The towers on the hill

Starting up

Marina on the bottom left, Marmaris harbor and town in the middle and Iҫmeler off in the distance.

Looking down on the town fountain and clock tower.

DoraMac in the middle of the first two docks on the right

There she is though now we’re moved up into the space in front of us as a stage was set up on the walkway just next to us here in the photo for a private LOUD musical night.  The marina felt it would be better for us and the event if we weren’t so close to the stage and the crowd. 

Master and student

Duck in a drawer

It kept opening and closing its beak as if trying to say something.

The rest of the ducks were just doing normal duck things.

This morning at 8 am Randal took me on the motorbike to meet Patricia in Iҫmeler where she lives and where we would start hiking.  To start hiking any later would have made most of the hike in the heat of the day.  As it was we finished about 12:45.

Patricia told me the sign prohibited bee keeping along the trail; you see hives lots of places when you hike, but not here so I guess the sign worked.

A hazy view as Patricia and I started hiking.

A tortoise nest and some hatched eggshells.  I’d never see that before but Patricia has several tortoises in her yard so she knows.  They keep making more tortoises so one day she will round up most of them and take them to a safe place in the woods. 

Patricia had asked him if he would mind giving us a ride across the stream and he offered to drive us across all of the streams.

We sat behind the driver. After climbing up it was tricky trying to figure out what to do with my backpack as the seat is pretty narrow.  I would have loved a photo of us on the tractor, but didn’t want to hold him up mucking about for my camera.  I’d buried it deep in my pack for the walk across the stream in case I slipped and landed in the water.

It was ankle deep and wide with no stepping stones, even if I had the balance so a ride across was nice.

This was the third stream?  I can’t remember how many we crossed.

Our pal was waiting for his cousin with a backhoe who was delivering a load of rubble stuff to take to a house/olive farm/goat farm we’d passed just before arriving at the first stream.  I learned all about it because after the tractor man had his load, he drove off and Patricia and the man driving the backhoe had a lengthy conversation about his life and that he would soon be retired at age 50 something and he had 3 grandkids who had named all of the goats on the farm we’d passed.  He also lived in Iҫmeler.

Patricia’s command of Turkish is really very impressive.

We actually met friends of Patricia’s.

Patricia is the blond in pink and it would have been nice if I’d taken a photo of her face rather than her back.  The woman in blue had been in Patricia’s Turkish class several years ago but had moved back to England.  So she was just here visiting.  She and her friend were serious runners.  They had to be to bike from Beldibi up the hill to where the hike started in Armutalan and then hike an additional piece before hiking down to Siteler or Iҫmeler, I can’t remember which.  Strong women!

We did the barefoot thing here for the second time.  When we got to the next stream we just walked through it.  I was tired of doing the shoes on and off thing and it was not as deep or as wide.  Patricia and I finished our hike and caught a dolmus back to Marmaris where we had lunch and a drink and by then it was 2:30 and time for her hair appointment.  If there’s time next week we’ll do another hike.