We were on a high from paragliding. Here we were in Fethiye, Turkey, on the sandy beaches of the Mediterranean Sea; it was just too much. We looked around for a sea-side place to get a drink. Nearly every business was closed, undergoing renovations in preparation for the tourism season which begins in the end of April. We heard music coming from the second story of what appeared to be a restaurant, so we climbed the staircase searching for the origin of the music. The restaurant was empty except for a handful of guys working. “Is it open?” we asked. The owner, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt covered in his work shook our hands and smiled, “Anything is possible. Please, have a seat.” We picked a table with an open view of the beach and ordered an Efes beer and glass of red wine. Murphy, the owner, chatted with us like we were friends of the family, completely welcome at any time.
It wasn’t until I had reached the bottom of my over-sized glass of wine that I realized alcohol and Dramamine were interacting in my system to produce an incredibly sleepy effect. It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other and walk back to Hector’s Paragliding office. All I wanted to do was curl up on the ground with the cats and have a nap. Hector wasn’t in his office, so we were stranded without a ride back to our hotel. We bought a snack and waited as the sun was setting. Eventually, Hector pulled up on his scooter wearing a leather cowboy hat. He was short and round and it struck me as funny because the cowboy hat sat like more of a sombrero. Up until this point, our interaction with the company had been superb, but Hector was about to change that. “Hey, instead of giving you a ride back, why don’t I give you 10 lira and you can take the dolmush (public minibus).” “Okay…” We didn’t know the city at all, but Hector assured us it would be easy to take the dolmush to the Otogar where someone would tell us where to go. We boarded the dolmush with confidence. I chatted with a Scottish family on a two week holiday and some English kids visiting for the week. 45 minutes later, the dolmush emptied us out into the dark. “Finished,” was the only English the driver spoke. We had no idea where we were, and no idea how to get back to our hotel. Usually I grab a business card from the hotel or write down an address, but we had come and gone in such a whirlwind that I hadn’t thought to do it. Besides, Hector was supposed to give us a ride back to our hotel. We picked a direction and started walking, hoping that something would look familiar.
In the dark, nothing looked familiar. We’d been walking for about 20 minutes when suddenly we saw 4 guys waving at us from an outdoor restaurant table. “Hey! Join us!” they said as they jumped up to push another table into theirs. “Sure,” we replied, dumbfounded. These were the same guys we had seen an hour and a half earlier at the landing site. They were from Saudia Arabia. We’d barely said two words to each other and didn’t know their names, but they spoke broken English, and they were inviting us to join them for supper which was a lovely distraction from being lost. Like them, we ordered the lamb and cheese tortilla specialty that the restaurant is known for. They brought out their fancy I-phones and showed us videos of their solo-gliding adventures and pictures of their homes and families. They bought us supper, loaned us their GPS unit, and helped us request a local phone from our Syrian waiter. I loved looking at the Arabic writing on their I-phones and GPS unit. They had a rental car and offered to drive us to our hotel. Again, we were overwhelmed by their generosity. By calling Hector, we were able to get the hotel name, and from there our waiter gave us directions to our hotel. Abdullah and Mohammed drove us to our hotel which turned out to be just a 5 minute drive from the restaurant. It was one of those days that we got to our hotel and thought, “Wow, the Universe is so on our side.”
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