The Agrinautica

Monday, October 26th, Day 23, Busia Kenya-Uganda border crossing, ~2am - Lightning flickered in the dark night sky to the West, over Uganda, as we filed out of our bus into the cool night air. We made our way across the muddy street, carefully picking our way around the large and numerous puddles, to the Kenyan passport control building. Inside this building everyone else on the bus queued up at the "Kenyan nationals" line while I was the only one to go to the "international travelers" window. I tried to wait with Grace in line but I customs official yelled at me so I had to continue down the corridor leading out the other side of the building into No Man's Land. I checked in to "swarm" on my phone and was somewhat amused to find "No Man's Land" listed as a "travel lounge."

   Presently Grace came out and we continued to Ugandan passport control about 100 yards away. There a bunch of money exchangers descended on us like mosquitoes. We had to go through a metal detector to get into customs but I didn't bother to empty my pockets and even though I set it off no one stopped me, sometimes you can tell they're just not taking it seriously, and as we say, usichokoze nyuki, no need to disturb the bees if you don't have to. I had been very word they wouldn't be issuing visas at this hour but they were in fact. Ugandan sitting behind the window in a military uniform was surprisingly chipper for the hour and cheerfully informed me I couldn't come to Uganda for just two days ... leading me for a moment to fear it was some visa nuance but he continued "it's just too beautiful!"
   Unfortunately though I thought I had kept $100 USD in my wallet for this purpose but found I had used $20 for something and now only had $80. The visa was $100 or 10,000 Tanzanian shillings, and I only had about 9,000 Tanzanian shillings. Fortunately the passport control officer, who was perhapds better caffienated than me, had a jugaad for this problem and told me to just go change $20 with the money exchangers. And my inititial instincts to avoid them sure were right because they gave me only about 66% of the value that $20 should have been!!! Feeling a little violated by this I returned to the window and got my passport stamped.
   From there we re-boarded the bus and continued for about five more hours from Busia to Kampala, skirting the northern edge of Lake Victoria, and crossing over the Nile near its headwaters at some point, but I think we were both asleep. As the sun rose we got our first glimpses of Kampala -- it actually looks pretty good as far as African cities go, the streets were broad, most of the buildings lining the streets were around five stories tall and didn't look like they were about to fall over or anything. There was some traffic coming in to the city but nothing compared to what we'd see later in the day. Another distinguishing feature was that with funding from USAID there was apparently a lot of AIDS awareness advertising afoot, with billboards practically every 100 feet with an AIDS awareness themed message. One of our favorites was of a cool looking young man in his twenties with the caption "I'm proud to be a virgin!" ... I'm sure the friends of the model used in that picture rib him no end about that one. I took a picture of said billboard for posterity but of course... lost.

   Arriving at a bus stop around 7am we got out and cast about for a taxi. I thought it was a bit odd that most of the guys lingering around trying to solicit our business were boda-boda drivers -- motorcycle taxis. I'd later learn that they're actually the major way to get around the town since the traffic later in the day makes it a nightmare getting around by car. But also a lot of boda-boda drivers are young men who had been recruited into the Lord's Resistance Army as child soldiers and now had no skills and no family other than driving bodabodas -- one can feel for them, but also is bound to be pretty leary of trusting your life to someone on so flimsy a machine who might be seriously mentally imbalanced by the brutal conditions they'd been through (child soldiers are sometimes made to kill their parents as an initiation!)
   Anyway we had big bags so we found a taxi nearby, the driver was also a youngish fellow, Grace told me she'd have rather found an older driver, and especially after the shenanigans that ensued insisted that I should have let her choose one. Anyway as always I had found the hotel we'd be staying at on Tripadvisor on my phone (and just from the information there it looked pretty nice!). As _always_ he quickly said he knew right where our hotel was, but as I've commented before, this is a universal lie you can count on. Right away I noticed the driver was going the opposite direction, so I showed him the map on my phone, to which he mumbled something I couldn't quite make out. As we continued to drive the wrong direction both Grace and i tried to tell him we were going the wrong direction, but despite him speaking some English and sharing Swahili with Grace we never really got a straight answer from him. With panglossian optimisim I hypothesized that he was taking us out to the ring road to avoid the traffic in the center of town but no he kept going, over our objections. Finally he stopped at a gas station and had admit he was lost. To a certain extent I could feel a fremdschamenian sense of embarrassment for him, knowing that he was lost and his two passengers were getting increasingly angry with him. I showed him the map on my phone again, it seemed pretty easy to find on the map, and it's not like you even need to be literate to see where the marker on the map is but he seemed to have zero comprehension of how to read the map. I could see that if we took a specific road we were near it would take us in the right direction, so I tried telling him "A 109" "Take A 109 that way!" "that road, take it that way!!" but for some reason the dastardly p'takh was either unable or unwilling to comprehend or execute my instructions and retracted his steps exactly back to our origin point. By now it was well on 9am and mornign rush hour traffic was full on, such that it took us more than an hour to get back to the place we started. Since he retraced his route exactly I suspect he hardly knew his way around the city at all, I don't know who gave this shlemiel a car! Grace suspected he was drunk but I didn't really see any signs of that.
   "Ah, well," I said, "at least this way we can have him drop us where we came from and there'll be no debate that we don't need to pay him for this colossal ferhoodle!!" But to my alarm we passed the bus stop and kept going!!! Fortunately this time we were finally headed directly toward the hotel, otherwise I probably would have absolutely demanded he let us out.
   Once we were headed in the right direction it was pretty simple, down the main road toward Entebbe a few miles and then down a side road through a labyrinth of residential houses but fortunately there were signs pointing the way here. We finally arrived at the beautiful Malakai Eco Lodge, an oasis of gardens and ponds amid the haphazard suburbs, after about two hours of shenanigans over a trip that should have taken 20 minutes. And then, AND THEN, the knave had the nerve to demand of us not only the fare from the bus stop (I think around $30? again all my notes are lost), but something like another $20 specifically for the wild goose chase. He was utterly unblinkingly unmoved by my arguments, soon joined and reiterated by the hotel manager, that I should in no way have to pay for a journey I had not only not asked for but had in fact repeatedly told him was incorrect. He was unmoving but finally I just put the $30 for what the fare _should_ have been in his hand, turned my back to him and walked away without looking back.



   Finally grace and I were able to breath a sigh of relief and look around at the beautiful peaceful place we had found ourselves in. The lodging in the eco lodge seemed to be all be in freestanding sort of "hut" shaped buildings, which were luxurously furnished. Between them there were ponds full of fishes and well manicured gardens. I couldn't believe we were getting a room here for only $45 (turns out that was a special and its usually $145). The managers are a Belgian man and his Ugandan wife, and their three young children could often be seen frolicking about the gardens. To be continued!

   Having continued on from Olympos...

Flashback to Monday, August 19th
   When a travel agent in Istanbul first suggested I might like to go on a Blue Cruise ("Australians love it!") I was almost offended. To me "cruises" are something only posh people do, and I'm a sailor, why would I pay to go on a boat, and why was I talking to a travel agent anyway?
   Well let's go off on a bit of a tangent and tackle that last question first. Why WOULD I be talking to a travel agent, having a long history of DIY travel behind me and a healthy loathred for package tours? Frankly, I was kind of curious. What were they all about? How did they make their money? Did they actually have decent travel related ideas? Would it be considered some form of plagiarism if I talked to them about travel plans and then used some of those plans without booking through them?
   First I stopped in at the travel agent on the ground floor under my hostel in Istanbul, and he traced a plan from Istanbul to Cappadocia to Nemrut to Konya to Olympos to Fethiye and back to Istanbul, which included some odd things like "in Konya you can have home made icecream" (uhh, or I could do that at home if I found it so novel), and he practically refused to take the Nemrut loop out of his proposal, and couldn't get the whole thing under $1800, which was way more than the shoe string budget I had in mind. But it was here where I first heard about the Blue Cruise, popular among Aussies.
   Well that travel agent experience was rather unpleasant, I felt like he had tried to badger me into package deals I didn't want (the Nemrut thing was a package tour loop out of Cappadocia), or that didn't sound terribly entertaining (I'm sure Konya has its charms but it really seemed like he was just trying to jam it in). I thought I'd visit another though, that a friend of mine had strongly recommended. So I ventured over to True Blue tours, half expecting it to be some Aussie thing (being as "true blue" is apparently some sort of Aussie thing). The specific person I was recommended, an American expat, had the day off though, so I ended up talking to Ruta, a Latvian expat. Compared to the first guy though she was excellent, she quickly got the idea of my avoid-package-tours shoe string budget planning-one-day-at-a-time travel plans and made her recommendations accordingly. In the end I left their office with that one package tour booked for Cappadocia (since as she pointed out, it would be hard to see some of the far flung things there otherwise) and a bus ticket to Cappadocia and nothing more. Since travel agents sometimes do have special deals for things I called them a few times on my trip to see if, for example, they had a better deal for the Blue Cruise, and things like that. In the end I never ended up booking anything else through them, but Ruta still had nothing but enthusiasm for helping me sort out last minute bus transfers to get from Fethiye to Cannakale in the middle of the night when I called her at 8pm one Friday evening late in the trip.

   As to the "Blue Cruise" itself, the first most salient point made to me was that it probably IS the most cost effective (in time, if not money) way to see so many different locations on the rugged Lycian coast. For the 200 Euros one gets a place to stay for four days, with three delicious (by all accounts) meals, which would work out to at least a significant portion of that cost no matter how you sliced it. Also though the word "Cruise" conjures up images of massive cruiseliners on which pampered vacationers sunbathe and carefully avoid rubbing elbows with locals, the Blue Cruises take place on traditional wooden gulet schooners with 12-14 passengers. The itinerary sounded packed with visits to interesting places an I started to come around to thinking it sounded like a fun idea. (Again, spoiler: best idea!)



Monday, August 26th
   And so we arrived on Monday morning at the little harbor of Demre, which appeared to be a large protected cove, most of which was far too shallow for vessels. A little motorboat took us from the shore to where the Lucky Mar, a 65 foot gulet, waited at anchor.
   In addition to myself and Stephen (who was from Melbourne, you'll recall), there were two fellows from Brisbane who had come from Olympos with us, and the girl who had gotten picked up by the wrong shuttle, also from Brisbane. Also on that shuttle was a guy from Canada. On the boat we met up with a girl from Melbourne (who apparently would have floated helplessly away while floating with a pool noodle in the sheltered waters of the cove, had the captain not dove in and pulled her back), two cute Spanish girls in their early twenties, and a Spanish couple, both journalists, in their late 30s. So that makes 11 people if I'm not forgetting anyone, with nearly half being Australians.
   Having so many Brisbanites about was funny, since they'd be talking about some night out at the bars in Brissie or such and I'd be ignoring it as one does about the at-home happenings for foreign travelers, and then I'd suddenly remember wait I know the bars and localities of Brisbane!

   Our captain was a cheerful suntanned weather-beaten looking fellow of maybe his late 30s, he spoke decent English and like many captain's I have known seemed to have some magic powers. In this case he seemed possessed of the ability to roll a dice while playing backgammon and get it to come out exactly the way he wanted it. There was a cook, whom we didn't interact with so much, I don't know where he was when he wasn't cooking, but he cooked some amazing meals. Didn't speak English. Unfortunately, writing this three months later as I am my descriptions may suffer but I think he was a somewhat slight man, with grey hair and a kindly and good natured face, who despite his grey hair moved with the nimbleness and rapidity of a much younger man. The third crewmember, "the first mate," also didn't speak any English, was a bit rotund and thoroughly jovial. I think he may have been the captain's father-in-law. He always seemed to have laughter in his eyes and a sly grin upon his face.

   After lunch, the first in a long line of delicious "home made" meals, we set off for our first destination. Made a quick visit to a cave that had a banner over advertising a "pirate bar," and the captain practically put the boat's nose right into it.
   Continued to the sheltered area inside "the Great Disappearing Island" of Kekova, as I like to call it. You see, now you see it, now you don't (or, probably easier than flipping through those two links, just toggle between the satellite view and the map view).



   Here we arrived at the beautiful little seaside village of Kaleköy (known in ancient times as Simena), where all three crewmembers live (and all the above pictures were taken). Many of us were taken to the dock by the smallboat and wound our way up the narrow streets to the fortress ruins at the top. Interestingly, within this confines of the fortress walls there was a small amphitheatre. This struck me as slightly odd since usually the small amount of space in a little mountaintop fortress like that would be a premium and an amphitheatre could be located anywhere. Also pirate fans may be interested to know the fortress had been built specifically to combat pirates.
   After we'd had our fill of enjoying the view from up there (see the top picture in this entry), we followed the meandering paths back down through the village. Since it is not accessible by automobile, the "streets," if you can call them that, are all narrow winding paths between the houses only about the width or two persons walking abreast. As you can see they're all crowded together on the slope there and sometimes it seemed the only way to reach a place was crossing across the porch of a neighboring house. The sealevel had either risen, or the ground has sunk, since ancient times, and there were some foundations visible underwater, and the tomb pictured below seemingly rising right out from the middle of the water. The water was about knee deep around the tomb and from the heights of the fortress you could actually make out a well worn path on the seafloor leading to it.



   From there we headed to this cove just a short distance away. To anchor for the night, though it was still fairly early in the day.
   While underway I saw the first sea turtle I've ever actually seen, so that was exciting, and then as we were anchoring we saw another one. The first mate dove in after it but to no avail.
   Having a nice long evening ahead of us we had another delicious dinner and drank Efes and played backgammon. Though the food was included in the price of the cruise, they kept a running tally of beer's consumed by everyone and charged about $4 a (24 oz) beer at the end which seemed alright, it's more than retail but less than many bars. The two Australian lads from Brisbane in particular had huge tallies by the end
   Also the water was a lovely lovely temperature and swimming about commenced as soon as we were anchored. The Australians quickly discovered they could float on a pool noodle and hold a beer with their other hand and spent many hours drinking in the water, having new beers tossed to them as needed (and I fear, since one of the Brisbane lads was also named Chris, while I kept myself to a beer or two on account of my budget, I may have been credited some of his).
   The sun set and I watched the moon rise over the water, a large red crescent. The very symbol of Turkey. Eventually Jamie and Chris, the two Brisbane lads, were extremely "loose" (which means drunk, apparently) and they kept informing one another "ah you're so loose mate, you're so loose!!" which was rather hilarious. Filled with drunk courage, Jamie declared himself / was acclaimed our fearless leader and around 1am we (Me, all three Brisbanians, Stephen and the Canadian) embarked on a quest to see if the other boats nearby wanted to join us in the party in the water.
   The first boat we visited declined, but one or two of its passengers engaged us with witty repartee at least. We then decided to swim the other direction to where some other boats were at anchor about 400 feet away. The first vessel was all dark, either all asleep or wisely pretending to be. Around this point Jamie started to advise us with alarm "I don't know if we'll be able to get back mate, we've gone like a mile!" but we just reminded him "you're too loose mate! You're so loose!" and continued on to the further vessel, where we could see some people playing cards on deck.


(Myself, Chris, Michelle (Brisbane) and Nick (the Canadian))

   These persons, it turns out, were that boats Turkish crewmembers, and upon being hailed they turned a flashlight on us and yelled at us to "fuck off!" We immediately turned around but despite our obvious retreat the crewmember continued to shout curses at us. They alleged that their passengers were trying to sleep, but I'd imagine the passengers would have been significantly more disturbed by the crew's yelling at us than our initial hail.
   Anyway, Jamie continued to bewail that we were miles away from our own boat and completely lost. As we headed back home the rest of us reached an unspoken agreement and informed him we just wanted to check out this last boat (which so happened to be ours) and then we'd head home. We told him this time he should actually go up on deck to see if anyone wanted to hang out. We arrived and he approached the boarding ladder, but then actually had the good sense to balk and say "I dunno mate I don't think we shoould be going on someone else's boat" ... and then he was shocked and alarmed when the rest of decided to go up all together. Even as we all stood on deck (he eventually came up after us), he still didn't realize we were on our own boat, saying "this is crazy guys we shouldn't be here!" "ah don't worry, you're so loose mate!" I'm not sure at what point it finally dawned on him that we were back on the Lucky Mar.

   Even coming dripping out of the water at 2am I found I didn't feel cold! The water and the air were both so nice and warm. That night most of us slept on deck. This had been a very awesome day, what excitement would the next several have in store?? To be continued!

Next: In which there are veritable hills of cash, and we go looking for Santa Claus.

   Presently drinking (why is there coke in my rum?!) and playing fluxx ("this game is like simon says, if Simon is a paranoid schizophrenic!" - Stacey) with gratefuladdict, supremegoddess1, blueashke, lostin_thestars, and stagger_lee77. Meanwhile their friends Delorean and the Greg are cooking delicious smelling food (tri-tip, chicken, and elk sausage). It is good times :d!