With its millenniums of history and culture, Turkey is full of sites to visit and obviously we have to choose which ones we want to see unless we plan to stay two years. With our visit of Istanbul behind us we came back to Marmaris in the south of Turkey where Chocobo was waiting for us. For this ride we took the bus. However here unlike Canada there is no quasi monopoly for bus companies. When we arrived at the bus terminal we were in the middle of a swirl of transport companies and trust me when I say that it makes your head spin when you don’t expect it. We already had dealt with that kind of bus terminal in Peru and Bolivia but yet we needed a few minutes to adapt. Nevertheless, without too much trouble we quickly found our bus and left for a nearly 12 hour overnight ride taking us back “home”! We were not back to the boat for more than one day that Danielle had already booked our next visit while I was busying at fixing the boat in preparation for our cruise to come in the Greek Islands. And hop we jumped again in a bus in direction of the site of Pumakale where lays an interesting geological formation. A water source with a high concentration of calcium bicarbonate flows down the hillside and creates these white pools. Unlike the site of Los Salinas in Peru, which is made of salt, Pumakele is formed by calcium bicarbonate. Like you I had no idea what is was so I tasted it. It was basically chalked or at least it tasted like it! Later our tour included the inevitable visit of a local business where they show us what they do then try to sell us their products. This time it was the visit of a Turkish carpet factory where they showed us their fabrication techniques and their huge inventory of magnificent carpets. We obviously didn’t buy any carpet but it is always impressive to admire a carpet on which every one of the million knots were handmade and took over two years for a family to complete. With fresh images of carpets of wool and silk in mind we resumed our trip back to Marmaris when the temperature inside the coach started to rise sharply. The diagnostic came out to be the air conditioner that decided to leave us for a better world despite our driver’s effort for reanimation. It is then with our sweaty forehead that we enjoyed the unique Turkish scenery along the way back to the boat while I felt a certain satisfaction knowing that continuous breakups happening at the worst possible time are not only the features of boats!
