Cleopatra wuz here

After more than a week of being a beach bum on the southern shores of Turkey, I headed inland and east to Pamukkale.  Puh-moo-kuh-lay.  Turkish words have fairly even accents on each syllable, so however tempted you are to say Puh MOO kuh lay or PUH moo kuh lay or Puh moo kuh LAY, that isn't the way.  The word "kale" is all over the place, in place names, on car dealerships, on all kinds of signs.  I finally found out in Pamukkale what it means - fortress.  And "pamu" means cotton.  Are you dying for me to make my point already?

Sailing the Sapphire Seas

A few years ago, I came across a piece of travel porn. It was a gorgeous catalog full of beautiful photos of amazing customized trips that the company organized. The only one that ever really appealed to me was called "Sailing the Sapphire Seas" and involved traveling along Turkey's Mediterranean coast in a gullet, which is a traditional Turkish sailboat. The whole point was to hug the coast, popping into the numerous small bays and coves that are only accessible by sea, hang out on the boat, and eat. Doesn't it sound great?

Lagoons and Ghost Towns

The tourist season on Turkey's Mediterranean coast starts April 1, and I arrived on April 2.  After three days of checking out the remains of the three prehistoric volcanoes that created Cappadocia's landscape, I escaped to Fethiye with its warm weather, cool breezes, and harbor full of yachts and sailboats.  And it only took a 13 hour bus ride to get here!

Fairies or something else?

While still in Istanbul, I went to the Cemberlitas Hamami because, as my faithful readers know, I like hamams.  I was quite excited to check this one out because it was designed by Sinan, an Ottoman sultan's go-to architect, and built in 1584.  This hamam is swank, folks.  It's not cheap and the clientele seems to be mostly tourists, but they supply you with everything: lockers, sandals, towels, even a new pair of panties, which you keep, of course (and they're not even terrible granny panties). 

Cisterns and Simit

Merhaba from Istanbul! I'm still in a semi-zombie state due to waking up at 3am four days ago and staying up until 5am two days ago. I am way too old for those kinds of circadian shenanigans. That has not stopped from me from making pretty valiant sightseeing efforts here nor from really liking Istanbul so far. So scenic! So historic! So stylish! So clean! This is the cleanest city of 15 million I've seen, and I abhor litter bugs so I strongly approve of the civic spirit of tidiness.

Downtime at the airport

It's 4:00am and I'm waiting out the night at the Cairo airport.  Today was my last day in Egypt, and I'll be in Istanbul in about 8 hours or so.  I would prefer not to keep too accurate a sense of that countdown.

Diving into another world

After leaving Siwa, I traveled from the far west of Egypt to the far east to Dahab- by bus! It really wasn't that bad, but 20 hours of bus travel gets old. Luckily, Dahab is nothing if not relaxing. It's on the Red Sea in the Sinai Peninsula, and you can even see Saudi Arabia from here (perhaps the closest I'll ever get to the land of Mecca). I'm no expert, but it really doesn't feel like Egypt. This may sound terrible, but it's just so clean. Except for rubbish along the shore and in the lagoons, which is a real shame because the shore drops off into some fantastic coral reefs that have taken a real beating over the last decade from divers and snorklers tromping all over them. Also, EVERYONE in Dahab speaks English and they speak it pretty fluently, which is different from the other places I've been in Egypt. But the vendors here in Dahab are inordinately pleased when I bust out a "hamdullah" which means "praise god" and is used extensively in conversational Arabic.

One of the people I met in Siwa, Andrew, was also heading to Dahab, so we shared the knee-numbing journey here. It turns out Andrew and I were unwitting neighbors back in San Francisco, and now we are roommates here in Dahab, sharing an ocean view room right on the Red Sea.

Dahab's beach isn't really a beach - it's more like a low wall of rocks with open air lounge restaurants covering the length of it. And there are loads of dive sites that you just walk to from the shore. So upon my good pal Jackie's recommendation, I decided to do the Advanced Open Water diving course here in Dahab. After a refresher dive to make sure I hadn't forgotten everything relating to scuba, I did 5 dives over the last two days, including a night dive and a deep dive to 30m in a site called the Canyon, a name which gives the game away. I also did a dive yesterday where you descend down a chimney-like hole for 26 meters or so, swim along a massive reef wall where you can't even see the bottom of the ocean, then come into the Blue Hole, which is also aptly named, a large circular formation with a depth of 110m.  I mentioned that the coral has really suffered here, but there is still a fair amount of interesting life to see, including cuttlefish and spanish dancers. But the physical structure of some of these dives have been pretty stupendous and alone worth getting in the water.

On that last dive, I noticed that my regulator just didn't want to stay in my mouth in the way you would prefer your link to life-giving air to do so. Regulators have a bit-like piece of plastic to hold it in place in your mouth, and I began to realize that there was only one on one side of my mouth and it felt very unstable. It was my first equipment failure in scuba! Luckily, you always have another, so I switched out, no harm done. But I still don't know what happened to that other piece. Did it fall off between dives? Did I somehow swallow it? I think I would have noticed, but there's lots of other things to think about when you're on such a lovely dive.

Tomorrow or tonight, depending on your viewpoint, at half past three in the morning, I'm heading on another dive trip, to a WW2 era ship called the Thistlegorm with an added dive in a marine reserve after that. And then one more day here in relaxed Dahab until I begin the journey to Istanbul via Sharm el Sheik and Cairo.

I'll have to come back to Egypt someday since I missed so much, but inshallah, I shall. And if anyone has recommendations of places to see outside of Istanbul in Turkey, please let me know. I haven't planned anything and I have more than three weeks there.

On a sadder note, my dear cousin Sarah is no longer with us.  Her husband, her daughter, and her family - my family - are very much in my thoughts now.  Please take care of yourselves and treasure each day, folks.  We really don't know how long we have, which is exactly why I'm taking this trip now.  Sarah understood that and wherever she's diving now, I hope she's smiling and laughing, as she always did in this world.

Love and light to you all,
Monica