July 26 - August 2, 2023

We spent a couple days anchored off beautiful Goldensands Beach, which is very well sheltered from the north wind. While there we did glamorous jobs like laundry, vacuuming, and cleaning, but also some fun things like reading about the various places we might visit in Turkey, writing the next blog post, swimming, relaxing and enjoying the scenery....

We had a hankering to go north, if we could, because all our reading said that it's supposed to be more like "real" Turkey, than some of the touristy places to the south of us.

The forecast was for light winds, the meltemi predicted to take another short break, which would afford us an opportunity to go north. We decided to take it. I found an anchorage that we could make in one day - a place near Izmir, called Ҫandarli, about 60 miles north of Goldensands Beach. (By the way, if you didn't pick it up from the title of our previous post, the letter Ҫ sounds like "ch".) We left early the next morning.



Our trip to Ҫandarli took us past miles and miles of fish farms (something that we would see plenty of, during our time in Turkey).


Fish farms


More fish farms

As we traveled, we made sure to stick close to the Turkish coastline. The border with Greece was close by, and we didn't want to get pulled over by either the Turkish or Greek coast guards, both of whom had boats patrolling the narrow waterway between the countries.

The seven-hour trip was pleasantly uneventful, and when we arrived at the small bay in front of Ҫandarli we discovered that there was only one other cruising boat anchored there - a pleasant surprise, for an anchorage in July, the height of the high season, We dropped Obama in the murky water, where he stuck in the mud, and Eric backed Awildian down more gently than we would on a sandy bottom, giving Obama time to sink down slowly into the mud, and be embraced by its anchor-swaddling gooiness.


Greater Ҫandarli and the bay

Once settled, we looked around. Ҫandarli was tucked into the NW corner of the bay, with a stubby peninsula sticking out to the south. Perched on this peninsula was an old castle, providing a scenic counterpoint to the town's modern buildings. Out in the center of the bay was a small island, where seabirds congregated.


Robert and Robyn Kiwi checking out Ҫandarli

We decided to treat ourselves to a Turkish dinner at one of the many small restaurants in town, so we put our dinghy in the water and buzzed over to the waterfront, looking for a place to tie up our dinghy and disembark. NoForeignLand - our usual go-to app for locating all kinds of useful places in towns - had been mum on where to land the dinghy, so we were winging it. (I've since added a dinghy-landing icon to the Ҫandarli map.) Back and forth we cruised, along the city's waterfront wall, with no obvious place to tie up. Eventually, we decided to tie up to one of the posts supporting the wire fence along the wall, bringing our dinghy right in close in the shallow, rock-strewn water, and clambering up through one of the gaps in the fence.


A minaret or, as we call it, the Voice of God

After locking our dinghy to the pole, we walked to a small open-air restaurant on the waterfront called Kasabin Kahve. Ҫandarli has a well-worn, yet exotic (for us) feel to it.


The shopping district

We walked into the restaurant, wandered through some of the tables, and sat down at one. No one spoke English, not even the staff. The menu was written on a whiteboard, everything in Turkish.


The menu

I had just pulled out my phone to Google "manti," one of the offerings, when our waiter arrived to take our order. Seeing that manti is "tiny dumplings stuffed with lamb and topped with garlicky yogurt sauce," I ordered that. Eric followed suit, and we both ordered "limonata" (lemonade), an easy translation.

As we waited for our food and drinks to arrive, I looked around and soaked in the ambiance. Just outside the restaurant's patio area along the waterfront, two young boys were fishing in the shallows with handlines; occasionally they caught a small fish, about four inches long. A couple of cats waited nearby, as patiently as they could, hoping that the boys would share their catch. Sometimes they did. Several other cats wandered lazily through the restaurant. At every other table besides ours, people were smoking cigarettes. Many were enjoying the strong Turkish tea (çay, pronounced "chai" like the Indian tea), drunk from the small, distinctively-shaped glasses made for this purpose. A feeling of relaxed ease permeated the place; no one - not even the wait staff - was in a hurry. Neither were we.

Our waiter reappeared with a question: "Sarimsak?" he asked.

I whipped out my phone, tapped Google Translate, and had him repeat the word. "Garlic," Google Translate suggested. Ah, he was asking if we wanted garlic on our manti.

How the heck do you say "yes" in Turkish...We didn't know at the moment, so we nodded and gave him two thumbs up. He soon returned with our manti, which was swimming in a sauce made of garlic, yogurt and melted butter. Yum!


Eric about to enjoy his dinner

I could only eat half of mine, so we consulted Google Translate again to find out how to ask for a takeaway box. Eating out was really cheap - the total cost of our dinner was less than $13 USD; another dinner we had a few days later was $11 USD.

After dinner, we walked through town, exploring, and enjoying the slightly cooler temperature of the evening. We passed by lots of little shops selling eggs or jams or hardware/household items. We stopped into an open air veggie market, whose wilted offerings had clearly endured a very long, very hot day, in spite of the shade cloth overhead. Farther along, we came to a tree-shaded park, with small booths arranged around its edges, all of them closed up. It looked like it would be an interesting place to visit, when the booths were open. Whenever that was.

Back on the waterfront, people were strolling along, or sitting on the benches; whole families - from grandparents to little kids - enjoying the evening together. We walked through the gap in the fence, climbed down to the water, liberated our dinghy, and scooted back to Awildian.


Ҫandarli's waterfront with Awildian anchored in the distance

We spent the next week anchored at Ҫandarli, making forays into town or hanging out on Awildian, while another meltemi swept down the Aegean.


It's kind of a dusty place...

One day, we visited the old castle. Built in the 1300s and restored several times since then - most recently in 2013 - there was no admission fee, so we could just wander around, exploring and enjoying the views from its windows and doorways.













I'd read somewhere that Ҫandarli has a town market every Friday, so when Friday came around, we loaded Rolly (our rolling cart) into the dinghy and headed to shore, tying up at our usual fence post. We figured that this would be the day that all those little booths in the town park would be open. We figured wrong: all of them were closed up, just as they had been before.

Undeterred, we walked back to the produce stand in town. Maybe that was where the market was held. Nope. The same two or three vendors who'd been there the other evening were there again, along with their tired-looking wares. Nothing about it said, "hey it's a Friday market!" to us.

Maybe we were early? It was 9:30; surely a produce market would be up and running by now. We decided to take advantage of being in town to have breakfast.

We sat down at a streetside cafe where elderly men sat at small tables with glasses of çay or raki (Turkish moonshine), having spirited conversations. The menu listed a wide range of food. A waiter brought us a basket of bread and asked us something in Turkish. Remember: no one in Ҫandarli speaks English. Or if there are people who do, we haven't encountered them yet.

I cued up Google Translate and tried to get him to speak into my phone, but I couldn't get the point across. After repeating the same word to me several times (but never into my phone), he exasperatedly called over a woman and pointed to my phone.

She asked the same one-word question. When we shrugged, she spoke into Google Translate on her phone. The word was çorba, which means "soup." She spoke into her phone again and showed it to me: "Sadece çorbamiz var" which means, "We only have soup."

Apparently nothing else on the menu was currently available. We didn't really want hot soup for breakfast, especially not on a hot day, so we thanked her politely and went to find another restaurant.

We ended up at a small cafe in the shade of the trees in the small town park. Their menu was also varied, but unlike the other place, these guys had more than just soup. Eric and I ordered a cheese-filled "tortilla" and a sandviç (yes, it's what you think it is). Both were good. Along with them, Eric enjoyed a Turkish coffee, and I had a glass of çay.


Brekkie in the park

While we were in town, we needed to buy a new phone, as mine had accidentally gone swimming in Greece a couple of weeks earlier (don't ask). Eric had done some research and decided that we wanted to buy a Samsung A23, which was available in Turkey. Ҫandarli has two cell phone stores in town - TurkCell and an independent seller - so we figured we could knock that off pretty easily. And since there was apparently no Friday market, we had plenty of time.

It actually took three days and three trips into town.

Day One. The independent seller had the phone at a good price but their credit card reader wasn't working, so we went a few doors down to TurkCell. TurkCell could take our credit card, so we bought the phone from them. We were going to get an e-SIM for my phone, so we didn't buy a physical one.

Back on Awildian, Eric set up my new phone. Though the Samsung A23 usually accepts e-SIMs, this feature was apparently disabled on my new phone since we'd bought it in Turkey. Oh well. We'd need to go back into town to procure a physical SIM. There is a physical SIM that will allow my phone to use e-SIMs, so we'd try to get one of those.

Day Two. The next day, we dinghied back to town and visited the TurkCell store. Yes, they had the e-SIM-abled physical SIM...but it wasn't available in Turkey. So we'd have to buy a regular SIM instead. But even that was a moot point, as the Internet was down in the store, so we couldn't do anything anyway.

We stopped back at TurkCell later, on our way back to Awildian after exploring the castle. No dice. Maybe tomorrow...

Day Three. We went back to TurkCell again the following day. Their Internet was working, and the clerk sold us a SIM. But...before he'd activate it, he asked us 45 minutes of questions, took all the details from Eric's passport, asked us our home address, and our Turkish address (we told him we're on a boat and he wrote something down, we don't know what). Using all that info, he registered the SIM with the Turkish government and told us that, as tourists, we could only use it for 90 days. I picked out a case with nice colors but some weird markings (those are not stickers), and we went back to Awildian, phone sorted.


My weird phone case

One afternoon, while we were doing some jobs around the boat, we heard voices nearby. Voices?Nearby? Since we were anchored out, that meant that someone must be visiting. When I looked outside, I saw a couple of teenage girls swimming near Awildian. I was surprised because we were anchored pretty far out. Using charades, I asked if they wanted to come aboard; they did. I lowered the swim ladder and they climbed aboard, happy not to be treading water anymore. Once aboard, they told me (using Google Translate) that they had been trying to swim to the small island, but then they realized that it was still quite a long way off, and they were exhausted. They sat on one of Awildian's transoms for awhile, chatting and laughing, and drinking the water I gave them.

A little while later - using Google Translate - I offered to take them back to shore in our dinghy, and they nodded. When we got close to shore, one of them said, "thank you!" and they jumped into the water.

On our last night in Ҫandarli, a huge orange moon rose out of the sea, casting a shimmering streak on the water of the bay. It was stunningly beautiful. I took my best shot at taking a photo, which didn't really do it justice. Eric and I stood on Awildian's deck for quite awhile, enjoying the warm evening and the beautiful scene. Tomorrow morning we'd head even farther north, to the area around Ayvalik.