The last week of our time in Fethiye continued much like the first couple of weeks – waiting for the engine to get finished, working on some more projects on the boat, walking into town to go to the weekly market on Sundays and Fridays, eating out while the boat was torn up, relaxing at the pool during the hottest part of the day and overall enjoying our interactions with the people we meet. It has been great to make new friends wherever we are and hopefully with the use of technology we will continue to stay in touch with many of them. Time will tell of course, but even if not, we have enjoyed our encounters!
We have been very impressed with the Turkish citizens we have met. One thing is obvious is the way they treat their elderly and their children is very impressive and tells you a lot about a culture. Whenever children are around – your own or someone elses, there are always plenty of people giving that child attention. If there is an older person and they go to get up, there is someone there to offer a hand. It really is wonderful to
see how natural it is to see others being helped without question or hesitation. A on a people and their values.
We have been here long enough that we find that many of the vendors seem to know us, even if not by name, then by sight. When we go to the fresh fruit and vegetable market each week, we always stop either to eat or just have a fresh fruit drink at the same stand. We now know Sonny the owner and he knows us to great us by name. This last time as we were leaving his stand he reached into his cooler and gave us 2 ice cold bottles of water to take with us and didnt let us pay – this is the generosity we have encountered here many times. Another day we stopped to get a cold drink at a restaurant and got talking to the owner and had a lovely visit. We went to pay and he wouldnt let us and gave it to us as a gift, again, showing the generosity of the people here. We planned back to his place to eat, but when we did, we
must have been too early and he wasnt open yet -we were sorry it didnt work out for us to eat at his place.
Unfortunately, the engine took quite a bit of time to get but it we just learn to roll with it and enjoy where we are – and Fethiye is a great place to do that! Bob was very impressed with how the mechanic took the problem apart and worked it through to make sure everything was fixed. Once he was done with the engine and it was looking like new again, he then tackled our water system and he did the same methodical diagnosis of that system as well. Without water on the boat and the engine area being torn up it really gave us an excellent excuse to eat most of our meals off the boat. With the wonderful food available and the inexpensive prices, it was not a hard choice to make. Even after this amount of time, we still are surprised at how reasonable the price of meals are no matter if we are in town, at the marina or close to the tourist area. Yes, those areas were a
little more expensive, but still very reasonable. We could eat down at the market having a lamb kebab and pancake stuffed with meat (must thinner than a typical pancake in the US), and 2 fresh squeezed fruit juices for a whopping price tag of $4 or $5! As I mentioned in the last blog post eating at the marina is more expensive with a grand total of $23 for a nice meal, but even that is very inexpensive so our budget is going much farther thankfully as we still dont know what we have to pay for the work being done on the boat! We have been wondering what the rate of pay is here in Turkey and had been told by someone that the people that work at the bar at the marina which we know work hour days, only earn about $400 per month. We know the prices of food in the markets, but now wonder what the cost of housing and utilities are here for local residents. It would be interesting to find out more.
can take out of the ATM on a daily basis so each time we walk into town, we hit up the machine.
