The day started with swimming in the blue sea and an extensive waterside breakfast - including cats begging for food and a dog begging for cuddling. As one of the cats (seemingly the boss of the pride) hooked its claw into my finger, causing some bloodshed, this one was henceforth the bad cat which was to be distracted before handing out food to the other ones, grmpf! When we finally got started we met a group of 3 Turkish cyclists after a few hundred meters! Up to now I have only seen 2 cycling couples in Turkey - one on the windy days on Marmara sea and one during the Mercedes ride to rescue Jörgs wallet. The 3 guys were basically following us - riding from Istanbul to Antalya, so maybe we will meet them again on the way.
The morning was the most beautiful seaside cycling so far - a small quiet road winding up and down through the pines with the greenish bluish shimmering water below. We could not resist and had to do another swimming break - this one even more beautiful than this morning. The water was very clear and surprisingly cold at the surface but warmer in the deep so we had good reasons to dive and marvel at the seafloor. After lunch we went inland again and tried to make up for the mornings laziness - it was going well, we were cycling pretty fast when my bike started making strange hammering sounds. A quick check at a gas station showed that my rear tyre had a strange scratch on the tread and was swelling sideways in that area, thus knocking on the mudguards - not good, not good at all! We replaced it with my spare tire so for now we could fix it (though I will have to go on without spare tire for some time). Still we were wondering how this kind of damage could happen to the tire - there were some roads with nearly melting asphalt in the last days, today was more of a very pebbly affair.
The repair left us short on time, so we were going really fast only stopping for a watermelon break before fighting up the last hill. We arrived in the town of Ortaca an hour before sunset and still had to shop, eat and find a place to sleep. The first two proved to be easy and for the latter we just entered some side street, looked around and finally asked (in sign language) an older man if we could put our tents close to his house. He was very friendly and showed us a nearby lemon grove. It was nearly dark when we were settled and now we will fall asleep with an ambrosial odour in our noses.
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