving the boat around at inconvenient times according to where the wind was blowing and more importantly, we wouldn’t have any social interaction. Finike was known to have a very active cruising community – and so it does…
Yoga/Fitness and arts and crafts 2 or 3 times per week for Laurie, Bridge twice a week for Bill, plus Happy Hour on Fridays at the local pub and a Barbecue every Sunday! There were probably 30 liveaboard boats here most of the winter – so it was a great place for some much needed social interaction.
Finike itself is not a tourist destination (though they’re making efforts to change that) – so it has more of an authentic Turkey feel to it. The Turks are amazingly friendly people, but the difficulty in a place like Finike is that few speak any English – but we all seem to get by just fine. The view of the snow capped mountains surrounding Finike is stunning.
What was frustrating is that we came here expecting to be able to fix the rudder and get some other maintenance done while that was being taken care of. The rudder is made by Outbound in China (I just couldn’t get comfortable with buying one made in Turkey) and has to be shipped. Importing things into Turkey is nigh on impossible and the local shipping agent couldn’t tell me how much the duty would be (depends on what the customs guys think) or how long it would take. The engineering supervisor at Finike indicated that sometimes duty was waved, sometimes it was significantly more than the item being imported! In the end we decided to have the rudder shipped to Greece and will look to sail back to Kos in the Spring and install it there. Unfortunately, the uncertainty surrounding the rudder issue hung over us all winter causing stress all round. Making matters worse, the rudder’s eventual arrival in Athens a couple of weeks ago then met another problem, which we were fortunately able to solve by switching forwarding agent’s mid shipment. What a hassle! Hopefully it’ll get to Kos before Toodle-oo!
Christmas
We took a two week trip off the boat to head back to the US for Christmas, giving Laurie a chance to catch up with family and friends and me a chance to load up on boat goodies! Once again we returned with loads of boat stuff!
Road Trip
When we got back from the US, we rented a car for 3 weeks at the airport – $8 per day! – and so took advantage and enjoyed a road trip… Turkey is a much bigger country than either of us realized so we could only scratch the surface – but we had a fascinating trip to Cappadocia in central Turkey.
We were amazed at the things we would see in and around Cappadocia – I had never imagined such places even existed…
Ancient communities living in elaborate cave dwellings
Strange rocks and erosion patterns yielding ‘Fairy Chimneys’.
Underground cities
Cappadocia is noted for excellent balloon rides with hundreds being launched simultaneously (during the busy season) – so we booked… unfortunately, despite booking three days consecutively, the weather gods prevented any launchings while we were there – bummer!
On our 2 day drive back to the boat we encountered snow. Heavy snow. Everything was fine and dandy until it wasn’t and we lost all traction and like everyone else, couldn’t get up a moderate incline. We turned around and went back the wrong way down the motorway and chose another route home.
We hit snow again! This time it all happened in slow motion – I could see two trucks trying to pass and ending up nearly completely blocking the road – but we managed to keep going – until we didn’t! Then I kicked Laurie out to push and she was helped by a couple of guys who must have been stunned to see a woman pushing! We managed to crest the top of the hill and once Laurie had recovered her breath, continued on – fortunately not encountering any more problems. Made for an interesting trip!
Of course, no trip to Turkey could be complete without buying (and haggling) for a rug!
