20120704
Getting up in the AM has not been as easy as it was in Istanbul for some reason. There I was out on my balcony nearly every morning at 0600 working on pictures and/or my travel log. It is nice to sit out here in the morning by the river watching the falcons and the blue spinners gallivanting about on the air currents on the cliffs on the other side of the river. Uncle Cliff was out here every morning and I intended to join him every day but did not meet that goal.
Today we went down to the beach, Iztuzu Beach. The hotel boat takes you down and back for free. The boat is designed and decorated like a traditional Ottoman boat and seems to be the only one like it on the river here. As we motored down the river to the beach, we got our picture taken more times than I care to think about. En route we passed through Dalyan, had another great view of the tombs, saw some incredible scenery, and stopped to watch a guy feed blue crabs to a loggerhead turtle.
We had heard conflicting reports from people about the beach which is famous for not only being the longest beach in Turkey but also being protected habitat for the loggerhead turtles that lay their eggs on the beach. People were saying that the sand was black, volcanic sand and extremely hot. The hotel staff and my parents, who have been there before, did not depict it as such. When we got down there we could see that it was not standard tan or white beach sand and it was damned hot. You could barely walk on it.
The water however was a most refreshing temperature and very clear. It is a shame there was no vegetation or fish because the water was crystal clear. The folks were going pay for beach chairs and umbrellas and hang out there until the boat went back to the hotel but Cliff and I were going to walk down to the end of the beach where the buses came over the mountains to drop people off.
We had a great walk of about an hour along the beach and stopped at the Loggerhead turtle rehabilitation facility to see the good work they were doing there. Cliff was a bit depressed seeing the turtles that had had their shells hacked up by boat propellers so we did not stay long. It was a short walk from there to the bus departure area where we paid up and waited for the next bus back to Dalyan. The ride back was very cool with some nice views of the beach, the river delta, and a quaint town tucked on the side of the mountain with quite a nice mosque in the center of town. I had intended to take the bus back up that way, get some lunch at one of the places near the top, and take some pictures but never did so.
Once back at the hotel, we got into the usual routine. Uncle Cliff did much exercising of his bad shoulder and practicing on his guitar. I did much lounging by the pool and, as usual, started happy hour earlier than everyone else. Normally, for at least part of happy hour, we had drinks on the patio outside of one of our hotel rooms. Since it was not generally kosher to bring our own booze into the hotel and we had beer and gin, we tried to keep it low key out back rather than flaunting it poolside.
I have lost track of where we ate when. I know we had seafood night and another BBQ with mezes night at the hotel and ate out in town two more nights so I think that we must have eaten at the hotel off the menu one night. Everywhere we ate, the food was plentiful, good and reasonably priced but I think that the food at the hotel might have been a better overall than any of the places we ate in Dalyan.