Talkin’ Turkey

By Dan

Since Greece and Turkey aren’t exactly the best of friends, there aren’t a lot of connections between the two countries, but we had done the research and knew about ferries from Rhodes to Marmaris. In fact, we had tickets on one that left Rhodes Town at 4:30 on Friday the 26^th. It was about 50 kilometers from Lindos to Rhodes Town, we reckoned, so maybe 45 minutes on the bus, and a 15 minute walk from the bus station to the ferry terminal. So, we thought a 1:30 pm bus would work just fine. Tourist information in Rhodes Town told us that there was a 1 pm and a 2 pm bus. The 2 pm would still work, we thought. We even talked to the guy at the ferry terminal on Wednesday, and he told us that he’d be happy to issue our tickets on Friday – no need to do it then. You know where all of this is heading. . . .

It turned out that the bus schedule had changed a month earlier, and the bus left at 2:30, not 2:00. It turned out that the bus would take more like an hour and ten minutes, not an hour. So, things were getting tighter, but still, no worries. We got to the ferry terminal about 3:55, and then things started getting wild. They were pulling away the gang plank! The ferry guys were telling us “Too late, too late, ferry leaves at 4 pm!”, while we were hollering, “But our tickets that you sold us say 4:30 pm!” I was trying to put our bags on the boat, straddling the water since the gang plank was gone, while they were pushing them back. The captain was yelling something in Turkish from the bridge. Plus, they were telling us that we needed to pay a port tax and go to immigration. Christina got started with the port tax people, while I lifted the kids onto the ferry to serve as sort of reverse human hostages. Even the most cold hearted ferry captain wouldn’t take two American kids to Turkey while their parents were still in Greece, right? (I think my mother-in-law, upon reading this, has just disowned me.) The ferry people were starting to show some sympathy to our predicament, and one of them even cut a deal with the port tax guy that he’d collect from us and pay the tax man later. Ultimately, we were on the ferry and pulling out of Rhodes at 4:05 pm, with stamps in our passports, a port tax paid, and reminders to ourselves to confirm everything a few more times. We’re not in G-7 countries any more!

After ninety minutes on the ferry, we were pulling into the Turkish port of Marmaris. It had been a while since I’d had the feeling of, “Uh, I can’t speak the language, I can’t even fake the language, not many people speak my language, and I have to keep my two kids fed, housed, safe, and ideally comfortable. How am I going to manage that??” Immigration was fairly smooth, and then the guy who had escorted us through port tax and immigration in Rhodes asked us where we were going. We explained to him that we were heading to Fethiye, about a 3 hour bus ride to the east. That’s when we heard the line of the day (or, thus far, probably the trip): “Why you not take direct ferry Rhodos to Fethiye? It go this morning.” So, recognizing that I may have lost of few of you with this story, to summarize: if we had known about that other ferry, we would have missed all of the adventure of the nearly missed ferry, and saved ourselves a 3 hour bus ride, 36 Turkish lira, and 2 barf episodes. Ah, well. . . .

At the bus station, we were reminded that this sure as heck wasn’t anywhere we’d ever been before. Communications with our bus driver were quite an adventure, especially since we had to explain that we didn’t have any Turkish money yet. We were pretty sure that he said “no problem, we’ll let you get some at a bank at one of the stops along the way”. At any rate, he let us on the bus without making us pay. Off we went, rolling through pine forests as we went up and over a mountain and down onto the flats on the other side. Clearly, we are in Turkey now, since the bus had beautiful Turkish rugs running down the aisle. Nice touch! We saw a great sunset and moon rise from the bus window, along with mosques, minarets, and some of Turkey’s finest bus stations. As promised, the bus driver stopped in front of an ATM in the dark somewhere, and shoo’d me off the bus. He then drove off. The ATM machine showed the Windows XP logo, which is not something I’m used to seeing at ATM machines. I had noticed another bank down the street, which I jogged down and utilized. Jogging back in the other direction, I heard a plaintive cry in the dark, “Dan, Dan, Dan?” Christina was worried about me. She led me to the bus depot, where they were taking a tea and potty break. This is all definitely a new experience for us.

The three hours proved to be an accurate prediction. Abby managed to barf twice, living up to her reputation as the most weak-stomached of the traveling squad. The first one used up our barf bag supply (“sac vomitoire”, as it was translated into French on the ferry), so the second was a little more on the messy side. The kids earned major brownie points, since they didn’t put up a bit of fuss through the many hours of travel adventure. The last acts of the evening were pretty fitting: as the taxi that took us from the bus station in Fethiye to our hotel, the driver helpfully pointed out to us where the ferries from Rhodes arrived. Great. The hotel had no idea who we were, even when we showed them the email from them confirming our reservation. We had to shoo away all of the teen aged boys in town, who were clustered around the big screen TV at the hotel restaurant (it was now 10 pm), getting them at least to turn down the volume of the Turkish cops and robbers show they were watching. And Abby had the smallest lamb chop that I have ever seen. We had to relieve Grayson of his duties as our cheap interpreter. We had all struggled with our first words of Turkish, but apparently Grayson was way off. When he tried to thank the waiter for something, the guy asked Grayson if he had just called him a terrorist. Oops! But, hey, we were in Turkey, the view from our room over the harbor was spectacular, the weather looks to be great for our boat trip, and everybody had smiles on their faces. Here we go. . . .