ARGGGHHH!!! (Like a Pirate)

Day: 30

It’s time to move out of my tree house and head out to sea for a few days. The cruise I’ve booked was a great deal, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I may just end up spending three days on a tug. Sometime around my morning omelet I came to realize this trip was only going to be three of us, me, Akbar (a 28 year old Pakistani optomologist who works in Chicago) and Jasper (a 32 year old Canadian finish carpenter and long term traveler). The owner of the Treehouse place, Kadir, was going into town so we all hopped into his little van for a ride to the harbor which was about an hour and a half away. Somewhere in the middle of our car ride we talked him into stopping so I could hit an ATM and we could find a store to buy some alcohol, batteries, cigarettes, and hot sauce (for Akbar who began to complain that everything in this country is to bland for his Paki tastes).

When we got to the harbor we started looking at all the boats there trying to figure out which of the small tugs was for the three of us, but we soon learned that the 85 foot yacht with a crew of 3 was all for us. We were rather impressed and are sure whoever runs this tour company is losing money on this trip, especially since we brought our own booze to avoid buying it from the bar. As soon as we were underway, we made some cocktails (Vodka, Sprite, and OJ) and headed to the deck to get drunk and wait for our lunch and first stop in Simena for a short walk around the island. We powered through our first bottle of vodka just short of our stop and staggered ashore to see an ancient castle (which we didn’t go in because it was 5 lire each and we figured to all pitch in and just buy another bottle of booze instead), women selling scarves and bracelets (which we bought), and more boats and sun. After about 30 minutes we realized our boat was starting to leave without us and the little power boat was going up and down the coast trying to find us. We jumped on board and climbed back on our yacht soon to learn that the harbor police were upset with the boats captain because he didn’t have a list of our names and passport numbers so he was forced to set sail without us.

We spent the next couple of hours heading east towards Kas, listening to Jack Johnson on my laptop while laying in the sun drinking Raki and water (a Turkish licorice alcohol similar to Greek Oozu, 90 proof). At lunch we decided to play a game and eat everything given to us for the entire cruise, now lunch wasn’t to big but when they brought out dinner the crew must have caught on to our game because they brought us so much food that it took us a good 45 minutes to eat it all, but we still managed. We were so stuffed, but out come our server with a dessert of apples and oranges, they took us the better part of 2 hours to eat. The game was getting exhausting. I had realized that Jasper and Akbar were good company (we got along like teenagers, just talking about stupid shit all the time), although it is too bad we couldn’t of convinced 4 or 5 women to join us on this cruise, it certainly would have made things more interesting. We spent the rest of the night on deck acting like 15 year old jackasses, telling stories, making up new ways to piss off the crew (who seemed a little peeved about us bringing our own alcohol), having another glass of Raki and a smoke. I went off to bed (which my legs hang off all the way to my shins) a little after 10 hoping that tomorrow would be sunny and warm so we could get into the sea.