Blues Cruise!

This morning we all woke up early to start our 4 day 3 night sailboat cruise along the Adriatic. Our destination is Epheusus. The Blues Cruise was by far one of the coolest experiences. Our boat is crewed by a captain and two crewmates. Their English is not the best but mostly everything is brokenly communicated.



The cruise was a lot of relaxing on deck, catching some rays, exploring lagoons via snorkeling, checking out hippy settlements along beaches, checking out islands along the way and jumping from any rock that has a deep though landing area. We even found a narrow area of water to stand in. Here is a pic of me and Casey once we swam out to that shallow island.



There was one in particular jump that was really scary that even Casey, who is usually up for anything, backed out of. One of the older brits commented that a rock near where we were anchored was a good jumping point. Looking at the height we thought he was joking. But sure enough he got in the water and started swimming towards the island.





I followed but when I got up to the top and almost backed out. Looking down the side of this cliff, which took an inordinate amount of barefoot climbing to get up to, every ounce of sense told me not to jump. I froze for a second and then thought “well when’s the next time I’ll be Turkey?” with that in mind I took a big leap to make sure I cleared the outward part of the cliff and shouted out what Casey called a “death moan”. Here’s a snap of it. It was much less impressive when the 60 year old brit came jumped in after me.



We even visited a Greek island to check out some ruins. Who would have thought I’d still get to cross Greece off my list while visiting Turkey. We explored the entire island and found a pack of goats. There were five of them on this tiny island, quite strange. Up at the top Casey gave us a quick lesson on some yoga poses.





During the evenings we slept out on the desk under the stars. The night is pitch black and only small tiny lights from distant boats can be seen. Looking up the entire sky is lit up with starts. It reminds me of going to the country sides of Kansas away from the city’s light pollution, but on the ocean, the sky is so much more expansive. It’s an incredible feeling laying there and seeing how encompassing the blanket of stars is; almost like looking through a fisheye lens.





I never really got sea sick with exception to one night. We usually dined in the back of the boat under a tent like area. In the middle is a light dangling down laminating over the entire dining area. That night the ocean was particularly choppy and the cove that we ducked into was not as well protected. The entire meal consisted of a rocking motion going back and forth and back and forth. That motion was exponentially amplified by the swaying light which made the shadows all around us sway even more. After dinner I rushed to the front of the boat along the layout area. It was dark and just laying flat and watching the stars made me feel instantly better.