As no breakfast was provided we had our own cereals in the lounge area of the hotel, and as they don’t serve food it was OK for us to do that. I had to rummage through the boxes on Tuah’s roof in search of the discs I bought for the Garmin and while at it Alison asked me to look for a makeup, neither of which was found.

We then started making tracks and 11 miles down the road came across numerous hotels and beaches and this went on for approximately 20 miles. I had to laugh because we always end up making the wrong decisions, like checking in at the first hotel that we saw in Antalya, while one minute further on there were newer hotels probably giving the same rate that we got.

After leaving SiLiFKE we nade good progress as the road was good and at Mersin we joined the highway to Iskendurum and reached it in good time. We headed for the centre and came across the promenade which was full of people strolling around in temperature of 13C. There was however no hotels at the sea front and a motorcyclist pointed us in the direction of Grand hotel. I nearly choked when he told me that the room rate was USD100. There was no other hotel that we could see and decided to go towards Antakya.

On the way we took note of some of the hotels we saw opened and about 13 kms from Antakya we saw to travelers on bicycles. We turned back as we saw them going into a petrol station. Katya & Miroslav have been together for 8 years travellling the world and had spent 2 years on and off in Penang. They were also heading towards Syria, Jordon and Egypt, albeit a bit slower pace than us, before returning to Erope. Katya told us that they wanted to see the oldest church located in Antakya, which she read about. As we left Kataya and Miroslav were getting ready to settle for the nigt at the petrol station.