Blue Cruise Day 3 - Butterfly Valley and Oludeniz

Kati and Me on St. Nicholas Island For Sunset

I was awoken at 6:00 am as our boat started crashing over the waves.  We were supposed to leave at 4:00 am for the 5 hour ride to Butterfly Valley, but apparently the captain decided he wanted to sleep, which was fine because the trip only took us 3 hours.  We're still not sure how that worked or if he was just lying the day before to help his cause.

Well before we made it to Butterfly Valley I had forced myself to move to the deck of the boat in hopes of easing my newfound queasiness.  Being on the boat didn't phase me at all the first two days, but I'm sure that the drinking from the night before coupled with being on the "open ocean" with bigger waves was to blame.  We had breakfast in Butterfly Bay but I couldn't eat anything because by the time the food came out I was dangerously seasick.  Renee, the Australian girl who was shacked up with the cook, told me that Butterfly Bay was the worst because it wasn't sheltered from the waves and we were in the back of the cove which somehow amplified them and made it worse.  I skipped breakfast and jumped in the water, swimming to shore as fast as I could so that I could wallow in my misery on dry land.  By the time everyone else came ashore, I was feeling a little better.  After talking with the others, we learned that it wasn't just me.  While I probably had the worst of it, Jule was pretty sick as well, and many more talked about not feeling well too.  Kati started feeling pretty sick after reaching the beach, but felt better once we made it to the waterfall.  We struck off into the valley.  The waterfall was about a 30 minute hike from the beach.  The views in the valley were amazing, and it was early morning so we had made it there before all of the crowds from Oludeniz took day trips into the bay and valley.

Me Cliff Jumping

From Butterfly Valley, we went to Oludeniz, the blue lagoon.  It was here that I had hoped to go paragliding--people travel a long way specifically to paraglide over the lagoon--but my stomach was still too unease to make it sound appealing, so I decided to pass.  We parked in a shelter behind rocks, providing us with smoother water.  After lunch, we decided to swim to the lagoon.  It was actually quite a swim from our boat to the small hole in the rock peninsula separating us from the lagoon.  When we got to the rock barrier, Phil and I stopped to climb one of the cliff faces and do some cliff jumping.  The cliff, which didn't look that imposing from the water, was deceptively high--at least ten meters (~33 feet).  The jump was so much fun.  Afterwards, we crossed the threshold into the lagoon itself, which was a gorgeous blue.  We swam around the lagoon for a little and then headed back to the opening to do some snorkeling only to find a giant sea slug  and a whole slew of sea urchins.  It's a good thing that we were looking underwater before climbing on the rocks, otherwise I almost certainly would have gotten a foot full of urchin!  Before heading back to the boat, Phil, Manu and I decided to do one last jump.  I climbed up, I jumped off, and I screamed (underwater).  Somehow my foot had gotten contorted in the air and I landed on it badly.  With one foot, I pathetically paddled over to the rocks to assess my injury, convinced that I had broken my ankle.  Luckily it's not broken, but even days later it's still very tender.  Needless to say, making the long swim back to the boat with one bad foot that I couldn't kick with was no small task.

We ended our third day at St. Nicholas Island, an island where it's reported St. Nicholas lived for a number of years.  The mountainous island is covered with the ruins of old churches that we hiked through to reach the summit just before sunset.  The view was stunning despite the fact that a nearby mountain almost completely obstructed the last 20 minutes of the sunset.  Although we didn't get to actually see the sun fall under  the horizon, the sky was still painted all kinds of reddish hues.