Woman & Home - February 2007
TWO GO SAILING IN TURKEY
Libby Purves and her friend Rose set off for a week of gentle gulet sailing off Turkey’s Lycian Coast and then the heavens opened…
Rose H and I are seasoned travelling companions. Neighbours for years, we were virtually joint mothers during the years when she taught my own young Rose to ride and I had to deliver her to pony camps at dawn, usually with a wheelbarrow and shovel insecurely lashed to the roof-rack. Those days would end by drinking tea in Rose H's kitchen.
Time rolled on, we missed those chats and hit on the idea of doing a few short out-of-season trips together while our husbands were otherwise occupied. So we have tramped across Maine (till we gave up and hitched a lift), got lost in Melaka, braved the Casablanca souks and done the napkin-folding class on a cruise ship. We rather like ships - on one shameful night off Senegal we both drank so much that we woke up at 3am, pointing at one another saying, "Whassat on your face?". We had both fallen asleep so suddenly that our chocolate pillow-mints were welded to our hot cheeks. Perils of the sea...
Anyway, I can thoroughly recommend travelling with a woman friend. We know one another's ways and are comfortably familiar with one another's range of ancient sunhats and regrettable shorts. We are both married, so nobody is on the pull; we have known one another's neighbours for years, so there is plenty of gossip. On the other hand, we put up with each other more calmly than if we were family members.
Rose is obsessed by ruins and is a massage addict (in Singapore she vanished down a side street to have her feet rubbed by an elderly Chinese gentleman while I was buying a kimono). I caused uproar by losing my boarding card at Boston airport in the middle of a security scare. There is something calming about not being really responsible for your travelling companion.
This time we embarked on a gulet, a fat, romantic wooden Turkish boat, loitering along the south-eastern Mediterranean coast. As I write, it is almost the last day. Rose is being pummelled in the hammam and I am reviewing the week's adventures. It started and finished in luxury, with a day of equally pleasing drama in the middle.
Exclusive Escapes, our hosts, aim to show hidden Turkey to visitors wary of the sweaty mass-market tourism which sullies this astonishing country's reputation. As well as villas and boutique hotels they use gulets, so we joined Aleyna-3 at the little seaside town of Kalkan, east of the more crowded tourist hotspots. It is a laid-back place and the ship even more so. We flung off our shoes and Captain Ahmad flung open our huge en-suite cabin. It even had two proper beds (unlike a memorable hotel in America where Rose insisted, chivalrously, on using a strange folding cot thing which folded up with a clang and a shriek in the middle of the night).
We had only four companions, the maximum on this gulet being eight; they were quiet British couples on the edge of retirement. A lot of people hire the whole boat and take a gang of friends, but we rather like the lucky dip aspect of travelling. This time we learnt a lot about cosmetic dentistry and the interiors business.
In the morning, after a barefoot breakfast of bread and honey and fruit and pancakes, we sailed for a couple of hours towards Kekova, where an ancient earthquake separated the island from the mainland and left the ruins of a sunken city, over which you glide in a kayak like an overflying bird. I bullied Rose into swimming in the warm clear sea and she bullied me into taking an interest in the 2,000-year-old Lycian tombs, which serve as chicken-houses. We struck up a friendship with a two-year-old whose mother nipped out and sold us headscarves with shells on. And so, from anchorage to anchorage, three barefoot lazy days drifted by - an hour or so at sea, a run ashore, an evening swim, a sumptuous dinner of sea bream or kofte, sleep, a morning swim, honey and pancakes for breakfast.
Then we set off eastward for the lost city of Olympos, beneath the glowering Taurus mountains and discovered what can happen if you rashly leave your eastern Med cruise until late October. The long dreamy Turkish summer broke a few weeks early - Ahmad heard a storm forecast and turned sharply back towards the coast. A gulet takes no chances; this is not a holiday designed for people who enjoy being tossed about. We went into the harbour of Fmike and Haluk the boss summoned taxis to take us onward to Olyrnpos while the boat fled back to Kekova. Rose then proceeded to go crazy with delight among tombs, amphitheatres, Roman docks and Greek temples and I paddled.
Back across the mountains, we boarded Aleyna-3 at dusk in a sheltered bay and the storm struck; sailors' feet pattered on deck, anchors were reinforced. Rose and I went on deck at 2am to admire the lightning against the mountain range and saw a great waterspout. By morning, rain of unbelievable intensity bounced off the deck on which we had lounged so happily. We ate breakfast in serene comfort in the big saloon and waited. The sea slowly became blood-red with soil washed off the hills. We played Scrabble, unconcerned. By lunchtime, the forecast was worse; Haluk decided to take us ashore to the divine Regency Hotel that clings to the cliff above Kalkan.
By the time he had got a little ferryboat to take us off, all six of us were being British, loving every minute, rallying our Dunkirk spirit. When we got to shore, flash floods had knocked out the village electricity and were in the process of demolishing the road, so for a couple of hours we all sheltered in Ibrahim's open-fronted restaurant with our soggy baggage, while the sons of the house swept floodwater out with brooms and solicitously threw wood on the barbecue to keep us warm.
Rose, at this point, decided brandy would keep us even warmer and started buying rounds. Another passenger, Marianne, gamely shared out her stock of nuts and dates from Finike market. The Blitz spirit continued, rather to the relief of our harassed courier, when news came that the rescue minibus was stuck on the far side of a flooding river. It proved impossible to stop giggling.
Eventually, the bus reached the top of the village, above the broken road where chunks of tarmac floated free on brown swirling water. Our doughty band waded and scrambled through the chaos, cutting through backyards because the road was a waterfall. As we did so, villagers darted out from their flooded homes to help us with our baggage.
And that's why you go to Turkey, really. Not just for the fabulous scenery, history, food and climate. You also go to enjoy the way the Turks are - their helpfulness, their amused unsycophantic welcome, the gentle wit which sells you a rug with so much charm you buy two, the way that even a soaking wet goatherd in a thunderstorm takes the trouble to wave back.
And the last few days? The weather lifted, we swam and sailed again and were taken to a mountaintop village among ruined temples to eat lunch with the imam's wife. We went out for lunch and ate a dish described on the blackboard as "the Priest has fainted". It is mainly caramelised aubergine. Rose had her scary massage and returned staggering slightly and smelling of strange oils.
Oh, and on the way to the airport, our bus got a flat tyre and Mustafa the driver fixed it in 15 minutes with the help of two keen small boys who scampered over from helping with the pomegranate harvest in the dusk.
I do like Turkey...
FOR MAXIMUM TURKISH DELIGHT
• Gulet trips are not for serious sailors and they stick to calm waters, but you might want to play safe with Stugeron or Sea-Bands if you're prone to seasickness.
• It is always cooler than you think out at sea, even in high summer. A cotton sweater is useful and a pashmina for on deck. And pack a waterproof jacket,
• Quite apart from the wonderful kebabs, this is vegetable-growing country and the cookery so inventive that meals are heaven for vegetarians and carnivores alike. But tell the company ahead if you don't eat fish; catering on the gulet has to be planned. Eating is meze-style - a bit of everything you fancy. Ashore, avoid ice cream in rural plates (refrigeration can be capricious) and buy sweetmeats from the cleanest-looking shops.
• Friendly pavement greetings are normal and rarely pushy; it is rude not to smile and nod, even if you don't plan to go into the shop.
• Turkey is not yet in the EU - but euros seem very popular in the shops. Take along a few as well as Turkish lira.
• Local markets - for nuts, dates and spices and the cheapest clothes and utensils - are often in a different part of town from the tourist shops. Look around!