Turunç

Friday 5th October

I adore that ten or fifteen minutes just before the sun comes up. It is daylight but, as yet, there is no sign of the sun – the horizon is still bluey-grey, the sea is flat and calm and the air is still. There are no sounds from the other residents but in the distance is the occasional gunshot from a local hunter and a few muted sounds drift up from the restaurant below as the staff start their early morning duties. Bees, wasps and other insects are going about their business almost silently. The only real noise is the distant crowing of a cock in the valley, the chirping of birds waking up in their nests and the bleating of goats somewhere up on the mountain. The stars are still twinkling in a pale blue sky and the, now, crescent moon is still clearly visible directly above. It is a beautiful time of day.

I was woken by Debrah getting up to go to the loo and then couldn’t get back to sleep because my shoulder was aching and I was afraid of waking Debrah in my attempts to get comfortable. Sitting here typing, my arm doesn’t hurt at all.

Slowly the horizon takes on an orange hue and then the sun almost charges up over the horizon, it comes up so quickly. At first it is muted by the mist and haze lying close to the water and it is very easy to look directly at it. The water in the bay reflects its amber tones. As it climbs higher it imperceptibly brightens. Each time you look at it you have to adjust your eyes to its glare more pronouncedly and each look becomes more of a glance. The first boat motors round the headland and the first car is heard driving down the road. The birdsong gets louder and the insect activity multiplies tenfold. Ten minutes after it has risen it is impossible to look directly at the sun.

After the thunder and lightning of the previous night’s storm there is debris littered everywhere – leaves and twigs and flower petals are strewn about the terrace and a large amount of dead insects that clearly didn’t survive the battering. Yet, looking up at the cloudless sky and the sun slowly climbing into it over a calm and peaceful sea, you wouldn’t have believed there had been a storm at all. The gulet and the cruiser are back at their moorings and look ready for another day of slipping in and out of the bays up and down the coast. When I get down to breakfast there is just one broken palm tree as evidence of the night before – the pool is absolutely spotless, the lounger cushions and towels are in place and the breakfast tables are laid in their pristine white tablecloths. It is as it should be but it is impressive nonetheless.

We spend the morning catching up on computer stuff but are ultimately frustrated by the slow speed of the internet connection. We eat at the bar and continue to read and swim and generally do what one is supposed to do on holiday – not a lot really. In late afternoon we adjourn to the hammocks situated in the gardens down below the pool and drop off for an hour or so.

We take the 7.00pm minibus into Turunç, our first visit to the town in the next bay along. All the shops are still open which is good news for Debrah as she has run out of cigarettes and has been without hair conditioner for a week, which I believe is some sort of crisis. We walk the town, which doesn’t take long. It consists of one long street with shops and restaurants on both sides and the parallel beachside path with restaurants on one side and the beach on the other.

Meanwhile in the street the kids were playing football and riding around on their bikes, dodging the mopeds and ‘taksis’ that passed up and down. There seemed to be a huge number of cats in the town and Debrah spotted one rat making a dash for it from one side of the road to the other.


Most of the bars advertise the English Premiership matches that will be shown live over the coming weekend (you can watch more live games here than in the UK) and a couple are advertising the Rugby World Cup matches, especially the England v Australia game. I am tempted to come back the next day but decide against it – I think my compatriots would probably annoy me and I expect England to lose.

We did a fly-by of every restaurant in town with varying levels of hassle from the staff – some ignored us, some made polite attempts to get us to come in to their establishment and one man tried very hard. “Hello, my name is John, you are my very good friends and very welcome”. We politely decline. “Very good food, very good price, my good friends”, he intoned ‘Good’ was a word he used a lot. We thought we had shaken him off but as we doubled back down the main road he came back out of the other side of the restaurant, which clearly went all the way through to the beach. “Lovely couple, you come eat here, very good food, very good price”. No, you are trying to hard.

We chose a place called Pisces, partly because they made no attempt at all to get us to come in and, then, later on they made no attempt at all to serve us any dessert or coffee. In between though we had a lovely dinner and a good bottle of wine. My starter, ‘manti borek’ was very good – a lightly spiced filo pastry meat pie with yoghurt. The lamb shanks I had as a main course were extremely tender and the rosemary seemed less harsh than that we use in England. It was all delicious.

We took a ‘taksi’ back to the hotel and had a nightcap to end another lovely day away.