Cruising the Mediterranean

The past three days have been spent sailing the Med. I got the choice to either continue on with the group or go off and do a gulet cruise for three days. I had to decide before I went on the trip so I decided to go on the gulet which is a kind of boat. Turns out I was quite unlucky in choosing this option because it meant I missed out on Saklikent Gorge which is one of the reasons I chose to do the 15 day tour and not the shorter tours - my tour company told me 4 times that I would be able to do both if I chose this option yet the day before the cruise I found out that this was a lie. So, they will be receiving a pretty horrible letter from me because I was really disappointed about missing out on the gorge.

Luckily, the gulet was really relaxing and I had a fantastic time cruising around the Med and we stopped off quite a lot to have swimming time. We were able to just dive out of the boat and use our noodles and inflatables to entertain us whilst swimming in the dead sea. There were times when one of the people from my tour who were also doing the gulet cruise freaked me out by saying they saw jelly fish and laughed so much they almost drowned when they saw me trying to paddle quickly back to the boat...

Oh and it was hilarious because we would hear a 'put-put' boat which was amusing in itself because it really did sound just like put-put and these small boats came up to our gulet and each boat had something different. There were ice-cream boats which were ridiculously expensive (7 TYL for a magnum which is the same in dollars), other boats had Turkish pancakes, another boat sold slices of cake... we saw one boat selling grapes. There were boats with banana boats on the back and parasailing which they were coming up to us asking if we wanted. It was fun. We tried to bargain with them to get cheaper ice-creams but they wouldn't budge so we ended up without. No way was I going to pay the equivalent to $7 AUD for an ice-cream.

There were five of us from my original tour and six other randoms which was cool. I learnt how to play 'cheat' which is a card game and I discovered that I suck at card games but it was fun. We spent many hours playing cards when it got too dark for us to swim. I lazed about and spent my days swimming and sunbaking on the deck. There was a hammock which I lay about on a few times but mostly I just had my iPod in or a book and was either on the wooden deck or on a cushy sunbaking pad.

A very enjoyable time although a few of the girls got bored. I really enjoyed just kicking back and doing absolutely nothing. Having the crew cook for us was good and we had an amazing meal of roasted eggplant with minced meat on top which was delicious. I've decided I really like eggplant so may need to incorporate that into my cooking when I get 'home'.

I keep saying home but I really don't have a home... It's a strange feeling being in limbo. I like not having plans though. I have just resigned from CSC which is a liberating feeling. I knew I was always going to resign but now that I've sent the email I feel really relieved, another weight off my shoulders. At the moment I'm not even scared because in my mind, reality is so far away even though it is actually only a few weeks...

Stay tuned...