Spring in Türkiye

Now we're the right side of the equinox, the days are getting longer, and they are *hot*. There is usually bright sunshine and 25°C or more. The solar panels are keeping the batteries charged, we have plenty of power to make water, and it will soon be time to put away the Watt & Sea hydrogenerator – at least until the next cloudy passage day. Our diesel stove frequent use in February and March, but that too needs cleaning and storing for the coming summer.

We've spent April exploring between the coast between the gulf of Izmir and Ayvalık.  Despite many years of visiting our former boat Grace in Marmaris, we never made it far enough to visit this part of the Turkish coast. We'd seen places north of Bodrum that are quite industrial, with lots of fish farms and commercial shipping activity. Although there are certainly plenty of ships here and a mixture of power stations mixed with a heart-warming proliferation of onshore wind generators, so long as you don't go too near the massive city of Izmir, it is delightfully pretty. There is plenty of nature, lots of green hillsides with a variety of trees, and a welcome number of seabirds helped by a number of unpopulated small islands.

One of Foça's local pelicans

For some reason, they like to hang around the fishing harbour

Dolphins!

Every week or so, the wind has come from an inconvenient direction, so we've had to keep our eyes on the forecast and move when necessary. Occasionally there has been a little rain ("it's green for a reason"), which has annoyingly been deposited a blend of sand and yellow pollen on the boat. Sara seems to always be cleaning the windows.

The towns are well populated, and were busy for the holiday week at the end of Ramadan. The most established have charming centres built around old Ottoman and Greek buildings (Rum Evleri).

Foça

 

 

 

 

English is not widely spoken, but we can communicate well enough for the basics such as shopping, buying SIM cards, and restaurants. My Turkish has stretched to a couple of half conversations before I hit the buffers and resort to Türkçe bilmiyorum ("I don't know Turkish").

Çandari

On the way up to Ayvalık, we stopped in the islands off Bademli. There was a ruined old Haman building there built around a hot spring with some very unwelcoming green water. Walking up the beach a bit we found several natural pools of various temperatures.

This one was very warm

The bay of Ayvalık is accessed via a narrow channel, but opens out to a large natural harbour with plenty of sheltered corners. We spent several days, switching between busy towns and deserted bays. We would have liked to have stayed for longer, but needed to catch the wind to get south back to Foça so Sara could fly back to the UK for a week.

Birds guarding the end of the channel

Cunda