Greece and Turkey: boats, blue skys, blue water....not bad!

Greece could not have come sooner. We escaped encroaching autumn in Scandinavia to sunny Greece just as the ultra hip Copenhagenites donned fox fur coats.
First stop: cacauphonous, crowded, Athens--with history at every step. The summer Olympics of ‘06 drove massive capital improvements in the city. A new metro system swept us into the city from the airport and deposited us in a metro station cum archaeology museum with discoveries from the excavation of the Acopolis Station. One whirlwind day and a half in Athens yielded sunset at the Acropolis, our first taste of kebab, incredible statuary in the National Archeology Museum and huge scoops of yoghurt honey peach ice cream. Then we were off to meet Uncle Cliff and the boat, Oasis, on Paros Island in the Aegean Sea.
Paros is part of the Cycladic islands. They earn there name from the winds that attack the sea and whip up waves with little notice. Cliff and Oasis had been stuck at anchor in Paros for 8 days with consistent 40 knot winds and 6-9 foot seas in the harbor! We arrived to nearly flat calm beautiful weather.

As the sun set over the glassy harbor , we dined on roasted pork loin on the back deck by candle light. Mercy and I were in heaven when we collapsed into our devilishly comfortable queen sized bed below decks in our stateroom.

Cliff cruises like it’s his job--and he’s very good at it. The boat is kept in a “better than new” condition. The 14 years and 100,000 plus sea miles since it came out of the ship yard seem to have worked out the kinks of him and the boat. His attention to detail and fanatical upkeep pay off. Our first hours of cruising he spent pressure washing the dust and sand from every inch of the exterior. The windstorm seemed to have delivered a significant part of a Saharan sand dune onto the vertical surfaces of the boat. Cliff let me join in after the boat was dry and soon Mercy and I were “polishing the stainless”, a task that would take about 30 man hours, needs to be repeated on a monthly basis, and at times involved tools I had previously reserved for oral hygiene. We were happy to help and to have an excuse to absorb some sun rays on deck. After 14 hours cruising we docked on a tiny volcanic island, Nysiros. I immediately ran off for a race against the darkness while Mercy, Cliff, Catherine, and Marina went off to explore town. The tiny port town offered a cliff mounted monastery complete with neon sign, a few open air bars, and great rocky beach for a full moon swim.

Our traveling companions on the boat include Catherine, a friend of Cliff’s who works as a firefighter in Miami. She’s a Jamaican, world traveler, animal lover, adventurer, and seems ready for just about anything. Garnet is the cook/steward/deckhand crew who has worked for Cliff for the last 2 years. A Philippina by birth, she has worked in Italy and on boats for all of her adult life. Marina II, a well loved golden retriever thankfully requires that we make daily shore runs to stretch legs and enjoy the scenery.

Our first port of call was the eastern most Greek island, Rodos (Rhodes). This is the second biggest tourist area of Greece. An old walled city cram packed with tiny winding cobblestone streets, a Crusader era castle built by the Knights of St. John, medieval moat, and about 4000 little trinket shops. The crystalline blue water and rocky beaches complemented the thousands of beach umbrellas and beer bellies shoulder to shoulder on the shore.

Our days on the boat have a regular routine: A few days in a marina where we spend about half of each day working to upkeep the boat, (washing and polishing are non-stop) followed by a walk through town, a run for me, and a great evening meal on the back deck. Catherine, Mercy, and I sometimes rent a car and explore the hiking opportunities or nearby ruins to get a feel for more than just the marina. The life is too good. So good we boarded the boat on September 25 and we’re just tearing ourselves away today October 11. We reached Turkey on September 30 and we’ve explored the Mediterranean coast from Marmaris to Finike.

Mercy and I will leave the boat today and head to Cirali a few miles East of Finike to begin an 8 day trek on the Lycian way, a coastal trail that heads 500km village to village through mountains, beaches and ruins. Our route will start in Cirali, head along the coast for a couple days of hiking and then up into the mountains to sramble up Mount Olympos. We should be off the trail by October 19th and head over to the Aegean sea to visit Ephesus and then back up the coast to Istanbul over the next two weeks to make the Istanbul marathon on the 28th.
After the race we’re heading for Capadoccia in central Turkey, then south to Syria by the 14th of November Lebanon does not look likely due to the current political situation. After a week or so in Syria we plan to head to Jordan. Our tentative schedule puts us in Egypt by the beginning of December and then a week in Israel just before our flight to Germany to catch up with Rollo & Marga around the 21st of December.

We are in a lovely little town Çirali with fabulous juice stands and lovely people, but painfully slow internet so we apologize that our flickr pıcs aren't named and oriented correctly. If you want to see them they are here. If you want to see them spiffed up and named, we'll do that in a week or so. Love to all.