A birthday, Christmas and New Year in Turkey

Our winter berth – Karaca Söğüt, near Marmaris, Turkey

On Andy’s birthday we had a 2.5 hour Turkish bath (hammam) together; brilliant!

Followed by a narghile (pipe), Raki and tavla (backgammon)

Newly arrived from Paris – Emily, Judy, Sam, Jean-Paul

First of 2 day’s sailing

All happy on board!

The shore party went to look at Cleopatra's beach

Another amazing sunset over the gulf of Gokova

Christmas eve – the hammam treatment for our guests ...

... after which Sam had now stopped “looking grey”, according to Judy!

Christmas day

Sam and Emily each posed thier "excited" look. Note the tree – one of the few in the whole of secular/Muslim Turkey

er... scary!

Sam was up late the night before making Emily’s backpack

We walked to this spooky place, we'd called “Sam’s bay” ...

... as featured in the beautiful, great Turkish film Mutluluk’(which we saw after Judy et al went home).

We hired a car to go east to Dalyan...

...Chartered a boat and ...

...Saw the volcanic springs

Weird stuff growing in the water there! (anyone out there know what this is?!)

The famous Lycian tombs at Dalyan, near the large Roman settlement of Kaunos

The theatre seated around 5000.

Only 6 today; for lunch.

Sam and Jean Paul climbed up to the fort

The estuary to the ancient port has, as usual, silted up since Roman times

The last meal together in rainy Muğla – a great 6 days of Christmas fun!

A quite night for two on New Year’s eve in the marina restaurant.

Cleaning sails on the tennis court tp be ready for packing up Deep Blue in 2 weeks time for our UK/China trip away.

Still morning swims!