The Artist with our new table.

I am writing this in the Teknobus on our way north from Finike to Selcuk . Tomorrow we meet up with Alan's brother Brian and his wife Marion which is a nice coincidence as it is also Alan's birthday. The Teknobus is very comfortable, has wifi and a movie/games screen for each seat, just like flying except it takes longer and there is no baggage allowance. They also skip the pre departure instructions.
At Seluk we are going to visit the ancient city of Ephesus.

The plan for the next 3 or 4 weeks is to visit Ephesus, Gallipoli then on to Istanbul where we fly to Jordan. We will have about 7 days in Jordan then depending on the political situation we will travel through Syria back to Turkey, to Cappadocia on the way back to Tuatara at Finike will complete our land traveling.

The last 3 months has been a busy time working on boat maintenance and improvements. The big job was making our big freezer into a slightly smaller fridge freezer. I can now touch the bottom, so I guess the job of cleaning it will now be mine again. In the process we have also gained a couple of new lockers. When we left the actual fridge unit still had not arrived from agents in Istanbul, we hope it comes!! Alan has done all of the work, I have been there just to pass the tools, hold the torch and make the tea. Alan also made a bigger cockpit table. We asked the art class to produce a Tuatara design to be put on the table before it was varnished. They came up with a good selection and we chose one design drawn by Clare from Hai Mei Gui. Clare burnt her Tuataras onto the table before Alan varnished. We are thrilled with the result, we now have a table that takes more than one plate and is lovely to look at.

We are just going through some great scenery, snowy mountains ahead and flat plains around us.
I had to give up writing at this point as the road was a bit bouncy and my typing and spelling was bouncing all over the page!

Spring has sprung. The landscape is dotted with pink and white blossoming fruit trees on carpets of daisies. The flocks of grazing sheep and goats have few new additions bouncing around. Fields are being ploughed and planted. The high mountains still have a good covering of snow but lower down the snow is beginning to melt leaving patches of white here and there on the rocky slopes.

We arrived at Aydin on time at 5pm, I just had time to visit the loo before catching the dolmus on to Selcuk. A lira (nearly $1NZ) for the toilet.....must be in a tourist area. By the time we got to Selcuk we had been traveling for more than 9 hours, admittedly we stopped at every otogar along the way but this is a big country. The bus was comfortable and we were served tea and cold drinks through out the day, we had movies to watch...in Turkish changing to English didn't seem to work, the scenery was lovely and so it was an easy 9 hours. The dolmus to Selcuk was crowded, just when we thought he couldn't squeeze any more bodies in we stopped and picked up a family of 5. As we went down the last long hill into Selcuk the driver called out something and those sitting on knees and standing ducked down as we passed a Police car on the side of the road!

The instructions to get to Jimmy's Place, our hotel here in Selcuk, were easy to follow and we were soon settled in and having dinner beside a warm fire. We chose Jimmy's on Andrew and Gemma's recommendation and the niece of our friend Graham is married to one of the owners. Sheryl , Adem and their cute wee daughter Kassia joined us for dinner and we had a lovely evening. Adem runs the travel desk so is going to give us some ideas for the next few days and our trip up to Cannakale and Gallipoli.

Our room is right opposite the mosque about the same level as the mosque loud speakers but we were so tired we slept through the early morning call around 5 ish.




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