Izmir to Cesmealti, an escape from a booming Meltimi

8 - 10 Knots and rising. Anxious faces taking refuge in the bowels, sea sickness an option we wanted to avoid so big plan change. Instead of a 6 hour power sail (nice way of putting it) we turned for Iskelesi harbour an hour away. The relief was palpable throughout the boat, we were taking a beating out there.

Iskelesi read well and on arrival looked so good. A beautiful little harbour bounded by attractive hostelries, fishing boats and local Izmirian yachts.... but alas nowhere to moor. Bummer!

Plan C please.

A mile north was an anchorage comprising a double bay. Harbour in one, anchorage in the other. The northern bay very shallow, only suitable for catamarans and shallow draft yachts but "only to be attempted in calm weather!!"

Well, lets take a look.

We did, we entered, we anchored and we swam. Moral soared.

When you have guests, you really want them to have a great time. Plan changes put you into unknown space and anything can happen. Fortunately, the Duncan's are a flexible mob, up for anything and we were all happy to be out of that blustering wind.

We dropped the dingy and motored around to the harbour. Other than the fact that they'd decided to dig up the entire road system, and I mean all of it, it was a welcoming little town with variety.

We ate at a great waterside restaurant, there was a tented market with everything and because the wind was not going to abate for at least another two days we planned a land based itinerary.

I'm not sure why, but wineries always feature highly in these plans.

The entrance from the car park

Some of the best wines we'd tasted came from a winery called Urla. It just so happened that the winery was a 20 minute taxi ride away and a 'must do'.

Sal called, they were open but no meals to be had? We taxied over and (choose your best superlative). This is without doubt the most impressive winery any of us had ever seen.

Tempus Two, Hunter Valley, Vas Felix Margaret River, you name it, nothing comes up to this place.

It is the venue that has been making wine for literally thousands of years.

It declined in the Turkish Republican era but was recently reestablished.

The money spent is impossible to estimate. The return on that investment... questionable but the experience... well, fantastic and thankfully, not on my dime!

At the end of the water feature above are three large underwater windows.The natural light illuminating the cellar below and somehow not effecting the brew.

No lunch, which was a little disappointing given the venue, the quality of the wine and the fact that we'd taxied over, but we were treated to an exclusive wine tasting and the range lived up to its reputation.

Between ourselves and the Duncan's, we bought a bit of wine!

We had been to the Urlice winery when we were in Alacati, covered in an earlier blog. That was such a pleasant, personalised experience that we decided the following windy day to take Sandra and Alan there to illustrate the contrast...

Well, our excuse anyway.

No pizza's this time, but a tasting, a cheese platter with their Rose and a tour of their unique cellar made it worth while.

These photo's always surprise. It is hard to believe how 'well' I'm looking these days! Ah well, it'll just have to wait...

We could not leave the area without a visit to Iskelesi. It looked so quaint when we tried to moor and we thought that if by chance a mooring had become available, we'd move the boat for the final night. Things had not changed on that front, but there was the most beautifully refurbished restaurant beckoning.

A fabulous Turkish meal was had and we were unanimously happy that the Meltimi had blown us into this part of the world.

The following morning it was time to return Alan, Sandra and Keyomi to Izmir to catch their evening flight direct to London.

The road works around our anchorage had made the boat more filthy than we could remember, the fine dust having worked its way into every crevice.

A night or two in Izmir meant we could once again get all the big laundry done and Al and I could give her a good scrub while Sal attended to the insides,

We spent the day in downtown Izmir for a final meal and a mini look around before it was time for a sad farewell. I reckon a couple of weeks would have satisfied our mutual appetites... Maybe next year the Duncan's?

Bye guys.... 'till Sydney!