Blue Cruise - Day 1

Smuggler's Cave

September 15 -- Today we departed Olympos on a four-day cruise up the coast of Turkey.  We got picked up from our hippie commune at 10:00 am and took a bus for about an hour to Demre.  Demre was an interesting place.  It's home to a very famous bishopric because it is where St. Nicholas (Yes, that St. Nicholas) served as bishop.  However, the town is pretty horrible.  Most of the town is run down and, outside of the museum and church of St. Nicholas, there isn't anything worth while in the town.  From the strange presence of Cyrillic signs, the absurd number of Orthodox icons, and the absolutely ridiculous fashions being sported by the tourists, it's clear that Demre is nothing more than a religious Disney Land for Russians--St. Nicholas is, essentially, the patron saint of Russia.

Our ship departed from Demre.  When we left there were 3.5 crew members (Renee, an Aussie girl, was shacking up with the cook and did a little work so I count her as .5 people) and 12 passengers.  Jill and Nikita were from Capetown, South Africa.  Just from the ride to Demre we thought they were going to be insufferable, but they both turned out to be really pleasant.  We later found out that Nikita grew up in Hong Kong, used to be able to speak Mandarin, and played basketball.  There was also a German-Czech couple--Alfons was German and Sylvia was Czech--who lived in Belgium.  John and Linda, both Aussies, lived in Jakarta, Indonesia despite the fact that John is high up in the Australian government and works on the budget.  They're giving us tons of information on Indonesia so that we can plan one of our future excursions in that area.  There were two other Australians on the cruise, Phil and Emerald, who were closer to our age and are starting a 7 month trek that will take them across Europe, to the US, Canada, and Central America.  Between all of the Aussies, Kati and I learned all sorts of crazy new words.  Finally, two Germans, Jule and Manu, rounded out the group.  Manu didn't speak great English, but Jule spent a year in South Dakota of all places and has an amazing "American" accent.

Our first day was supposed to be spent seeing Kekova, relaxing near a castle, and spending the night at Kas.  However, in what would become a problematic theme of the trip, our captain (Only 25 himself) was more concerned about himself and making money than he was about doing what we wanted to do and what he was supposed to do.  He decided that we were going to change the itinerary so that he could wait and pick up three more people (Germans) later in the afternoon.  So instead of following the plan, we wasted most of the day in a cove just outside Demre, picked up the three Germans, stopped by Smuggler's Cave, and then spent the night in a nearby cove, not more than 5 km from Demre.  Despite the fact that these issues with the Captain would cause serious problems later in the trip (Which I will address in a later post), we had a very good and relaxing day.

Smuggler's Cave was moderately cool.  We got to swim inside the cave, but because of our expedited schedule we only stopped at the cave for about 10 minutes.  Afterwards we went to the cove where all of the boats tied up.  After a few drinks on the boat and a solid meal, we all went to Smuggler's Inn, a bar nearby.  At the bar the drinks were ridiculously priced, 7.50 lira ($3.90) for a tiny can of beer!  Thus, not long after we arrived, half of us headed back to the boat.  Jule, Emerald, Alfons, Kati, and I went back to the boat to drink some more and relax.  Kati and I called it a night around 2:00 am after drinking some Becherovka Apertiv and some of Alfons's homemade spirits.  There was a boat parked next to us that was really getting rowdy and, after Kati and I turned in, Emerald and Alfons swam over to the party boat.  We learned later that our captain didn't get along with that captain and kept screaming, "You are not even humans, you are animals!"  Thus for the rest of the trip Emerald and Alfons were dubbed the animals.  All-in-all it was a very good first day on the cruise.