It’s
raining. It WAS pouring down – the sort
of rain that pours off your umbrella soaking you just as much as if you didn’t
have one. Now it has calmed down to be
just a gentle pitter-patter. It is a
sound we haven’t heard really – apart from a few drops – since May. It means I don’t need to water the garden –
hooray! But Kenny is on the boat and
Poppy the puppy is rather alarmed as she has never seen anything like it. She decided the sofa in the bar would be a
good place to sleep - until she got turfed
out. She was lying there so quietly the
other night that she got shut into the bar – for the night. When I arrived in
the morning she was howling at the door!
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| Poppy looking for a comfy place to sleep |
I’ve got a few
lessons going now and have set up the room opposite the bar as my classroom. Most of last year’s students are starting in
the next couple of weeks, plus I have a few new ones. I have wondered before about setting up a web
site for people wanting to learn turkish.
I have so much stuff that I have prepared – and at the moment it doesn’t
seem as though it will become a book (though I can’t say I have really tried
that hard to get it published).
The hotel is
winding down – though I had a new booking through this morning arriving in 3
days time! Hope the weather holds out –
it is showing sunny again from tomorrow and I guess even a little bit of rain
is going to be better than the UK.
We had a great
day with Grant and Dawn on Saturday. We
went up Babadağ – the mountain that stands above Ölüdeniz. It rises from sea level to just under 6000 feet and it is where
the paragliders who land on the beach take off from. It is supposed to be one of the best jump
sites in Europe – and you certainly would have to look hard to get a better
view.
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| Ölüdeniz - the lagoon |
The road up is
a lot better than last time I went up, though eventually they are hoping to
have a cable car going up there. The
last bit is above the tree level – this is where it gets a bit scarey because
you can see the drop at the edge of the road – but we went up in a minibus and
some people were even going up on scooters!
When you get to the top, the air is clear and clean and the views of
Buttefly Valley, Ölüdeniz beach and lagoon, St Nicholas Island and Fethiye Bay
with its scattering of islands is spectacular.
There is a cafe up there now and we had breakfast and sat for a couple
of hours watching the paragliders take off.
Some make it look very easy, some make your heart jump as they appear to
just get off. The ‘pilots’ who carry
passengers are obviously very experienced and know what they are doing. I remember from when I jumped that they tell
you to wait until they say run – and then run.
Some of the passengers are so keen their legs are still ‘running’ long
after they have taken off!
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| Take off! |
We also saw
eagles up there which was nice. They
have nests on the mountain and it really looked as though they were showing off
their flying skills. The mountain
apparently also has wolves and jackals, though I haven’t ever seen any. There are some lovely upland pastures – small
flat areas among the wooded slopes that the nomadic people use as summer
grazing for their animals. Being that
high up, you really feel like you are on top of the world and I would recommend
anyone to go up there. At the end of
this month there is the air festival at Ölüdeniz when hundreds of paragliders
from all over the world come here to display their skills. I am looking forward to that.
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| breakfast with a view! |
