So once upon a time, many moons ago, I had a day off. Yes, I know the point of a blog is to write your daily endeavours, and I’m two weeks behind… so what? But back to the story, on this day off, the final day off with the other students myself and Fiona decided that we wanted to go to Gideros, a small picturesque town outside of Cide, known for its fish restaurants, beach, and beauty. We couldn’t convince anyone besides Gwen to come with us, as some of the survey teams surveyed the Gideros caves and therefore had seen all there was to see.
One of the team directors, Claudia, was able to drop us off outside of a pansion and restaurant and we began our day of relaxation from there. The restaurant was right on the water with a roof of vines with ripe grapes you could pick off and eat. It overlooked a quiet bay with a few small rowboats out on the calm waters, on the other side of the bay was the beach where we would spend the remainder of the day. Myself and Fiona ordered the fish we had been craving for weeks now and is so famous in the Black Sea, Gwen ordered beef Kofte (meatballs grilled) as she is not a fan of fish. The fish was small mackerel lightly battered and fried, absolute perfection on a plate! It reminded me of all the mackerel I would catch and eat as a kid in Nova Scotia. I would just die for some smoked mackerel right now! After our delicious supper and a quick photoshoot of the scenery we began our walk to the beach… but not before I stopped to change into my bathing suit in the pansion’s bathroom. Now by this point I am very used to peeing in a whole on the ground, so that is not what was so blogworthy about this bathroom visit. However, I did have a guest with me in the toilet, a very tiny and poisonous scorpion! Fiona who used the bathroom after me actually discovered it. I then had to go through my bag which had been sitting on the floor as I changed just to make sure none of his friends decided to come for a ride.
Fiona, me and fishies!
Vines!
As we begun to carry on our way I saw the ground beneath my feet move, inches from stepping on a long snake in sandals. Just our luck! The snakes in this area of Turkey, however, are not poisonous but our multi-legged friend was! The smaller the scorpion the more poisonous the sting!
Although I have managed two weeks of intense hiking and mountain climbing through the Turkish heat, for some reason today the heat got to me and I felt like the road to the beach would never end. We walked the road overlooking the bay until we reached the other side, stopping to take the lovely photo you will see below!
The beach was not nearly as nice as Cide, but it was nice to expore and be somewhere new. Outside of the tourist area we felt a little out of place in our bikinis so we decided to further explore and find a more secluded spot to enjoy the sun and water. I think we drew even more attention to ourselves by scaling and climbing over the large rocks above the beach, we must have looked insane, but since this is what we do every day we work, it seemed quite natural. Eventually we found a nice spot with some large flat rocks to sit on. The water itself was perfect temperature, but visibility was poor and there were hundreds of jellyfish so I was the only one who made it into the waters, and I’ll admit my snorkelling endeavour was fairly short due to all the jellies. However it was just enough to refresh and all in all it was a lovely quiet day off! After our swim we headed home to finish our day with some Limmy’s Show, which has become the official show of the project. I suggest it to anyone who enjoys very random Scottish humour!
That’s all for no folks, next up the awaited post on Extensive survey highlights!
Aurora
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