Our week in Datça was awesome! We stayed in a Hotel which was another luxury for me, yay to no 12 bed dorms and shared showers for once! We ate out every night so I was trying lots of delicious Turkish food, actually I ate the best Köfte (Turkish Meatballs) while I was here. Datça is famous for its almonds so the Köfte was coated in almonds, HEAVEN! All the beaches we went to there were so clean and blue, and we drove to a different beach every day, they all had restaurants on or by the water so we alternated between sitting and relaxing at the restaurant and swimming or jumping into the water from the pontoons that all the beaches seemed to have. Another day we went out on a boat for the day, and this week was also my 23rd Birthday so basically I had the best birthday sitting by the beach on the Turkish Coast. Not a bad memory to take home.
From Kas I was able to do a day trip to the Greek Island of Meis (Kastellorizo). You catch a ferry that takes 20 minutes and, BAM! You are in another country. The Greek Islands are a dream of mine, but because I dont have enough time or funds to do them properly on this trip, spending a day on Meis was the perfect solution. And you better believe I made the most of my time there by eating Greek Salad and Yoghurt, and it tasted so much better there than anywhere else.
One thing I had discovered online that I could do there was visiting the Blue Cave. Basically I read on a couple of blogs that when I got off the ferry I should ask for Kostos at the dock and he would take me to the blue cave. So I found Kostos and ended up travelling out to the cave with a family of three from Istanbul and an American couple. When we got there, the cave entrance there was another boat there but the driver decided not to go in because the tide was so high that the entrance was only about a meter high. But my friend Kostos was going to attempt to get us in, so we all had to lye on the floor of the boat while he line up the boat with the entrance. He then blew his whistle and gunned the engine and we shot through! I screamed the whole time along with everyone else. We had to take photos really quickly as the tide was still rising and we had to get out (hence the poor quality of my cave photos). I think going out was worse because we knew what to expect. At this point I was thinking that it was highly probable that I was going back to NZ without knee caps because my knees were sticking up, then I started praying that insurance would pay for new ones if that happened. Not to worry, both knee caps and all other body parts are still accounted for, and seeing the cave was totally worth it!
After these three amazing stops along the coast I headed inland to Cappadocia. But I think this is enough awesomeness for one blog post so I will save that for another day because the stuff I did there was epic to say the least!
Besos xx