Thursday 20th April - Fethiye

OH MY GOD!!! Today has gotta go down as one of the best days of my life!!!

This mornings paragliding adventure was totally AWESOME!!!

I met up with about 15 people from Robbies tour group (Robbie chickened out) early in the morning as I was the only one from my tour going. Our first stop was to check out the LZ (a cute little beach) and collect our gear and pilots.
Once we were all piled into the back of the dodgy trucks, we started the scary trip up the rocky mountain road to the 2000 metre site... The wheels were so close to the edge, I honestly thought we'd roll off before we even got there!!

But, get there we did and while it was perfectly launchable for a hang glider, it was too windy for a paraglider so we drove back down to the 1800 metre mark... I wish I could have gone in a hang glider instead but I was soon to find out paraliding was just as much fun!!

I got lucky with my pilot in scoring a national paragliding and skydiving expert and felt comfortable placing my life in his hands. Turns out he even knows a few of the hang gliding pilots I know and have met. For the next half an hour we just floated around and he threw in a couple spirals to make me squeal. The view was awesome, the flight was brillant and our landing was perfect.

The only downside to my fantastic morning was I missed getting back in time for the island boat cruise with my tour group. No worries tho, Buddah belly came through for me again and Robbies tour leader was kind enough to ask me to join the TopDeckers on their cruise. Their boat was already waiting at the beach we had landed at and it gave me a chance to have a good catch up with Robbie so on I went.

I didn't have my swimmers or anything with me but luckily I had enough cash in my pocket to buy lunch and a couple of beers. It was a hot sunny day and when we stopped at the first bay, I was dying to join the others in the water but since I didnt have my togs I decided against it... For now anyways...

Later in the afternoon we moored at Gemiler island - also known as St Nicholas Island. Medieval sources claim that Santa Claus came and lived here once upon a time... There are still ruins on this island and after geting off the boat and exploring them for an hour I really, really needed a swim... Swimmers or no swimmers I had to get in that cool, refreshing water so, once again, there I was getting round in me undies and thankfully- to my knowledge anyway - there's no photo's of that getting round...

This evening we had dinner in town and sat down to watch the Australia and New Zealand cricket match at a local pub with a big projection screen. Our tour is pretty much half Kiwi's, half Aussies so we had some good competition going. We're off to Kusadaci tomorrow and we'll soon be singing our little Turkish folk song at Ephesus... Eeeek....