t
o
n
y
a
n
g
'
s
 
w
e
b
l
o
g


SEP

26

2001

i woke up in the middle of the night to watch the stars.


6:05am

6:23am

7:08am

as the sun slowly crept up from the horizon to bring light to another day, i watched one of the crewmembers get on the speedboat and motor off to this remote area by the shoreline to catch some fish with a net. the previous day the same guy got dressed in a wet suit and went hunting for fish armed with a speargun. he didn't catch anything, so i think that's why he was up so early fishing (besides the fact that maybe there are more fish right at dawn). around that time ayse and dave woke from their outdoor beauty sleep. johnny walker, you're my only friend! when our fisherman returned, we saw what he had caught. they weren't the most appetizing looking seafood, and one of the fish even had what appeared to be either a bite mark or an open sore. memories of rob's deep sea fishing still relatively fresh in my mind, i decided i wasn't going to eat the daily catch.

what would later become a morning ritual, the bread man came by our ship on his rowboat. apparently the locals know this region is a hot spot for vacationers, and there's a booming business of people on boats coming by throughout the day selling stuff, whether it be food items like homemade bread or ice cream, or services like parasailing or water skiing. this one particular man we called the bread man, he had this most striking feature, grey eyes on a moustached face that looked like it was born frowning. he sold the most amazing bread though, and i'm normally not a big bread guy. his bread was so soft and tasty, it was more like eating cake than bread. and because it was freshly made, it was still hot when we bought it.

breakfast! more of the usual, but we also had boregi ("brick" i called it), which was this turkish bread that reminded me of scallion pancakes. a hungry wasp was invading our breakfast, which caused dave to run up in a panic and squat at the flying insect. ayse's father grabbed a butter knife and when the wasp landed to lap up some honey, he took the knife and quickly sliced the wasp in half, then poked at the abdomen to show us the stinger. nothing like a freshly killed insect to to whet my appetite!

after breakfast we sailed to a different location (site 3), situated next to some underwater ruins no older than a hundred years old at most. we took the speedboat to the site and got into the water to do some exploring. the walls of the rooms were made from stones, and the ground below was covered in sea grass. after our exploration, we all swam the 500 yards back to the ship. i of course was decked out in my life preserver and fins, and basically just paddled backwards effortlessly on my back for the return trip.

for lunch, salad and vegetarian lasagna, washed down with turkish beer (i just had coke and water). dessert, watermelon slices and figs.

prior to leaving this location, we were approached my a boated fisherman (who resembled a mikhail gorbachev) selling some of his daily catch. we bought a large fish (couldn't tell you what kind, they all sort of look the same to me) and a whole squid. i wasn't too looking forward to the seafood and now we were buying more of it. yum!