My Marina in Caunos – the Kids are Exposed to Fine Dining

Our experience so far is that we have either no wind or lots of wind, not much in between. Here we are on November 2^nd powering from Marmaris to Caunos. We left Marmaris around noon. It took a while to pay (this is a BIG marina and their cash control is you get the invoice from one person and then go pay at the cashier, bring the receipt back, and then are given clearance. Sounds cumbersome but if you saw the 6 inch high stacks of 50 Euro notes in their cash area, you’d appreciate they’re operating with tens of thousands of Euros of cash every day … a pretty good business I’d say.

As I’ve said before, a good cruising sailboat has to be a number of things including being a good powerboat. We cruise along at between 7 and 8 knots – a little faster if we want to put up with the noise. Our destination was only 20 miles away and we just throttled up and made it in a couple of hours. When we arrived we had a debate whether we anchor out or tie up at a small marina called My Marina. The bay was completely exposed to the South and deep – 20 to 30 meters, so we opted to tie up at the marina. Perhaps we were lured by “free if you eat dinner at the restaurant” pitch as well.

There was one other boat at the dock so it was a great opportunity for Marina to bring the boat into the dock. It has laid moorings (anchors on the bottom that are led by lines to the dock, so she needed to back into the slip, tie the stern lines on while Ross pulls up the laid mooring line with the boathook and attaches it to the bow (all the while being aware to not run over anything with the prop). As usual she did a great job as did her crew and we tied up securely to the dock. My Marina is a lovely place, quiet (maybe because it’s November) but immaculately manicured, with interesting buildings, very nice docks and crystal clear water. We arrived early enough for a swim and we dove off the boat into the water. While the water is getting cooler, it’s still warmer than it ever gets in English Bay or in Centre Bay Gambier Island or most certainly – Parker Island. After drying off and getting dressed we went up to the restaurant.

It was the kids’ first experience with fine dining with many waiters filling up glasses, several sets of silverware, etc. We had a couple of appetizers and a few entrees that we all shared, followed up with deserts and coffee. It was a wonderful meal and the kids behaved perfectly. I’m not sure that we want to be taking them out to this level of place on a regular basis, but it was fun to see their eyes pop out at the service and how nice the experience was.

The next day we were picked up in a small tourist boat for our trip to the city of Dalyan, the ancient city of Caunos, tombs carved in rock, and the mud-baths. We were like tourists for the first time in a while.

Jessies Blue Crab Necklace

The tour started heading past a beautiful cave (apparently if you swim there with a partner you’ll be married within a year). That didn’t appeal to Ross & Jessie or the two German guys that were on the tour with us. Next we stopped at the river estuary to see some resident sea turtles. The guide was fishing for turtle with blue crabs – and while we didn’t see a turtle we did end up buying 3 blue crabs for an appetizer for dinner that night. As we wound up the river we went through miles of estuary with bull rushes. The river wound its way with no particular mind as to its track. After a few miles of this we came to the old town of Caunos.

We disembarked our boat and went ashore to explore the ruins. Hellenistic (Greek), Roman and Byzantine and Ottoman – each successive conqueror would build their city on top of the old one.  Apparently the mantra “location, location, location” applied to real-estate thousands of years ago as it does today. We explored the ruins of a large amphitheatre, of some temples, a roman bath – pretty much all by ourselves – tourist season is definitely over.

After the ruins we got back on the boat and proceeded to the Town of Dalyan for lunch. On the way we saw on the cliff face near the town amazing tombs. Gets the imagination going. Once berthed in Dalyan, our guide took us to a local restaurant where we ordered many different Turkish dishes – even Jessie tried some rice with tomato sauce on it, and there was not a bite left to be had afterwards. The girls took off to check out the shops and Ross and I enjoyed a Turkish tea (I drank the tea, he ate the sugar cubes). At 1pm we took off on the boat for the mud baths. Marina wanted to visit the mud-baths because the astute tour salesman suggested that the mud-bath would take 10 years off anyone that goes in.

We arrived at the mud baths and were treated to a beautiful facility. We changed into our oldest bathing suits and waded into the mud-pit. The mud was very fine, Jessie and I embraced it completely, Marina somewhat; Ross opted to be photographer.

They said it would "take 10 years off"

Showering off the mud is harder than you might think … the temperature and speed of the shower was reminiscent of a garden-hose on full blast through a spray gun. We helped each other clean off and then proceeded to the mineral bath (very aromatic). We got into what was very salty water almost as hot as a normal hot-tub in Canada.  The salty water made our skin feel very soft and smooth … but by the time we made it back to the boat both Marina and I were ready to have a shower.

Warm sulphur water after a cold cold shower!

That night we had another fine-dining experience – though this time without the kids along. They stayed on board the boat and listened to ‘The Help’ an audio book we bought for language arts. We have about 20 movies we can watch (each had probably been watched a dozen times) but more and more we’re not watching TV, more reading and game playing as we have found a rhythm to our cruising.

We are off to bed early, because tomorrow we’re on our way to Tomb Bay about 30 miles away, then onto Fethye and then around the corner towards Kemer. The weather is supposed to be fantastic for the next week – warm and sunny. Hopefully there will be wind.