Day 25: just look at the world around you Right here on the ocean floor. Such wonderful things surround you What more is you looking for

Miles: 269
Countries: Turkey
Stops: Bodrum -> Oren -> almost Antalya
Playlists: Kygo Essentials (Spotify)

Last night was awesome. We were so relaxed and smoked shisha/drank wine until 2am before making our way back to the car. We didn't end up making friends or partying like we thought we would, but it was a perfect night regardless.

Justin woke up in the middle of the night dying of heat and tossed and turned until he decided to go swimming. Everything was closed by then including the short way to the beach so he settled for a shower at, like, 5am?

We woke up, packed the car, and made our way over to the beach. Grabbed some Turkish coffee and tea. Justin flew his drone, we swam, soaked up the sun then made our way over to the car. While Justin was editing the drone footage on his phone sitting in the car, I was hovering over the open door, and we somehow managed to adopt a child unknowingly. I was hovering, minding my own business, trying to airdry in my bikini, when all of a sudden, there were hands around my waist and a body pressed up against my bum. I turn around and I see the top of a head as this 4-5 year old was resting his cheek against me.... he looked up and hugged me tighter. While doing so, he started making his way around until he was in front of me with his face on my tummy... and he blew a raspberry.

Yup, that happened. We somehow got into a tickle fight, and his parents were nowhere to be seen. He made his way over to Justin, hugged him and just hung over his shoulder watching the screen. Then he came back to hang off of me. Not sure if creepy or cute as I write this haha. His parents showed up a good 10 minutes later and he rushed over after they said something I didn't understand and didn't "pester" us after, though he waved bye as we drove by.

The Bodrum Castle was not even a 20 min drive. It was rated Europe's best museum and it was super wicked! It was all excavated shipwrecks as old as dating back to 4000BC. One of the ships was, what they think, a royal ship carrying materials including a scarab inscribed with Queen Nefertiti's name. It was amazing to see all these things that, not only survived 6000 years, but did so underwater, no less. This specific shipwreck founded in 1960 was the first time archeologists started asking just how big of a part the Ancient Egyptians had in Mediterranean trading. We spent longer than we planned but the scenery was breathtaking with the waters so piercing blue, the floating yachts, the giant city of Bodrum and its hillside homes, and the liveliness of the shops and streets.

We got on the road only to find out that Justin's 6GB data plan, that we're roaming on, somehow went over 10GB this month. Funny, we only had it on for the last week or so and justin has never even come close to reaching half, let alone his max. Best part is Rogers usually sends a message warning you that you reached 90% of your data, but managed to royally fail and only sent us a message saying we've gone over so much that they're shutting us down. So now we need to sell a kidney to probably pay for this bill, but worse, are completely blind/map-less since we haven't even had a chance to download the map offline. We did end up getting them to reactivate it at this point and they said they couldn't do anything about it until the bill actually comes out next week. So now this is a future problem.

We saw a sign for a town called "Oren" and it only seemed like a half hour detour as it was in the general direction we were going in, so we figured we'd go for the LOLs. It was quite the road, justin had fun, and it turned into this tiny little resort town for Turks - not much outside tourism by the feel of it.

We figured we'd grab some seafood by the coast and watch the waves. Well, this half hour detour turned into 4. The food took hours to come out and we were getting cranky. The phone situation was not getting solved even while being on the line with Rogers. And we started stressing over the temporary car ownership we currently have (that it wouldn't work in the Eastern countries) and that we need have the real one shipped from U.K. It's turning into almost $100 just to ship a piece of paper overnight, which really is 3 days. So now we needed to figure out where to get that shipped. We spent an hour with the restaurant's shitastic wifi, not loading anything, and not coming to any conclusion except that the half hour detour into Oren was no longer even on the way as we decided to head back up and directly to Konye. We started really stressing over time that we're 1.5 weeks behind schedule (not that it matters, since we probably can't get in to most countries). We also got a little mopey about the ridiculous detour Bodrum ended up being - as awesome of a night as we had, smoking shisha, drinking wine, and sitting by the beach is something we could've done en route on the Black Sea, it didn't have to be a 2 day detour. Ankara really screwed us over, since we planned on hitting the coast for the sight seeing and all the ruins! Especially since we then had to double back and take the same highway back.

Lots of discussion and debate, we decided to head to Antalya anyway. What's another day detour if it means we actually get to see the things we wanted to? Antalya was the site of Alexander the Great and tons of other wonders so we'll be hitting that up tomorrow, and the plan is to make it just past Konya tomorrow night, giving us most of the day in Cappadoccia on Friday.

Enough time to figure out a sump guard, check out the underworld, and settle in for a 5am wake up call on Saturday. Meanwhile, we set up camp at a gas station and for some reason, didn't notice the big cage a metre from the car that contains a rooster staring us down. Tomorrow morning is going to be interesting.