Hello from the Turkish gateway to the Greek islands.

I'm still still here in Marmaris Turkey and working on two postcards and three sets of photos for places  pondered during the past three weeks. Messing with the pictures takes a long time and now that I've figured out how to do it efficiently, I seem to have lost interest. I'll get to it eventually, but thought some of you might like a brief update of my wanderings sans pictures. A couple friends have complained that I send so many pictures they don't have time to get around to them all . Guess I'd better try being more selective with pictures in the future. 

A few days ago I noticed an old black mole on my back had started to change shape and bleed. My Santa Barbara witch doctor and I have been watching it for a couple decades. He always concluded that I should not worry about it unless it started to change in some way. Well naturally with all those changes, I started to worry. So, I made an appointment with a dermatologist here in Marmaris Turkey. She spoke no English so we had a nurse translator helping. After my lengthy explanation of why I'd asked for a consultation she took a look at my slightly enlarged and at one point bleeding little black bump, and with her most stern professional expression and her best attempt at very limited English pronounced "not good... some Turkish gibberish... good," shaking her head as she made the pronouncement. Then she looked sheepishly at our translator and spoke in Turkish until our nurse nodded. Turning to me she explained, "She says you have, how do you say it, "shiny skin." Your melanin is more sensitive. But there is nothing to worry about. Just keep that part of your body out of the sun as much as you can. Put a Band-Aid over the spot, if you like." Hearing this I went through my concerns about the specific changes again and again with translations got more reassurances that I need not worry. She wrote a prescription for some sort of cream and I left to pay my bill: seventeen and a half million... about what we eventually will be paying for such a consultation in America I imagine. The bill here is in Turkish Lira and when converted to U.S. dollars, comes to about twenty dollars!

The one ferry to Rhodes this week leaves tomorrow, so I'll be off to Greece. My current expectation is to spend a week in Rhodes and then catch a ferry to the Greek side of Cyprus (I visited the Turkish side a couple years ago). From there I am told I will be able to get another ferry to Egypt. We will see.

I am reluctant to leave Turkey as the dollar grows stronger every day. I got 675,000 TL per dollar when I arrived here the first of February and last night the rate had jumped to 880,000. That's a thirty percent increase in just a little over one month! Credit card charges are figured at about a million TL per dollar and my first class hotel costs less than 18 million per night, well under twenty dollars a night. Yesterday I had a marvelous lunch of lentil soup, Pide (Turkish pizza), salad, bread, and a buttermilk kind of drink for a total cost of 2.6 million (under three dollars). I make money every day I stay here.

O.K. This is a short postcard, so I'll stop. Sorry there are no photographs for this visit to Marmaris. I do promise to get the other 200 picture backlog processed at some point and will pick out some of the better ones to share with everyone. (Finally got that done after returning home!) So long for now.

Peace,
Fred L Bellomy

 

End