Sicily and Greece to Marmaris, Turkey
11 November 2010 | Marmaris, Turkey
jane, thankfully still warm and sunny
We have already been in Marmaris for two weeks, or is it three? I am only just doing our blog - oops. What have we been up to? Lots. This place is buzzing. Our first week was race week with a ton of people in town and entertainment every evening, luckily it is a bit quieter now.
We have already met many cruisers/liveaboards. There are two very large marinas here, one has 2300 boats and is one of the biggest in the Med Sea, and ours seems small at 850 boats. We are at Netsel; which is right by the town and very convenient. There is a large market nearby twice a week, a daily fish market, hundreds of restaurants of every type especially along the quay, lots of shops, chandlers, etc... Life has been busy socializing and we have been to boat jumbles, BBQs, Happy Hours/Dinners, a large Halloween party, oil wrestling (a Turkish tradition), visiting other boats, bowling, pilates, yoga and in our spare time of course we are working on Ta-b. The weather has been warm and sunny since we have been here, currently it is a sunny 26 degrees outside while I write this at 1530 hours. The early mornings and evenings are a little cooler, but still pleasant for sitting outside of an evening. As you can imagine we are finding it hard not to really enjoy ourselves hereJ.
Since our last blog, we had a few fun filled sightseeing days before we left Salerno. We rented a car for a couple of days and braved driving the most scenic coast road in Europe along the Amalfi Coast. It was spectacular, and better still we survived the crazy Italian drivers; just. There was one moment when a lunatic passed us on a blind corner and a car was coming the other way, close is all I can say, luckily Russ is a fantastic driver. We also spent an amazing day around Pompeii - see gallery for lots of pictures. Vesuvius buried the city of 66 Ha in 79AD under rock and ash, in 1748 the Italians started to excavate and they are still doing so. A large earthquake in 1988 caused a huge amount of damage and the statues, mosaics, etc. that I remember from a trip in my teens, are now in Museums, however the place is still a treasure.
While we had the car we did a massive shop for our trip to Turkey and then we were off south for the overnight trip to Sicily and the Aeolian Islands off the NE coast. Stromboli Isola is probably the oldest lighthouse in the world being an active volcano that spits fire and lava into sky every 6-8 minutes, quite the sight. Vulcano Islola is also active and you can see steam rising off the sides of the volcano with fantastic rock colour formations. We had a fun evening there sneaking into the hot mud pools and soaking in the warm bubbles, they close the pools at night, but the Italians love breaking the rules and so we were not the only couple there.
We passed through the Messina strait and stopped at Taomina which has a delightful town perched high above the bay, quite the walk there and back straight up the hill. A bus would have been too easy. A weather opportunity showed itself while we were there and so we left promising ourselves that we would see a little bit more of Sicily on our return trip to the Caribbean. We had a fantastic two day sail across to Methoni in Greece; a place we fell in love with.
In Methoni we met a wonderful English family, with 6 and 4 year old girls, who are taking a year off and home schooling the kids on board. They had found a preying mantis ashore and that night we enjoyed drinks on board while we played with the incredibly friendly insect. With a hand held microscope with a light connected to their computer we were able to examine and take pictures, next day internet computer research completed the lesson. What a wonderful way to learn about the world.
We spent several days cruising with Steve, Charlie and the girls around the Peloponnisos coastline finally saying goodbye as we took off for the Greek Islands and they headed for Crete. We loved the Greek mainland and we found the Greeks wonderfully friendly, happy people.
Another wonderful sail to Sifnos, we were going to Milos but arrived too early so kept going to Vathi a gorgeous protected anchorage. Sifnos has 365 churches on an island that is only approx. 10 miles long and 5 miles wide; at one point when we were in the main town of Apollonia we were able to see 8 churches all at once!! A very pretty place, white houses with mostly blue doors, white painted cobbled paths, so like one imagines the Greek islands to be. We stayed longer than planned, as we had to wait another weather window so rather than getting caught again we decided to grab the opportunity and spent an amazing three days sailing straight to Marmaris only stopping at night. One day we averaged 7.7 knots over 11 hours; which we were very happy with.
We found our last two stops very bleak with hardly any vegetation to be seen, the islands are all very different and it will be interesting to get some feedback from our new friends here as to which are the best bays, islands and harbours to visit. Local knowledge is always best and it is fun to share.
We will be in Marmaris until 21 April; which is when our contract at Netsel runs out. On the 7 Dec we are going to Istanbul and then we will fly to Vancouver via England. We will be in Vancouver from 14 Dec until 12 Jan and are planning on taking the kids up to Whistler ski-ing from 2 - 9 Jan. Then we will be in England for a little while before returning to Ta-b in Feb. It would be lovely to see as many of our friends as possible, so please email us and let us know if you are around.
Hope that you enjoy the photos in our gallery, be warned there are a few more than normal (this blog covers a long period). Please note that if you enlarge the photos I have added notes as usual to each one of them. There is also a route map for fun.