Birvidik

Still in Finike - have stayed a little longer than anticipated. Never mind, it's under half the price pf Gouvia.

One of the several contributory factors to our extended stay was the fact that we hired a car for a few days. We took a recce trip to Antalya airport in preparation for our guests' arrivals.

Driving in Turkey is an interesting experience. In theory the Turks drive on the right and give way to traffic approaching from the right. In practice they drive down the middle and give way to no-one. Lane discipline is an alien concept to them. On the rare occasions that the lanes are marked the Turks take no notice of them whatsoever. Overtaking seems to be carried out, for preference, on the brows of hills and approaching blind corners, of which there are many. Failing that, approaching a complex junction makes a good alternative. Red traffic lights are not even just regarded as advisory, they are totally disregarded. During a five hour drive we were virtually the only car to stop at any red light. There we sat doing our 'couple of pensioner' impressions (impressions?). "Pass the thermos dear. Oooh - look at her, what does she think she looks like? Have you got any of those peppermints?" Cars screamed past us on both sides kicking up clouds of dust which obscured the still red lights, their drivers giving us quizzical and disdainful looks.

We were under the impression that the purpose of road planning was to facilitate the flow of traffic and to reduce the risk of accidents. Turkish road planning seems to be part of a grand design to reduce population growth. Lane markings appear and disappear without reason. The right hand lane will suddenly just peter out leaving you with a choice of barging into the high speed pack to your left or careering right down a steep bank into a dried up river bed. If lanes do merge, they usually do so just over the brow of a hill followed immediately by a sharp right hand bend. The Turks have also reintroduced the concept of the three lane road, an innovation that caused such carnage that even the Portuguese phased them out. These have one lane going in each direction separated by an overtaking lane which serves for both directions. This ensures that when the inevitable head-on collision occurs both cars are travelling really, really fast and the resultant bang is really, really satisfying.

Nevermind, we got to the airport. We (well, Liz mainly) had been looking forward to spending an hour or so looking round the shops, getting a paper and a coffee, watching the world go by. The usual airport sort of thing. It was not to be.

Most modern airports are primarily large shopping complexes with a bit tacked on where aeroplanes land and take off. Sort of a loss leader really, just a ploy to get punters into the shops and extract money from them. Just like the Lycian rock tombs, 98% of the complex is front and 2% is where the actual work of airporting takes place.

The Turks have reversed this balance. In Antalya, an airport is an airport. It's an architectural and technical complex designed to get people on and off aeroplanes which can then take off and land - not some namby-pamby consumerist palace. Security starts at the outer doors. You can't get in or out of arrivals or departures, not even to go to the toilet, without a passport and boarding pass. Even with these you can't get more than a metre into the building without being subjected to a full body search and enough X-rays to desiccate your bone marrow. All of this under the watchful eye of about 20 guys carrying enough ordinance to outgun Sylvester Stallone. All meeting and greeting is done in the open air outside the buildings, and that is also scrutinised by peripatetic Rambos.

More successful was the expedition to Saklikent gorge. This is an 18 km gouge cut into the Akdaglar mountains. It is so steep and narrow that the sun rarely reaches the bottom and so it remains cool and the water remains bloody cold. As you make your way further up you have to wade through deeper and deeper water. We were encouraged by a couple of Turkish lads, aged 11 & 12, who latched on to us and shepherded us through. As we were carrying cameras etc with us we called it a day when it got to chest deep. The lads looked quite disappointed.

We had, however, made the mistake of coming on a Saturday. It was mobbed, mainly with Turkish families on a day out. It thinned out a bit as you got further into the gorge and deeper water though.

We were all set to go the next day when Liz spotted something scuttling behind the heater in the forward heads. 'Probably just a beetle' we optimistically declared. It wasn't - it was a cockroach. An hour later another was spotted in the forepeak and then one in the main saloon. It's surprising, actually that it took this long for the little buggers to get their feet in the door. We had tried all the usual precautions such as not bringing cardboard on board and checking fruit etc, but these are only ever delaying tactics. They hide in books, under the labels of cans, in toothpaste cartons. They crawl up mooring ropes and anyway the little sods can fly.

All our ecological ethics shot out of the window in a desperate attempt to eradicate the tenacious little bastards. Apparently cockroaches are one of the very few species that will have no problem surviving climate change and even a nuclear holocaust.

We went to a local specialist poison shop (they have them here - makes you wonder) and explained the problem. We now know the Turkish for 'cockroach', 'kill', 'exterminate', 'without mercy', 'poison', 'Sod the environment', 'CBW suit', 'chemical warfare,' 'nerve gas', 'boric acid', 'dioxin' and 'alpha-cypermethrin'.

The boat was dismantled and Bob sprayed every toxin known to science (and several that weren't) into every nook and cranny. Areas of the boat were sealed off and chemical smoke bombs let off and allowed to permeate. As the survivors came staggering and coughing out of the cracks and channels into other areas of the boat they were swatted, sprayed and trapped in glue. Having presided over this mass extermination we scattered baited traps throughout the boat, just to check.

So far so good.

If none reappear we're off back to Kekova tomorrow. We need to renew our visas soon, so prepare for another diatribe about bureaucracy.