A country of contrasts

Marmaris, Bodrum & Paridise, Turkey

It was getting close to the end of our cruising season and we wanted to see a little bit of Turkey before taking Berkeley East into her new winter home. We had been told that the southern Aegean coast was heaven, but we needed to go north, so we started in the middle and moved slowly North towards Didim. What we found was not at all what we expected of Turkey. Everywhere we looked, we saw contrasts and contradictions.

Marmaris was a modern town full of British tourists on holiday. The harbor side was lined with non-descript restaurants, nightclubs and gulets (traditional sailing vessel), lots and lots of gulets.

For just 20 Turkish Lira (about $10 US Dollars) one could hop on a gulet from 10 am until 4 pm, visit beaches and have lunch. One particular gulet played Celene Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” from the film “Titanic” every day, at eardrum-shattering volume, as it left the harbor with passengers lined up to pose on the bow like Kate Winslet did in the movie. Everyone was having a blast and it was cute, the first time. But this town is also a cruiser’s dream, with huge anchorages, marinas, boat yards, marine stores and workshops. A boat can pull into Marmaris and just days, or even hours, later have repairs completed, new canvas made, whatever one might need. We quickly discovered that Turkey is clearly much more modern than we expected and far less conservative than we realized.

Bodrum is also a modern city, but with historic sights to balance out the new city. The disparity here is between the partying and the praying. Some people pray five times a day in Turkey and the prayer is announced with singing over loud speakers, beginning just before dawn. But it appears that the Turks are also big partiers and some coastal towns, including Bodrum, have discos that rock until the wee hours of the morning, often stopping just in time for the 5:30 am prayer. We wonder how they sleep.

As we traveled about, we saw more and more paradoxes:

Dramatic green mountains covered with boxy white holiday homes.

People in conservative clothes surrounded by casually dressed tourists.

Pride in the Turkish flag, yet four out of five vessels fly the Stars and Stripes (to avoid a large luxury tax).

A delicious meal of lamb cooked in a traditional clay pot can be followed by coffee at Starbucks.

Strict anti-pollution regulations for boaters, but endless fish farms impacting Turkey’s beautiful bays.

Nearly 74 million people in Turkey and more boats than we’ve ever seen, yet still a sense of peace and isolation. We spent our last boating days of the season at anchor in a bay called Paradise, a fitting end to our brief introduction to Turkey and a good place to start again next year.