Sun, Sea and Sand

27.08.2010 0 °C

Well from Selcuk we made a short by our standards 1 1/2 hour trip out to the coast and are staying in Ciftlikkoy a small fishing village on the Agean Coast with a view of Chios a Greek Island which is a mere 7 km away though a rather expensive $70 pp boat trip.

They seem to like cows in Cesme - so Holly's happy

The town has a nice feel to it and we have a house which is about a 3 minute walk into the village - handy when you don’t have a car. The house is nice the landlord a little "involved‘. On our arrival we got a full 30 mins of does and don‘t as well as a folder full of accompanying instructions what to do if you squash a mosquito on the wall and it leaves a mark and a reminder to take care with the kitchen knives as they take no responsibility should you cut yourself. Anyway it's clean and comfortable and most importantly has air conditioning. However we are finding that we are not needing to use it so much here as the temp is down to a pleasant 35 degrees and there is a relatively strong 'see breeze' most days - the first day the kids were unable to stand up down at the waterfront. Funny how we have become acclimatised - we were running the air conditioning overnight at 18 degrees, that has now crept up to 25 degrees with Matt still finding it too cold with Bella and I and so moving into the next room. Not sure how we’ll survive at home - we'll probably be the only family in Richmond running our fire all summer.

Ciftlikkoy Village

Sunrise over the fishing boats

Ciftlikkoy is part of the Cesme peninsula and there are 4 or five different beaches to choose from. Our favourite is Altinkum which is a short 10 trip in the Dolmus (like small buses) costing 2.5 Lira per adult, kids are free. So this week is about chilling at the beach. The kids are enjoying themselves, Toby and Bella are less keen on the salty water and sand but each day are enjoying it a little more. Toby is as brown as and looks like the real surfy dude. We have always joked that he would one day work as a surf instructor In Bali but after the first windy day at the beach we were having to revise our thoughts and picture him teaching surfing indoor at a wave pool. The beach is stunning and as usual we are almost the first there - our tendency is to go about 9am and head home at 1pm for Bellie to have a sleep and to get out of the hottest part of the day. lt seems that the beaches here don't start to up until after 2pm. We have met a couple of lovely families from Istanbul at the beach, we've enjoyed chatting to people who speak relatively good english and the kids have enjoyed playing with other kids “with toys" as opposed to the couple of empty water bottles we gave them to play with (and they had a lot of fun I might add)

The Dolmus

Antinkum Beach

Where did that wave come from Holly?

Sand Angels?

Tob looking buff

Bellie you have a bit of sand on your face

Where's Holly?

There are some great ideas NZ could use from here - for example, the village has a small one way loop road and it is set up with these road spike things that go down when you drive the correct way round. Should you make a mistake however you ruin a couple of tyres - I have seen the results of that once since we arrived - very definitive! Last night we had a beautiful fresh meal - fun as we got to choose our fish and after some discussion it was taken away to be prepared for us. Not a cheap meal at $47 a kg but beautiful and scoffed down by the three little Watson’s leaving very little for Mum and Dad - ahh the sacrifices you make for love!

Selecting a fish for dinner - Toby said - “we should bring Poppa he’d like it here"

We are heading to Izmir for the weekend to watch NZ play Lithuania in the world basketball champs. As you can imagine Matt is very excited and reckons we’re bound to get on TV as there will be few NZ supporters and we’ll be dressed in our NZ gear. I’m thinking we might too but only because Bellie decides she’s had a “guts full” and runs onto the court mid game. Sad to report one of her front teeth is starting to turn grey - and it is the one that was whole still - damn! lucky she’s cute. Her vocab is coming along at a rate she had us all in hysterics the other day when she passed some wind and then announced “bubbles”.

From Ismir it’s back out this way to Cesme for a week another nice town to explore. The biggest hassle is carting all our luggage round even though we only have two bags one of them is pretty much full of warm clothes that we don’t touch but need to wear home. Oh, and my running gear - not sure what the hell I was thinking - walking is as much as I can manage in this heat!

Forgot to mention Molly’s first squat toilet experience the other day. There was the intrigue of why they had “cut off the toilets” and then the exclamation when she discovered her stream was not direct-able and the fits of giggles at trying to keep her shoes dry and me clinging to her to prevent any slipping down the hole mishaps.

Holly and Toby are enjoying each others company, not that they have much choice really but they are good little friends and Holly tries to Mother Tob through the odd strop that he pulls. We had to laugh the other day though they were walking down the street Holly with her arm over his shoulder looking like they were in the middle of world peace negotiations and all the local people smiling and thinking “how nice”. However when we enquired we were informed that Holly was just checking Toby wasn’t going to ask for the Bakugan toy back that he had given her.

World peace talks