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Published: October 14th 2021
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The last week of our time in Fethiye continued much like the first couple of weeks – waiting for the engine to get finished, working on some more projects on the boat, walking into town to go to the weekly market on Sundays and Fridays, eating out while the boat was torn up, relaxing at the pool during the hottest part of the day and overall enjoying our interactions with the people we meet. It has been great to make new friends wherever we are and hopefully with the use of technology we will continue to stay in touch with many of them. Time will tell of course, but even if not, we have enjoyed our encounters!
We have been very impressed with the Turkish citizens we have met. One thing is obvious is the way they treat their elderly and their children is very impressive and tells you a lot about a culture. Whenever children are around – your own or someone else’s, there are always plenty of people giving that child attention. If there is an older person and they go to get up, there is someone there to offer a hand. It really is wonderful to
see how natural it is to see others being helped without question or hesitation. A great commentary on a people and their values.
We have been here long enough that we find that many of the vendors seem to know us, even if not by name, then by sight. When we go to the fresh fruit and vegetable market each week, we always stop either to eat or just have a fresh fruit drink at the same stand. We now know “Sonny” the owner and he knows us to great us by name. This last time as we were leaving his stand he reached into his cooler and gave us 2 ice cold bottles of water to take with us and didn’t let us pay – this is the generosity we have encountered here many times. Another day we stopped to get a cold drink at a restaurant and got talking to the owner and had a lovely visit. We went to pay and he wouldn’t let us and gave it to us as a gift, again, showing the generosity of the people here. We planned on coming back to his place to eat, but when we did, we
Lamb Kabab, Kofte (Meatballs in Sauce), Bread, Ice Tea
with free watermelon provided (all for 140 TL = $15.50) must have been too early and he wasn’t open yet -we were sorry it didn’t work out for us to eat at his place.
Unfortunately, the engine took quite a bit of time to get fixed completely, but it we just learn to roll with it and enjoy where we are – and Fethiye is a great place to do that! Bob was very impressed with how the mechanic took the problem apart and worked it through to make sure everything was fixed. Once he was done with the engine and it was looking like new again, he then tackled our water system and he did the same methodical diagnosis of that system as well. Without water on the boat and the engine area being torn up it really gave us an excellent excuse to eat most of our meals off the boat. With the wonderful food available and the inexpensive prices, it was not a hard choice to make. Even after this amount of time, we still are surprised at how reasonable the price of meals are no matter if we are in town, at the marina or close to the tourist area. Yes, those areas were a
Yes, Bob Is Back to Boat Yoga
the 2nd photo shows where his head is behind engine! little more expensive, but still very reasonable. We could eat down at the market having a lamb kebab and pancake stuffed with meat (must thinner than a typical pancake in the US), and 2 fresh squeezed fruit juices for a whopping price tag of $4 or $5! As I mentioned in the last blog post eating at the marina is more expensive with a grand total of $23 for a nice meal, but even that is very inexpensive so our budget is going much farther thankfully as we still don’t know what we have to pay for the work being done on the boat! We have been wondering what the rate of pay is here in Turkey and had been told by someone that the people that work at the bar at the marina which we know work 12-16 hour days, only earn about $400 per month. We know the prices of food in the markets, but now wonder what the cost of housing and utilities are here for local residents. It would be interesting to find out more.
We know that we need to pay the mechanic in cash and there are always limits on how much you
can take out of the ATM on a daily basis so each time we walk into town, we hit up the machine. The exchange rate is such that you have to take out 1,000 TL to equal about $118 so we knew that we were going to have to take out quite a large pile of Turkish lira. As Bob said having that many 100 TL notes really does quite a job on a wallet as it makes for quite a pile of bills.
Well, we now have a fully working engine as well as running water onboard – what wonderful news that was for us! Now for the mechanic to make out the invoice for us and hopefully we have made enough trips to the ATM machine. The invoice came and we were pleased that it didn’t break the bank – as Bob said it was reasonable and we were very pleased with the quality of the work that Iglas did for us. He was thorough, was very thoughtful of us knowing that we lived onboard and the engine looks like new. His great personality and smile didn’t hurt either even though we couldn’t communicate too much it
Anyone For Some Fruit - All Fresh & Delicious
even the apples remind us of back in upstate NY! was enough to get the job done and he is now paid. Fortunately, we took enough out of the bank and even had some left over. It is interesting in that most work that is done here is quoted in Euros, but as we told him we were going to pay in Turkish lira we did the conversion and came up with 13,842 TL. That made for quite a pile as all the bills we get out of the machine are 100 or 50 TL notes. When counting out the piles into 5,000 TL it did sort of feel like I was working with monopoly money, but with knowing it was real money I was careful with the counting!
Now that the engine is fixed, the refrigerator is working, the new batteries are installed, the water system is working and we had a diver scrape the barnacles off the hull we were pretty close to leaving Fethiye. The only thing we still needed to be sure was fixed was our “family car”, better known by others as our dinghy. Bob had found a leak before and patched it but over the last few days we have been noticing that
is losing air so Bob got out the soap and water again to check for leaks. This time he found quite a big one, so patched it and decided to wait another day to be sure that was going to do it. Fortunately, it looks like this time he found them all.
A look at the weather showed us that we would have a few nice days before a storm came through. This is great as we will have a chance to do some anchoring out along our way to our winter home for Tsamaya, Marmaris. We made our last walk to the large grocery store for our last provisioning in Fethiye, went to the pool area to visit with some friends we made here. Talked to the marina manager to let him know we would be leaving on Friday morning, October 8
th and that we would need some help to get out of the tight location we were in. We also decided that we would have our breakfast on Friday morning at the marina so we didn’t have to do any cooking or clean up so we could get a decent start. Everything was falling in place for
us to move on even if only for a short distance. It will just be nice to be moving again, however, it is definitely with mixed feelings as we have really come to enjoy our time in Fethiye.
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Mumtraveller
Lynne Brown
Market heaven
It’s a joy to read your blog again.... I tend to save them up and treat them like a box set to follow your travels - especially good on a grey damp English day ! Love all the photos of the market , and it’s so nice to read about the generosity of people. Now that the engine and water is fixed I’m looking forward to sailing on with you .