Saturday 12 July 2008

Evacuate! Evacuate!

Wow, Turkey's hot! It's so hot that the sun set the hills on fire! We'd just returned from a day trip to Kaş and were cooling down in the pool when a big cloud of smoke descended and, what started as a little fire in the distance quickly turned into an enormous fire that surrounded our hotel and threated to burn the whole village of Patara down. Yikes!

The fire was incredibly fast moving, and closing in on all sides, so we had to evacuate to the safety of the beach. There were lots of guests wıth kids, who were understandably worried, but we weren't really scared, just excited! It was exactly what we needed after a week of doing nothing. The beach resembled a scene from Armageddon - lines of people wandering up the sand, smoke billowıng towards us; helicopters and planes flyıng over, picking up water from a nearby pond to drop on the fire - but after about a 2 hours the fire was under control and we were free to go back to the hotel. Phew!





But the drama wasn't over yet. No sir-ree! We only managed half a glass of beer to celebrate our survival, when the flames flared up again, and we had to be evacuated, again. The owners of our hotel were great though, and this time we were taken to Kalkan to spend the night in a luxury villa - complete with its own private pool. Result! We didn't actually get a chance to swim in ıt- but it was nice knowing we had one :)


Anyway, all the fires are out now, and everything's fine.


Debs

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