GEORGIA, TURKEY AND THE BLACK SEA 2016

We flew from Thessaloniki to Istanbul to meet up with our friends whom we had left in Lesbos.  Four days earlier a bomb had gone off in Istanbul airport.  To our surprise, there was no sign of damage anywhere.  Apparently the airport was up and running six hours after the blast.

The next day we flew into an airport in Georgia, just over the Turkish border.  We were stamped into Georgia and then straight back out and were put onto a bus to drive us over the border back to Turkey. Here in Hopa, an hour away, we had our first glimpse of the Black Sea. From here we were met by our friends’ university colleague. He took us to his village home, high in the mountains of Artvin Province.  

Village home

We met his wife, daughter and parents-in-law. We stayed for three days, being fed like kings by 90 year old grandmother Nezaket 

Grandmother Nezaket

and we were driven through the densely forested mountains to numerous waterfalls and lakes.  It was not a good idea to look down on some of the hairpin bends on the little sand roads! The mountains are covered in spruce, pine, oak  and hazelnut and it is a tea growing area.  The tea is grown on impossibly steep slopes and the villagers use flying foxes to get their bags of clippings back down the slopes.  There are whole mountainsides of neatly pruned tea bushes, as they are harvested three times in a season.  The farmers use hand shears with bags attached to catch the clippings as they work. Although 80% of the world’s hazelnuts come here, tea has now replaced hazelnut as the dominant produce from this area.  Having seen how much tea people drink in Turkey, we are not surprised there is none left to export!

Tea Harvesting

We joined a  tour. They took us to the town of Batumi in Georgia where we saw a Las Vegas style  waterfront, complete with 5-star hotels and numerous casinos. The sad thing is that one or two roads back, the roads are sand (and become mud with the high rainfall), an unguarded railway line runs through the town, washing is strung across the streets and the buildings are Soviet style, faced with corrugated iron and mostly unmaintained. The high mountains surrounding the town are very beautiful.  They too, like the ones across the border in Turkey, are densely forested. We went to a winery in Georgia which, to our surprise, had photos of a visit by Hilary Clinton.

Back in Turkey, we went into the high villages in Artvin Province and stayed in a traditional lodge in the village of Ayder.  From here we drove to even  higher villages which are used only in summer for grazing cattle.  In winter the farmers move to villages out of the snowline.

Mountain village

Mountain village Ayder

The houses are built of stone and wood, on impossibly steep slopes and are very picturesque, dotted in amongst the forests. From here we hiked  to the snowline and some of our party had a swim in a lake with ice floes floating in it. 

  Because of the very high rainfall, there are countless, very beautiful waterfalls in this part of Turkey.  Although we were there in the rainy season, we were lucky to have only one day of rain-but did it rain! It, in itself, was beautiful, driven rain with the mountain peaks appearing and disappearing behind the clouds.  The rivers were swollen and we had an exhilarating ride down one of these in a raft.

Once our tour was over we slowly made our way along the Black Sea coast, back to Istanbul.  The prevailing wind comes from the north, so the Turkish coast is a lee shore and mostly deep until the edge. We saw only one sailing boat,  in harbour,  in the two weeks we were there and although many small harbours have been built, most of them are only used by small fishing boats.   In most of the towns in the east of Turkey people speak no Western languages. We were very glad to have our Turkish-speaking friends with us! We were pleased we elected not to sail and to travel overland instead.

We awoke one morning to find that there had been an attempted coupe.  We heard the speakers on the minarets calling people to mass meetings in the town squares and TV news coverage consisted  of arrests and speeches by politicians. We heard gunfire on two occasions and saw numerous flags being flown from buildings, cars and even the cable cars which took us up a mountain in one of the towns. This was continuing when we left Turkey two weeks later.

We traveled to Amasya to see the rock tombs of the Pontian kings. After a hot climb to the tombs, we wandered along the river front, amongst the quaint Ottoman houses. Of interest to sailors, we found a statue of Strabo, an ancient Greek from this region, who was the first known Geographer. Sofranbolo, now Heritage

Rock tombs of Pontian Kings, Amasya

 Listed, has an unspoilt old town, an exceptional example of Ottoman architecture. Here we enjoyed shopping in the little shops in the quaint stone alleyways.

A highlight was a visit to the ancient capital of the Hittites, in central Anatolia, with it’s imposing sphinx gateway and reproduction of burial sites as they had been found.

Sphynx gate, ancient Hittite capital

Reproduction of Hittite grave

 These were the people who defeated Ramses II of Egypt, later making the first recorded treaty between two nations. 

The other very beautiful site we visited was the monastery of Sumela, 1600 years old.  It is a very large monastery,  on a very steep cliff, carved into the rockface and perched above a river way below it.  As there are no longer Christians left in this area, it is now a museum. It is currently being restored and unfortunately we were  not allowed to  enter.

 

Greece, June 2016.

We picked up some friends in Avyalik, Turkey and left the marina in quite a blow.  The water in the marina was churned up and once out in the bay, there were short sharp waves in the shallow water – a baptism of fire for our guests.  We sheltered for the night behind a little headland and although we got up several times that night to check for dragging, our new Rocna anchor held firmly.

The next morning it was off to Greece for a week, before taking the boat to Thessaloniki where she would remain for a month while we were back in Turkey.

On arrival in Lesbos, we were met by a very excitable customs officer who instructed us to move from one dock to another for check-in.  The poor man seemed very harassed by all the tourists arriving by ferry. However, his stress level did not seem to abate, as it was the same story when we left the harbour a week later. He got very excited when we tried to leave before first reporting to the Port Authority…

We rented a car in Lesbos and traveled around the island, then went into the large bay of Kolpos Yeras.  We had a lovely cruise up the bay, watching the sun set over the hills with villages dotted all about and spent the night in Skala Loutra. Loud music from bars and restaurants, that continues until daylight,  is a phenomenon we have encountered throughout the Mediterranean.  Unfortunately sound carries very well over water, and we have had many a disturbed night.  This night was no exception and the next day, when we asked the restaurant owner if there would be music again that night, she said “What loud music? We only have a wedding on this evening”. That was enough for us to pull up anchor and sail off to opposite side of the gulf.  Apothekes, a tiny village in the  Kolpos Kalloni was a delight.  This tiny village  only had one taverna run by a family. On the waterfront were some  ancient warehouses (apothekes), just waiting for a tender hand to restore them.  We had a lovely village lunch here and thereafter spent some time out of the heat, sitting in the cool under the vines, drinking ouzo.

At Sigres on the west coast, we visited the excellent  Petrified Forest Museum. This museum has an excellent display of petrified trees many of which had been found still standing in their original positions in the ancient forest.  The huge trunks had been broken off  by volcanic activity 20 million years ago as the forest was flattened and were then covered in pyroclastic material and ash. This resulted in them becoming petrified (fossilized).

Fossilized tree trunk

We dropped our guests off here to catch an early morning bus back to Mitilini and we set sail for Thessaloniki, in the northwest of the Aegean.  We stopped in the late afternoon, under the shadow of a castle in the port of Milina, on the island of Limnos. Since our dinghy was packed away, ready for the next leg to Thessaloniki, we decided to have a swim to the beach. Once we got there, we stopped for a drink at a beachside taverna and then took  a walk through the town.  We were quite a sight, walking along in our wet clothes! We ended up doing some shopping and the shopkeepers obliged by wrapping our goods in several plastic bags to stop them getting wet. We were an item of interest to the sunbakers on the beach as we paddled back to the boat with our bags held above our heads.

We left early the next morning for the next leg to Thessaloniki. Mount Athos appeared out of the mist in the early morning. 

Mount Athos

  Again we stopped at sunset in a very secluded little inlet, Porto Koufo.  The entrance is narrow and hard to see but once inside it opens up into a wonderfully sheltered anchorage, with once again, a delightful little village at the head of the bay.

Porto Koufo

With no wind, we motored most of the way to Thessaloniki the next day. An hour or two from our destination, we could see a thunderhead approaching. We tried to race it in, but half an hour before we arrived, it hit us with a howling front.  We sat out an extra hour until the blow was over before going into the marina.

Our destination the next day was the tomb of Phillip of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father.  We drove through cherry orchards and fields of sunflowers and strawberries to get there. It was harvest time and the farmers were out with their tractors and trucks, collecting the fruit.  

The tomb and several others, of queens and princes, were uncovered fairly recently.  When discovered, they were still intact, complete with gold wreaths, silverware, weapons, furniture.  The tombs were found in burial mounds and the museum has been built over them as a large burial mound. One goes underground into the museum. The entrances to the tombs still have painted friezes on them. It is a moving experience to stand before a tomb that Alexander the Great would have stood before after the funeral that he had organized for his father. Somehow the pathos seemed to flow down through the ages….Unfortunately no photos are allowed of this magnificent place but look some up on the internet, it is well worth it.

Travels in Turkey 2016

Dawn at sea

We crossed the 1nm. strait from Samos to Turkey at the beginning of June.  We arrived in Kusadasi, a strange mix of new wealth and old customs, a juxtaposition of East and West.  The Setur Marina has excellet facilities and we were met at the mouth by staff who boarded us and assisted with berthing. The marina also did all our check-in formalities which, in Turkey, is a great help.

We decided to take a walk to the old part of town and to the market.  On the way, we saw a mix of modern hotels, high-rises buildings and beach-side tavernas, as well as old buildings, still with enclosed “ladies rooms” jutting out over the road, a custom from old times when women were mostly confined to the home. Men were smoking hookas and playing backgammon and vendors were selling goods from the back of minivans.  We even saw a sausage merchant selling his goods like this.  Australian health inspectors, eat your hearts out!

Market Kusadasi

Chicks and ducklings for sale

The market was a hustle and bustle of stalls selling excellent fresh produce, dried fruits and spices. We saw a person selling day-old chicks and ducklings out of a box, someone selling bunches of fresh chick-peas from a bike with a trailer, charcoal merchants and young boys walking about with trays of Turkish tea for sale.

Sausage merchant

Turkish Aegean Coast

We decided to sail south to the Gulluk Korfezi (Gulf) and then to work our way north towards Ayvalik, where we had arranged to pick up friends,  stopping at little ports along the way. 

Our first anchorage was a tiny deserted bay where St. Paul was reputed to have rested his oarsmen.  We anchored there, all on our own. There was not a building, a sheep or a goat to be seen and the only thing that broke the silence were the beautiful little swallows whose song sounds just like that of the canary.

In the Gulluk Korfezi, we stopped at a little holiday village.  We befriended some locals who treated us to Turkish tea and mulberries. They also were kind enough to arrange  a cab for us to take us to see some of the antiquities of the region.  Sure enough, the taxi arrived as arranged at 9am the next morning. We went to see the beautiful Temple of Apollo, the biggest Doric temple of the ancient world,  in ancient Didyma,  It was a sanctuary famed for its oracle. 

Current residents at the Temple of Apollo

Temple of Apollo

 From there we travelled through the countryside to the ancient city of Miletus.  This was the most important of the Ionian cities and one of the most important birthplaces of western philosophy and science.  Other than the outstanding ancient theatre,  set on a high hill overlooking the plains, very little of this huge site has been excavated. We were amused/?shocked to see that the  restaurant at the site  had ancient blocks of stone incorporated in the walls of the shop, many with the original ancient Greek inscriptions intact. 

Theatre at Miletus.

Much of the coastline in the Gulluk Korfezi, as along most of the Aegean Coast of Turkey, is marred by many unsightly holiday villages.  These are built in a grid pattern, all the buildings are  identical in each village, are approximately three stories tall with unsightly solar water systems on their roofs. It is a pity they are being built like this as the natural coastline is otherwise very pretty.

Turkey is fish farming in a big way and often we had to sail out of our way to get around these farms. The fish in the shops all seem to be around the same size so it seems that most would be coming from the farms. 

We have tried to find anchorages far away from villages.  In the morning around 4-5a.m. (once at 3.30 a.m.) the mullah, via loudspeakers, calls the faithful to prayer.  This wakes the village dogs who accompany the mullah with a chorus of howling.  A chain reaction occurs as the dogs wake the roosters who begin their morning crowing. Needless to say, once woken like this, it is hard to get back to sleep again.

Ancient Teos

Waiting while our gozleme is being prepared, Iassos

Dawn from our anchorage Gulluk Korfezi

Local residents, Iassos

Around 200nm from Ayvalik, we had a forecast of southerly winds so we decided to take advantage and get as far north as we could before the wind died.  We left with a forecast of force 6. We sailed in brisk wind with reduced sail and rising seas. While on passage, I decided to take a nap. I was woken rather dramatically with a drenching of seawater which came through the hatch above my head. When we arrived at our next port, Eski Foca, we found the harbour to be full of local boats with no suitable space for us.  We anchored in a bay west of the port where there were small boats moored and one other foreign boat at anchor.  As the wind was rather strong, we decided to stay on board to keep anchor watch.  Lucky we did as  we dragged our anchor, the first time this season.  We re-anchored and decided that we would take turns to sleep in the cockpit in case we dragged again.  At dusk, we heard a shout from the shore.  Five armed soldiers were standing there, waving to us and yelling for us to leave.  We cannot understand why, as nothing was marked on the chart forbidding anchoring and there were other boats in the bay.  Nevertheless, we weren’t about to argue with five armed soldiers so we upped our anchor and turned back into the seas which were at that stage running a 2m. swell.  Fortunately there was another bay just north of where we were, so we turned into it and managed to anchor before nightfall.  All in all it turned out for the best as the anchor was much more secure in this shallower bay and we ended up with a good night’s sleep, in our bed below.

Since we left Kusadasi, we have only seen three other foreign boats, one in the Gulf of Gulluk, one at Eski Foca  and one here  in Ayvalik Liman (lake) where we are now anchored.  At the moment we are in a very large bay, the Kumru Koyu, at the southern end of the lake, under a hill with a flat top called the Devil’s Table where it is reputed that devils met at night to wine, dine and make merry. The whole bay is surrounded by pine forest, with nothing marring the coastline. In the distance, on the other side of the bay, there is one other boat at anchor. The bay is reminiscent of our beautiful Broken Bay, but with no buildings, roads or moorings and a lot of  safe, shallow water to anchor in. I cannot understand why this area is not more popular with boating folk. It seems that most foreign boats sail along the southern Mediterranean coast of Turkey between Bodrum and Antalya. I do not know where the local boats sail.  We see many in the marinas but very few out at sea.

We are staying anchored here until the end of next week when our guests arrive, so in the meanwhile, we are doing some maintenance and buzzing around the bay in our little dinghy to go for meals and to get internet access.

Ayvalik

Ayvalik and all the surrounding area used to be Greek until the population exchange in 1922.  Vestiges of Greek civilization still abound, with Greek style houses, a large cathedral on the hill (now being used as a museum) and little derelict churches on hillocks and on the little islands in the bay. It is sad to think that people were forced to leave their homes and everything except what they could carry and move to a different country. Of course, an equal number of Turks were displaced from their homes in Lesbos and Crete and were resettled here.

Abandoned church on a hillside

Traditional house 

This season seems to be the “Season of Fixing”. Since we left Leros in the middle of May, we have had few days when we haven’t had something to fix, including the generator, alternator, rusted screws on stanchion bases, fridges, DVD player and dinghy engine ……. One good result of this is that we are really getting to know the  internal workings of all our equipment!.

That’s all for now folks.  Fair winds and safe passage.

May 2016

After two wonderful weeks, catching up with family in Florida, it was back to Greece for us. We arrived in Athens on Good Friday and joined the Easter procession (essentially a funeral for The Lord),  from the church just near our hotel in the Plaka district, following the epitaphio (the flower-covered  bier, in which a tapestry of the dead Christ is carried) around the block, in the shadow of the lit-up Parthenon.  There are so many churches in Athens and we watched another two processions pass by.

Easter procession under the Parthenon.

Celebrations were in full force, with lamb on the spit throughout the Plaka district.

Lamb on the spit in the road, Plaka, Athens

We arrived in Leros on a Sunday, when the shipyard is closed.  They had left a key for  us at the local taverna and a ladder under the boat so we were all set to go.  Artemis V was not looking too bad after her winter “on the hard”.  Her woodwork needed some work and she needed polishing.  The only problem we found was that the trailing end of her rudder had delaminated during the winter (no doubt related to a whale strike some years earlier).  Fortunately the shipyard has excellent tradesmen. While they fixed the rudder, we set about stripping and varnishing the woodwork and polishing the hull and deck.  It took us ten days to get her looking shipshape.  We worked most of the day but around 6pm. it was off to the taverna for a delicious home cooked meal and a glass of local beer. One of the highlights of our stay in the shipyard was a bus trip to the main town of Lakki.  We got onto the bus and with Greek music blaring, off we went.  There were only two old ladies on the bus at that stage.   We stopped in a small village for yet another old lady. She was having difficulty climbing up the large steps, so the bus driver said “Come on dear, lift your skirt higher so I can see what you have”. She replied “It won’t make any difference as it is hidden very deep and you wouldn’t know what to do with it in any case”.  On we went, passing houses growing vegetables in their gardens, saw the occasional donkey and goat and of course, many little churches.  Leros is a very beautiful island, with high hills, complete with a large crusader castle on one, dominating the island. To the side of the castle are several old windmills standing sentry over the bays below, where the little white villages tumble down to the sea.   As with just about every island in this area, there is a church to St. Ilias on the crest of the highest hill.  St. Ilias was a fisherman who went through a very bad storm and prayed that if he survived, he would leave the sea and go to the highest mountain and build a church.  He did survive, took is oar and walked uphill until the village folk no longer recognized what an oar was and there he built a church.

When we got to Lakki, the bus driver gave me a gardenia flower and said “When you want to return, just wave me down anywhere along the route and I will stop for you”.

Although there is still a UNICEF refugee camp in Lakki, most of the refugees have left and there are now only 600 on the island.  We saw few of them wondering around.

Lakki is unusual for the Dodecanese, in that it has many Italian style buildings, built by Mussolini during the Italian occupation. The locals are proud of their uniqueness and some are still building in this style.

Artemis V went into the water with no mishaps and after getting the sails up, we set course for Leipsi. 

Artemis V going into the water

The little harbour is very sheltered and we dropped anchor in front of the delightful little village, typical of the Cyclades.  The houses are whitewashed rock with little blue shutters and rise up from the seafront to a large church at the top of the hill.  We walked up the stepped roads and found a little granny running a small bakery shop. She insisted on giving us an extra roll as a gift when we bought our loaf of bread which had been baked in her traditional wood fired oven.    She told us that she starts work at 12.30 a.m. to have her produce ready for the morning opening of her shop and she had been doing this since she was 17 years old! Leipsi is one of those places where I felt I could stay awhile and just chill out with the slow rhythm of village life.

Boats in Leipsi port

Beach taverna, Leipsi

From Leipsi we left for Patmos, the island where St. John wrote his Revelations. We saw the cave of the Apocalypse where he dictated his works. About 1km. above the cave, on the top of the hill is the heavily fortified monastery of St. John. Because of these fortifications, the monks managed to resist Ottoman occupation. The architecture of the monastery is beautiful, with little courtyards and arches everywhere.  It has a wonderful little museum with some truly valuable artifacts.  They had an El Greco painting, Icons dating from 1100 b.c. and papyrus bibles dating from 900 b.c.  Sadly, only 15 old  monks remain and over the last years, they have had no new recruits.

Surrounding the monastery is the little town of Chora, also whitewashed but with the distinctive stone window and door architraves, a feature of the island of Patmos.

View from the monastery of St. John, Patmos

Inside the monastery

On the island of Levitha, we anchored in a very sheltered little cove, waiting for some heavy weather to improve.  On this island, there is only one family.  They have occupied the island for the last 300 years and farm sheep and goats. 

Residents of Levitha

  For the last 30 years they have run a taverna in the back yard of their farmhouse and serve local goat and lamb.  The rough stone walls around the farmhouse are topped with large shell encrusted pieces of amphorae that they have found in the bays around the island and there is an ancient grave stelae leaning against a wall.  The family tell us that there used to be a pottery works here in ancient times and on our walk around we found numerous pieces of broken pottery – handles and rims of amphorae. We left them all behind as it is illegal to remove any ancient artifacts from the country. They also had a part of a column from the old Venetian castle which is situated on the top of the island.

 They have put in mooring buoys for passing yachts for which they charge a minimal fee.  Getting back to the dock after dinner is interesting. One needs a torch and you have to follow the white paint marks they have put onto the rocks to find your way back in the dark.  The goats around us did not seem to have the same problem we had walking around in the dark.

We  decided to return to Leipsi  as we knew a Meltemi was on the way.  It was a very wise decision as the wind howled and howled.  We were well tucked into the little harbour and enjoyed our time at the tavernas instead of braving the seas.

We  arrived on the island of Samos, and,  for the first time this month, we had perfect winds – 20 kn. on the quarter with small seas and Artemis V hummed along at around 8kn. She was happy and so were we. Now, further north in the Aegean and closer to Turkey, we are seeing more trees and greener hills.  The rainfall in this part of the Aegean is much better.  

We spent a lovely day, touring this beautiful island.  The views from the coastal road are pretty spectacular, from the high cliffs around us to far islands, dotted like jewels in the blue Aegean sea.  We went to the quaint, although touristy village of Manolatos and from there walked along the donkey tracks towards the next village. 

Residents of village of Manolatos, Samos

  

Walking to the waterfall, Samos

We aborted the walk when it became very steep and we realized that we would have to go down into the valley and then back up and instead drove through the forest to see a waterfall. When the road petered out, we walked, first past an extremely old church and then on to the start of a gorge.  We never got to the waterfall as we would have had to wade through the river, neck deep and we had no swimming costumes with us, so instead, we climbed a rickety set of extremely steep steps up to a taverna in the middle of the forest, on a steep cliff, where a harassed old man was trying to serve all the young backpackers who had left their packs there to wade to the waterfall.

One does anything to get to a taverna!

View from the taverna, worth the climb!

From Samos it was on to Ikaria, the island where Iccarus was supposed to have come down to earth when his wings, made of feathers and wax, melted as he flew too close to the sun! The port was tiny and we had to raft up alongside our friends, three boats next to each other. It was nerve-racking getting out the next morning, as there was very little space to manoevre and the wind had come up. The sail to Mykonos was brisk, with wind gusting to around 28kn. and at one stage, we reached 10.4kn.  We anchored in a quiet little bay, enjoying frappe in the beach taverna and a long walk along the bay to a little village with just two tavernas.

We returned to Samos today to check out of the EU so that we do not end up overstaying our Schengen visa.  Tomorrow it is off to Kusadasi, Turkey.