The Blue Cruise - My First Moon Rise

The Moonrise Over Kas

Did you know that the moon rises?  No joke.  At this point you probably think that I'm as stupid as everyone on our boat did during our second night, but I'll get to that in a minute.  We spent the day playing catch-up from our Captain's selfish change in plans from the day before.  There was mass confusion and perpetual mutinous mutterings from the passengers.

First we went to a city with a really cool mosque for breakfast.  The captain told us that we could go ashore into the town after we ate, but then after our meal he pulled the anchor and we left immediately.  Next we stopped by Ucagiz, which is another coastal town with a really neat fortress on a hill.  We parked there, without any explanation and then the captain mysteriously disappeared.  His two assistants, neither of which spoke any English, proved themselves barely capable of navigating the boat and completely incompetent when it comes to anchoring the boat.  First we were told that we could go to the town, then we were told that we couldn't and that we couldn't even swim there.  After an hour the captain finally showed up on another boat and we left immediately.  When we protested, he asked why we didn't go into the town and swim.  It was very frustrating.  From there we saw Kekova, the ancient Roman city, destroyed by earthquakes, that's now referred to as the sunken city.  The ruins weren't nearly as breathtaking as I had hoped, but it was still crazy to think that a once great city was turned to rubble by a few earthquakes.

After Kekova, we went to Kas.  That's where the real trouble with the captain started.  We were supposed to stay in Kas our first night and in a bay further up the second night, but because the captain wanted to pick up more passengers, he changed our plans.  When we got to Kas he informed us that we could either spend the night in Kas and leave at 4:00 am or...yet when we asked him, "Or what?" he got very belligerent and threw a fit.  It was clear that he wanted to stay in Kas to party despite the fact that all of us wanted to continue on.  The "compromise" was to anchor the boat in the bay outside Kas so that we still had nature around us, but we didn't have to continue traveling.  It's a real shame because we were supposed to stop in a really nice bay that night and, due to his time-crunching, we didn't ever get a chance to see this bay.

After dinner Sylvia came back to the table and said that there was a really great moonrise.  I thought she was kidding.  I really didn't know that the moon rose.  I'd never seen the moon rise before and I'd never really thought about it.  You see the moon hanging in the sky during the day and I always thought it just kind of always stayed up there. (Yes, I know I probably sound like a complete moron right now)  It was really cool!  Yet for the rest of the night, and for the rest of the trip, everyone was making fun of me for seeing my first moonrise in Kas.