Coast of many colours Jeremy Seal describes an idyllic anchor-anywhere holiday in Turkey aboard a traditional gulet Weekend Australian, 20/10/2006
It looked like Ibrahim had sprung twin hernias – or done himself an injury with his speargun - as he hauled himself onto the varnished deck of the gulet. Then I realized that the alarming things dangling from his shorts pockets were freshly caught octopuses. The captain of our gulet, or traditional Turkish ketch, had merely been sourcing dinner.
Like feluccas on the Nile, Zanzibar’s dhows or gin palaces in London’s Chelsea Harbour, the gulet is the signature craft of southwest Turkey. You’ll see flotilla yachts in these waters where Aegean and Mediterranean meet, but the romantic timbered lines of these bay-hopping craft – high windowed galleon stern, twin masts and prominent bowsprit – are the defining summer refrain along this mazy mountain-backed coastline.
Originally built to ship mandarins and lemons from remote quays to the ports of Izmir and Antalya, the anchor-anywhere gulet has since been adapted to offer largely unscripted, comfortably barefoot and fully serviced holidays – popularly known as ‘Blue Cruises’ - to an expanding international clientele. Gulets, from the French ‘goulette’ or sailing coaster, have since built a deservedly devoted following among fair-weather yachting types, discerning indolents (you’ll be amazed by the crew’s willingness to save you lifting so much as a finger on these beamy pleasure boats), and ruin nuts.
The coasts between Bodrum and Antalya – ancient Caria and Lycia - are drenched in ancient history and legend, home to the fire-breathing Chimaera and to St Nicholas, the sailors’ saint (and much-mutated forerunner of our Father Christmas). They are liberally scattered with the fig- and olive-tangled ruins of Byzantine basilicas and chapels, with Greco-Roman theatres, agoras and temples, and with the ubiquitous stone sarcophagae – like capsized ships – of the Lycians.
It is also a place of limpid natural beauty, and one whose gin-clear waters are a stark reminder of what much of the Mediterranean used to look like. We were moored – anchor from the bow, landline around a pine tree from the stern – in one of the countless coves and inlets of Fethiye Bay, perhaps the deepest of the many forested indents along this concertina coastline. The bay was called Batikhamam, or Sunken Baths, after what local lore had down, somewhat fancifully, as the remains of an Ottoman bathhouse. Whatever it had actually been – perhaps a timber warehouse or a customs post – we snorkeled among its submerged stone arches where shoals of striped fish played. Rust-red starfish lay scattered among the corals. The only sign of settlement along the shore was a rickety, jetty-side houseboat-cum-café which was ablaze with geraniums potted in rusting olive oil cans. We took tulip-shaped glasses of black tea beneath the café’s faded awning and marveled at museum-quality chunks of fluted marble; these remnants from some 2,000-year-old column were casually embedded in the walls of the terraces at the foot of this remote and lovely hillside. Then it was time to return to the gulet where our crew had laid another magnificent lunch table on the rear deck; salads, peppers stuffed with rice, skewered lamb and chicken kebabs, boreks (filo pastry savouries filled with cheese and herbs) and plates of melon and cherries, all washed down by the extremely quaffable local Doluca wine.
Gulets, as much as 30 metres long, tend to carry a small crew (including a dedicated cook). They sleep up to 16 guests in wood-panelled cabins with ensuite bathrooms – expect flush lavatories, hot showers and not a confusing stopcock in sight. Some even offer air-conditioning. There’s a spacious main cabin, a stern deck where meals are taken and which are shaded by an awning when required, and there are sun loungers on the cabin roof. Ours was typically equipped with snorkeling gear, a windsurfer and kayak, with a music system and board games and with a chest-sized cold box of drinks. It was like being in a floating villa, but a fully-staffed and blissfully breeze-cooled one, complete with the scent of wild thyme and pine off the mountains – not to mention local seafood fresh from the captain’s shorts.
Gulets are available either by the cabin – you’ll most likely get on with what, in my experience, are invariably like-minded guests – or for private charter. We had hired our own gulet by joining up with two other couples to create a combined brood of eight children, from three to ten in age, and with the youngest in each family not yet able to swim. Keeping an eye on them all, being the sort of parents who issue arm-bands at bathtime, was an awesome prospect. But our gulet’s high bulwark sides and Ibrahim’s strictly enforced regulations – no running onboard, swimming only with permission, and children to stay on the stern deck when the gulet was underway – soon put us in a relaxed frame of mind. We soon felt safe - as well as spoilt for choice, pampered and generally captivated.
After morning swims, and ballasted by breakfasts of eggs and olives, oil-drizzled cheeses, tomatoes sprinkled with oregano (and a jar of nutella, much mined by the children), Ibrahim spread the sea chart before us and threw his arms wide. Where did we want to go today? The coast was ours. We had chosen to cruise this particular coastal stretch for its child-friendly abundance of sheltered anchorages; short hops (never more than three hours – sometimes by sail but more often by motor) gave little time for seasickness before we had arrived at new moorings, even when the local meltem wind got up in the afternoon. We spent our time at sea watching out for dolphins, marvelling at the great rampart of limestone mountains stretching away into the vast Turkish interior, sun-bathing or helping Ibrahim put wannabe captains – with the help of a high stool - in charge of the ship’s wheel.
At Gemiler, we snorkeled over submerged stone cisterns and the remnants of Byzantine warehouses before putting ashore on St Nicholas Island, a monastic settlement dating from the 5th century and choked in scrub oak and olive tree. The adults sought out mosaics and fresco fragments among the tottering apses of the basilicas and explored its extraordinary covered walkway while the kids searched for lizards, spiders, crickets and tortoises. And kept an eye out for the ice cream boat, its fridge full of Magnums, as its owner circled the island’s landing stage, sensing easy prey.
Then there was the Dalyan River, where our gulet could not go, but with enough attractions – wildlife, ruins, freshwater Lake Koycegiz and one of the Mediterranean’s great unspoiled beaches, and even a smelly sulphur mud bath for face-decorating – to keep the most restless of kids amused. We hired a local caique with a sun awning for the day and passed the vast sand beach at Iztuzu, one of the last great nesting grounds of the endangered loggerhead turtle, assuring the kids we would stop for a swim on the way back. We threaded our way through the reed-lined channels of the delta, flocks of beeeaters overhead, to the ruins of ancient Caunos. Where the stepped tiers of masonry blocks in the great theatre had been shook loose by numerous earthquakes, olive trees grew. From here, we looked out out over the long-silted harbour of this once-great port; another reminder that these coasts had once been at the world’s very hub. Not that the kids appreciated such reflections though they were quick to recognize a stage when they saw one, driving German visitors from the theatre and setting the local stray dogs howling with a rousing rendition of a Girls Aloud number.
Back onboard the caique, Lycian rocks tombs carved in the riverbank cliffs announced the provincial town of Dalyan, with its bustle of spice shops and carpet dealers. We sat beneath a mulberry tree eating pistachio ice-creams while the lunch-time call to prayer sounded from a nearby minaret. At the end of the day – after chicken kebabs cooked on the caique’s stern-mounted barbecue, a messy visit to a thermal mineral bath and a chance to wash off the elaborate face masks our children had smeared all over us in the rolling surf at Iztuzu – we were delivered back to our gulet. Olly, six, called it the best day of his life.
A good three weeks would have been necessary to take in this coast’s many highlights. Patara, city of St Nicholas with its great theatre invaded by sand dunes, and the gorgeous fishing villages of Kekova lay to the east. To the west was a whole week’s cruising out of Bodrum, including the Gulf of Gokova and the remote Datca Peninsula, not to mention the Bozburun Peninsula and invitingly adjacent Greek islands like Symi.
But we were out of time. It had grown so hot by our last night that many of us abandoned our cabins and dragged our bedding out on deck in search of cooling breezes. It gave rise to a classic gulet cameo – simple, romantic and timeless; parents and kids star-gazing together while frogs chorused from the shoreline marshes.
CHECKLIST
Specialist London-based gulet operators:
Tussock Cruising (www.tussockcruising.com; 0208 510 9292) charge from £2750 per week for private charters of their 16-berth gulets not including flights or transfers, plus £193 per adult per week to cover food, soft drinks and alcohol, with 50% discounts for children.
Other gulet operators offering both private charters and individual cabin bookings include Westminster Classic Tours (01225 835488;westminsterclassictours.co.uk), Day Dreams (020 7637 8921; www.daydreams-travel.com); Exclusive Escapes (020 8605 3500; www.hiddenturkey.com); Simpson Travel (0845 8121 6506: www.simpsontravel.com), and Peter Sommer Travels (01600 861929; www.petersommer.com).
The season for gulet holidays runs from late April to mid-November, though the weather can be marginal at either end – and extremely hot in July and August.
Like feluccas on the Nile, Zanzibar’s dhows or gin palaces in London’s Chelsea Harbour, the gulet is the signature craft of southwest Turkey. You’ll see flotilla yachts in these waters where Aegean and Mediterranean meet, but the romantic timbered lines of these bay-hopping craft – high windowed galleon stern, twin masts and prominent bowsprit – are the defining summer refrain along this mazy mountain-backed coastline.
Originally built to ship mandarins and lemons from remote quays to the ports of Izmir and Antalya, the anchor-anywhere gulet has since been adapted to offer largely unscripted, comfortably barefoot and fully serviced holidays – popularly known as ‘Blue Cruises’ - to an expanding international clientele. Gulets, from the French ‘goulette’ or sailing coaster, have since built a deservedly devoted following among fair-weather yachting types, discerning indolents (you’ll be amazed by the crew’s willingness to save you lifting so much as a finger on these beamy pleasure boats), and ruin nuts.
The coasts between Bodrum and Antalya – ancient Caria and Lycia - are drenched in ancient history and legend, home to the fire-breathing Chimaera and to St Nicholas, the sailors’ saint (and much-mutated forerunner of our Father Christmas). They are liberally scattered with the fig- and olive-tangled ruins of Byzantine basilicas and chapels, with Greco-Roman theatres, agoras and temples, and with the ubiquitous stone sarcophagae – like capsized ships – of the Lycians.
It is also a place of limpid natural beauty, and one whose gin-clear waters are a stark reminder of what much of the Mediterranean used to look like. We were moored – anchor from the bow, landline around a pine tree from the stern – in one of the countless coves and inlets of Fethiye Bay, perhaps the deepest of the many forested indents along this concertina coastline. The bay was called Batikhamam, or Sunken Baths, after what local lore had down, somewhat fancifully, as the remains of an Ottoman bathhouse. Whatever it had actually been – perhaps a timber warehouse or a customs post – we snorkeled among its submerged stone arches where shoals of striped fish played. Rust-red starfish lay scattered among the corals. The only sign of settlement along the shore was a rickety, jetty-side houseboat-cum-café which was ablaze with geraniums potted in rusting olive oil cans. We took tulip-shaped glasses of black tea beneath the café’s faded awning and marveled at museum-quality chunks of fluted marble; these remnants from some 2,000-year-old column were casually embedded in the walls of the terraces at the foot of this remote and lovely hillside. Then it was time to return to the gulet where our crew had laid another magnificent lunch table on the rear deck; salads, peppers stuffed with rice, skewered lamb and chicken kebabs, boreks (filo pastry savouries filled with cheese and herbs) and plates of melon and cherries, all washed down by the extremely quaffable local Doluca wine.
Gulets, as much as 30 metres long, tend to carry a small crew (including a dedicated cook). They sleep up to 16 guests in wood-panelled cabins with ensuite bathrooms – expect flush lavatories, hot showers and not a confusing stopcock in sight. Some even offer air-conditioning. There’s a spacious main cabin, a stern deck where meals are taken and which are shaded by an awning when required, and there are sun loungers on the cabin roof. Ours was typically equipped with snorkeling gear, a windsurfer and kayak, with a music system and board games and with a chest-sized cold box of drinks. It was like being in a floating villa, but a fully-staffed and blissfully breeze-cooled one, complete with the scent of wild thyme and pine off the mountains – not to mention local seafood fresh from the captain’s shorts.
Gulets are available either by the cabin – you’ll most likely get on with what, in my experience, are invariably like-minded guests – or for private charter. We had hired our own gulet by joining up with two other couples to create a combined brood of eight children, from three to ten in age, and with the youngest in each family not yet able to swim. Keeping an eye on them all, being the sort of parents who issue arm-bands at bathtime, was an awesome prospect. But our gulet’s high bulwark sides and Ibrahim’s strictly enforced regulations – no running onboard, swimming only with permission, and children to stay on the stern deck when the gulet was underway – soon put us in a relaxed frame of mind. We soon felt safe - as well as spoilt for choice, pampered and generally captivated.
After morning swims, and ballasted by breakfasts of eggs and olives, oil-drizzled cheeses, tomatoes sprinkled with oregano (and a jar of nutella, much mined by the children), Ibrahim spread the sea chart before us and threw his arms wide. Where did we want to go today? The coast was ours. We had chosen to cruise this particular coastal stretch for its child-friendly abundance of sheltered anchorages; short hops (never more than three hours – sometimes by sail but more often by motor) gave little time for seasickness before we had arrived at new moorings, even when the local meltem wind got up in the afternoon. We spent our time at sea watching out for dolphins, marvelling at the great rampart of limestone mountains stretching away into the vast Turkish interior, sun-bathing or helping Ibrahim put wannabe captains – with the help of a high stool - in charge of the ship’s wheel.
At Gemiler, we snorkeled over submerged stone cisterns and the remnants of Byzantine warehouses before putting ashore on St Nicholas Island, a monastic settlement dating from the 5th century and choked in scrub oak and olive tree. The adults sought out mosaics and fresco fragments among the tottering apses of the basilicas and explored its extraordinary covered walkway while the kids searched for lizards, spiders, crickets and tortoises. And kept an eye out for the ice cream boat, its fridge full of Magnums, as its owner circled the island’s landing stage, sensing easy prey.
Then there was the Dalyan River, where our gulet could not go, but with enough attractions – wildlife, ruins, freshwater Lake Koycegiz and one of the Mediterranean’s great unspoiled beaches, and even a smelly sulphur mud bath for face-decorating – to keep the most restless of kids amused. We hired a local caique with a sun awning for the day and passed the vast sand beach at Iztuzu, one of the last great nesting grounds of the endangered loggerhead turtle, assuring the kids we would stop for a swim on the way back. We threaded our way through the reed-lined channels of the delta, flocks of beeeaters overhead, to the ruins of ancient Caunos. Where the stepped tiers of masonry blocks in the great theatre had been shook loose by numerous earthquakes, olive trees grew. From here, we looked out out over the long-silted harbour of this once-great port; another reminder that these coasts had once been at the world’s very hub. Not that the kids appreciated such reflections though they were quick to recognize a stage when they saw one, driving German visitors from the theatre and setting the local stray dogs howling with a rousing rendition of a Girls Aloud number.
Back onboard the caique, Lycian rocks tombs carved in the riverbank cliffs announced the provincial town of Dalyan, with its bustle of spice shops and carpet dealers. We sat beneath a mulberry tree eating pistachio ice-creams while the lunch-time call to prayer sounded from a nearby minaret. At the end of the day – after chicken kebabs cooked on the caique’s stern-mounted barbecue, a messy visit to a thermal mineral bath and a chance to wash off the elaborate face masks our children had smeared all over us in the rolling surf at Iztuzu – we were delivered back to our gulet. Olly, six, called it the best day of his life.
A good three weeks would have been necessary to take in this coast’s many highlights. Patara, city of St Nicholas with its great theatre invaded by sand dunes, and the gorgeous fishing villages of Kekova lay to the east. To the west was a whole week’s cruising out of Bodrum, including the Gulf of Gokova and the remote Datca Peninsula, not to mention the Bozburun Peninsula and invitingly adjacent Greek islands like Symi.
But we were out of time. It had grown so hot by our last night that many of us abandoned our cabins and dragged our bedding out on deck in search of cooling breezes. It gave rise to a classic gulet cameo – simple, romantic and timeless; parents and kids star-gazing together while frogs chorused from the shoreline marshes.
CHECKLIST
Specialist London-based gulet operators:
Tussock Cruising (www.tussockcruising.com; 0208 510 9292) charge from £2750 per week for private charters of their 16-berth gulets not including flights or transfers, plus £193 per adult per week to cover food, soft drinks and alcohol, with 50% discounts for children.
Other gulet operators offering both private charters and individual cabin bookings include Westminster Classic Tours (01225 835488;westminsterclassictours.co.uk), Day Dreams (020 7637 8921; www.daydreams-travel.com); Exclusive Escapes (020 8605 3500; www.hiddenturkey.com); Simpson Travel (0845 8121 6506: www.simpsontravel.com), and Peter Sommer Travels (01600 861929; www.petersommer.com).
The season for gulet holidays runs from late April to mid-November, though the weather can be marginal at either end – and extremely hot in July and August.
