August 6 we left the Marmaris harbor anchorage for Ekincik, about 15 miles east. There are numerous small anchorages around this bay and we decided to anchor directly off the town beach. The attraction in this anchorage is the Dalyan River Tour, which one takes on small covered tour boats. We dinghied ashore to the office to book our river tour for the next day and later in the afternoon it was confirmed that we would have a boat with 2 others. We were thankful for the company since taking a tour boat with just the two of us would have been expensive.

The next morning at 9 am the tour boat came by and picked us up. The other two passengers were already on board and they were very interesting company for the day. These two women from Holland had a 43 foot aluminum boat which they have sailed around the world for 6 years, including around the Cape of South America and into the vast Pacific. From the Maldives (south of India), they decided to put their boat on a freighter to Marmaris, Turkey to avoid the risk of Somalia pirates in the Suez Canal. So they had many adventures to share and we had lively conversation on the tour boat and during our lunch together.

These tour boats go about 3 miles from the Ekincik harbor to the mouth of the Dalyan River which is a huge marsh land with many, many fingers. At first we thought that we might have gotten lost in these fingers if we had tried to go in our own dinghy, but after we saw the numerous constant stream of tour boats going thru the marshland, we realized that it would have been tough to get lost here. We were simply astonished at the number of tour boats full of passengers from various other resort locations. We estimated over 200 tour boats were in operation that day, going up the marsh land river.

The first stop was a place in the marshy river where many turtles are fed and nearby nest to lay their eggs on the beach. This beach is a protected area and evidently some of these turtles migrate from this beach back to the Gulf of Mexico each year. The turtles we saw were about 3 feet long!

While going down the river, the tour boat stopped at the ancient town of Caunos which was a busy harbor in the 4th century BC; but like so many other ancient locations, its harbor silted up and it declined. We hiked up to see the ruins which are being excavated and restored. From the hilltop, we could see where the ancient harbor had been and which is now the marshland of the river.

For lunch, we motored farther down the river to a riverside restaurant in the current city of Dalayan and from our table we could see the Lycian tombs which were carved into the high cliffs overhead. These tombs were carved from solid rock to look like Ionic temples.

The tour boat returned us to our boat back in the harbor of Eckinik, and that afternoon we heard two young men swimming near our boat. Dave went to the swim platform on the back of the boat and discovered that they had swum from the beach and were a bit tired. One of them spoke pretty good English, so they hung out on our swim ladder for a bit talking. They insisted that we come ashore to the beach restaurant and meet their family. So we hopped in the kayak and had a delightful encounter getting to know this Turkish family. The young men were brothers and their mother, father and cousin were at a picnic table ashore. They insisted on feeding us wonderful fresh fruit, which it turns out they grow on their own “hobby farm”. We had some interesting conversations about Turkey’s economic challenges currently. The brothers and father were all 3 teachers, and their cousin was an attorney. We learned that teachers earn about $10,000 per year. When we left to return to our boat, their mother insisted that we take some grapes, nectarines, figs and a melon, all produce grown on their farm. It made our lunch the next two days really delicious.