Fun In The Sun

For the past few days we have been staying with Veysel, who George met riding a KTM 640 Adventure down through Africa a couple of years ago. His house and his hospitality are both off the scale. His pad is on the side of a valley hill overlooking a small town and the beach. His balcony is almost perfect, with a tree over it for shade and enough wind during the day to keep cool. I've been sleeping on it on an inflatable bed combined with a mosquito net which so far has kept me bite free.

Whilst we've been here we've been on a day trip to Dalyan and a beach where turtles lay their eggs. Morgan was convinced that after getting the boat to one end of the beach, there was a lagoon to swim in at the other end, and thus after 45 minutes of walking, in full motorcycle boots for me, we arrived to find that yes there was a lagoon, but no you cannot swim in it. We then discovered that the last boat, 5km back down the beach, left in a couple of hours, and thus had a quick dip and then set off back.

No lagoon here!

Just down the road from us is a beach where Kitesurfers on, where we have spent a couple of days relaxing. The road to it is gravel and sand, great fun on the KTM's but it shook my wiring loom about and caused a short, causing the indicators to make the rev counter blip, eventually blowing the main fuse and causing the alarm to go haywwire. After several unsuccessful attempts to fix it including individually wrapping each bare connection in gaffa tape and tie wraps I covered the entire loom in tape which so far seems to have solved the problem.

Morgan and I went out the other day to find some dirt roads which criss cross the pine mountains here. I managed to fall off a few times as usual, mainly during slow stuff where I try to slowly manouevre the bike over a lump and discover that my short legs can't reach the ground. Speed is the key, but I also reckon having almost bald tyres doesn't help either. I plan on getting as many miles as I can out of these before I change somewhere in Eastern Turkey.

After our short forray I returned to find that my front tyre had gone a bit squishy. After removing the tube I found that it was peppered with thorns, and thus after the use of a few patches spent 2 hours trying to get the wheel back on the bike only to discover that I was putting it on backwards. Hopefully the patches will work but I now have the feeling that I will lose a bit of pressure. Veysel mentioned that there is a tyre buring tool available that they use here which melts rubber onto punctures which I fancy getting hold of.

Abusing the locals!

My first flat change!

Anyways later today we're off to Olimpus to see the eternal flames there, then after that over to Cappadoccia for a few days. I still have'nt heard about my Iranian visa so someone in London will be getting an polite prodding phone call today. Hopefully if it comes through I can then leave the bike and get a bus back to Istanbul to pick it up.