From Sea to Turquoise Sea

It would have been easy to stay in Bodrum for a bit longer.  Lovely small city on the coast.  Fascinating castle that housed the underwater archaeological museum. Lots of finds from shipwecks, including one dating back to the 4th century B.C.!  Good restaurants, even places to get "real" coffee – Turkish coffee sounds good until you try it.  I’m sorry, but I prefer the grounds to be filtered out of my coffee J 

The next two days involved sizable hills on rough pavement but the destinations proved to be worth the effort. We started Saturday morning with a two hour ferry ride across the bay to the Dacta peninsula, where our bike route took us from the Aegean to the Mediterranean. We lunched in Old Dacta – a tiny village that had been quite run down but has experienced a rebirth due to the efforts of some architects and artisans who have made it their home. 

In Old Dacta we enjoyed a typical "family style" lunch of eggplant salad, broad beans in yogurt sauce, a salad made with mushrooms and fresh (i.e., not dried into nuts) almonds, and baked eggplant stuffed with meat.  And bread, of course.  Always bread and plenty of it at every meal.

We spent Saturday night in cottages near the (rock) beach in Palamut - our first night on the Mediterranean. 

Sunday was our toughest riding day.  Sixty miles and several challenging climbs.  We passed old windmills at one spot along the way.  They must have picked the right spot because just behind them (not pictured) were modern windmills that have been erected in the past few years.

A typical rest stop and other scenes from along the way.

At one of the summits we reached that day you could see both the Aegean and the Mediterranean in the same view.  It’s not all that visible in this picture because the wind was calm and the ocean humidity created a haze.  We took a group shot to memorialize this "peak" moment.  From left to right, in front: our Turkish guide Firat, Dawn the Invincible, me; in rear: Bob, Mary, Nancy, our guides John and Danelle, Audrey, Marilyn, Jenny and Louise.  Everyone except me and Firat is from British Columbia.  Not pictured are Lima and Ken, our other guides who spend half the year in BC and half the year in Turkey doing sailing charters on their 50' sailboat.  

It was still a ways to our destination in Selimiye but there was nothing to complain about once we arrived. [No, there's nothing wrong with my feet - it's just the tan lines from my biking sandals.]

We stayed two nights in this small village that seems to draw a bit of tourist business during the high season, based upon the types of shops and restaurants it offered. We could have done a bike ride on this layover day but decided to go shopping instead, and spend time swimming and chilling on the dock.