Day 137 - 18th September, Friday, Rhodes to Turkey.

What a long, but very enjoyable day. We set off about 5:45am and reached Rhodes port by about half six. Nothing open, but some people milling about waiting to check in. Turns out ours and one other German guy were the only two vehicles on the boat, along with a large flatbed trailer (no cab) and about 300 day trippers. The ferry took about 2 hours to get to Marmaris, but the wait to get off the boat took another hour or so, because Bee was trapped behind the flatbed. As a result, we met the team of guys working on the boat who loved Bee and were laughing and joking with us before we left. We were escorted all over the place to get visas and go through police and passport checks by an official casually carrying a hand gun on his belt – a little disconcerting I have to say, but eventually all three of us were through and even managed to get some Turkish Lira at the port.

We drove without problem from Marmaris to the first petrol station where the manager came out and gave us free Turkish teas and a map of the area. Think it was Bee’s charm.

On towards Fethiye and we passed what looked at first like a junkyard but turned out to be an awesome collection of old cars (mainly American). We pulled in and asked the owner for a look about, who didn’t speak any English, but was in conversation with a German guy via a Turkish translator. Thankfully the German spoke English, so eventually we made ourselves understood and for 5 Turkish lira he allowed us to roam about, take photos and gave us a couple of Turkish coffees; Starting to love the people in Turkey. Ant fell in love with an ancient beaten up old Chevrolet van and a very long and low American estate car.

Drove on and upwards by about 2000metres crossing over the mountains and down into Antalya. Far too big a city for us to find any campsites without maps or TomTom, so we pressed on along the coast road and eventually (as it was approaching dark), we pulled into a service station hoping to sleep in the truck-stop area, but found it had a camping area behind it with some English mobile homers in it! Time for hot showers – three days since the last one and starting to fester.