Day 143 - 24th September, Thursday.

Last night Cathy and Derek took us to the small village of Tatilisu where they were having their annual ‘Harnup’ festival (Carob in English) and Cathy and her line dancing friends were performing. The evening was great fun and the traditional costumes worn by the other Turkish dancers were stunning.

This afternoon we ventured out to purchase a Turkish mobile phone (which makes phone calls home considerably cheaper in this non-EU country and ensures receiving calls is free of charge – new number for the next couple of months – 00 905 33 88 33 207) and then went for coffee at a friend’s cafe in town. The heat delayed a walk round town until another day; we’d like to get some maps and guide books to plan our tour of the island.

This evening also saw was plenty of wine and beer as Derek and Cathy had a darts match against a neighbouring team at the Old Mill, very entertaining. The English locals seem have built a very friendly community here with busy social lives and a great range of activities to get involved in.

Day 142 - 23rd September, Wednesday. We made it!

We woke and peered out, there were people on deck, so we assumed it was ok to be seen aboard at the Cyprus end and went up to investigate. The sun was shining, the boat was docked, Ant’s parents were waving from the port cafe and trucks were being off loaded with some efficiency. Finally after almost 6700 miles our arrival looked promising. It was 8am.
Thankfully the only vehicles behind ours on the boat were the truck drivers who had also slept onboard, so we were not reliant on the return of the car owners aboard the Calypso (which was nowhere to be seen) in order to get off the boat...excellent.... we could get a head start on the bureaucracy.
I think not.
For anyone planning to take a vehicle into Cyprus, be aware; IT’S AN EXPENSIVE AND TIME-CONSUMING PROCESS!
First we were ushered to the police desk to get our passports stamped - again not so difficult. Then it was off to another building at the port gates to pay another set of port tax and to purchase Cypriot car insurance (apparently your own car insurance is not sufficient, nor is your green card), then outside the port gates to get the newly purchased insurance checked, and back to a different kiosk at the gates for something else (I don’t even know what he did at that one – if anything), then back inside to the customs desk with all our new bits of paper, where we stood in line to get a visa for Bee to enter Cyprus. Once you have collected all the stamps and paid all the fees, you can attempt to pass the gates, where another guy will ask you to reverse into a side area for vehicle inspection. Thankfully he didn’t notice the bottle of Ant’s pee when he opened up the back, else I’m sure at that point we would have offered it to him as an English ‘home brew’. It was some time after 10am when we finally entered Cyprus and starting driving on the left again for the first time in 5 months.
We met up with Cathy and Derek (Ants parents) and they did the best thing they could possibly have done at that point; took us for a large English breakfast.

Day 141 - 22nd September, Tuesday. Last day in Turkey.

A very long, but amusing day! We left the campsite at 11:30am and although the ticket office was only 5 mins drive away, it still took us until 1:15pm (and £120) to have the tickets in our hands. We had a wander around town for a bit before heading down to the port where our ferry was supposed to be leaving at midnight. We had a lot of time to kill, but thankfully Tom and Pat were also down at the port and we were soon joined by Germans, Uli and Ulrika, in their Green custom made 4x4 mobile home/tank. We spent the afternoon and early evening drinking chatting and giggling about the absurdity of the situation, not knowing it was only the beginning. The first gates opened about 7:30pm (right in the middle of Tom cooking his fish supper) and we were able to get our passports checked and pay some port tax to leave Turkey, simple. Onto the next set of gates to park. Then we queued to get our passports stamped –fairly easy, and we thought we were all done, until Ulrika wandered over and informed us we had to get some vehicle papers checked too at customs, and that’s where it all got a bit confusing, in fact I’m not sure I can even remember the hoops we had to jump through or what order we jumped in order to get Bee onto the boat, but what I can tell is that it involved a lot of queuing, a lot of paperwork, a vehicle inspection by a bloke in jeans and T’shirt, a very important handwritten slip of paper (which became known as ‘the lottery ticket’) and 4½ hours of to-ing and fro-ing. We eventually boarded the ‘Mersin’ and were told to get out of the vehicle and off the boat. Nothing else. People started wandering back to the port (in the pitch black) rightly assuming they were getting on another boat the ‘Calypso’. We were not impressed at all and spoke with the captain of the boat who told us it was forbidden to remain in your vehicle, but go ahead and don’t tell anyone. So we climbed inside the back of Pat and Tom’s mobile home which was still waiting to board and got back into Bee and went straight to sleep - starving. It was about 1am and we were still at the docks, I have no idea what time the boat left.

Day 140 - 21st September, Monday, Turkey. Bayram day 2.

Spent the entire day snorkelling, swimming, chatting to Tom and Pat about the likelihood of us all getting on the ferry, waiting for the power to return to check the internet and then inventing meals to cook from the remaining items in the van.

Day 139 - 20th September, Sunday, Turkey. Bayram day 1.

Ant spent the morning putting in new spark plugs, clearing out the tool boxes from the rain and dirt of the last 200miles and generally tinkering with technical things to get Bee ready for the final push to the finish line.
The English whom we met at the last campsite (Tom and Pat) have arrived today too. They made it over the mountains in the dry and are now in the same position as us... waiting for a ferry to Cyprus.
Logged on to the internet today and discovered that Liam and Carly who we met at the Festival back in Spain, passed us on a bus on Friday in Turkey!!!! The world really is a small place if you travel it.