Blue

So I´m here at an internet cafe after three and a half days on a yacht on the Mediterraenean. It has been absolutely incredible!

Blue. There is a reason that the Mediterraenean is called "The Wine-Dark Sea." It is not an average blue; it is a deep, all encompassing blue. It seems endless, immortal. There is a great reason that the Greeks loved her, that the Romans called her "Mare Nostrum:" Our Sea. When I ride the Mediterraenean, I feel her immortality. When I burn my shoulders, I feel a taste of her wrath. She is like liquid azure slate.

Up until the Mediterraenean I did not appreciate most of the natural wonders that I saw. I was in Cappodocia, wıth its jutted landscapes carved out by the wind over incredıble time. Think Arizona but wıth vulcanic rock that sculpts like potter`s clay. The wind sculpts the rocks into points, so there are a thousand spears pointıng upward into the sky. The difference in the toughness of the rocks allows the top to be wider than the spear section below.

Ancient peoples carved churches and monasteries, houses and even entire underground cities. They built them because they wanted isolation from the world and because they wanted safety, depending on the time. Some built cavernous cities with elaborate ventillation systems and storerooms, with churches standing side by side with living quarters.

Anyway, I saw these incredible vistas and awe-ful towers that God created as I´ve tried to explain above, but I was not too interested in them. I was interested in how the people had used these wonderful pieces of geography.

Then I came to the Mediterraenean with its impossible salt-watered beauty, with its deep, bluer than eyes look.

Over the past three days on the yacht, called the Arıf Kaptan B, we have seen virtually no ancinet sites, but in the water, watching the water, holding my breath and floating on the salt-bouyant waters, cimbling the summit of the adjacent steep hills with six people of varying climbing abilities, creating mythologies for imagined constellations of an octopus named Seminus, sharing an iPod sining Jason Mraz while climbiming a ladder, gazing at stars impossibly clear shimmering stars, sharing a shooting start with three friends. That is the Mediterraenean, and that is why I don´t mind not seeing as many ancient cultural sites as I had before.

I have realized the difficulty of pictures. It was a lovely farce in thinking that I would be able to post picures, but it was a farce. So, sadly, I will be unable to post pictures for most, if not all, of the trip. My halting words and crappy metaphors will have to do.

I am not sure when I will be able to post again. I have given up any sort of comprehensive catalog of my days or the incredible events that are happening throughout each day, so you are left with whatever my thoughts are on on the day of the post. I apologize that I have neither the time nor the eloquence to document or convey most of the good events of the day, but I think that these little snippets will give you the most complete, if not the most comprehensive, explanatıons of the trip and my thoughts.

Farewell

Chris