by Jan Beukes

Created on: October 18, 2009   Last Updated: October 22, 2009

Day One:

The countdown for this seven day October holiday with my twenty-three year old daughter was now at last over. After a one hour delay due to a passenger becoming ill and needing to be taken to hospital, we were finally on our way.

We landed in Turkey at Dalaman around 2pm and were soon on the transfer bus - all part of our all-inclusive Cosmos package. An hour later, we arrived at The Green Forest Hotel in Hisaronu. The beautiful pine forest setting and blue skies gave us a delightful welcome and we couldn't wait to strip off our jeans and jumpers and get into our summer clothes whilst there was just over one hour left before the sun hid behind the mountains.

After a wonderful evening meal, we decided to retire early as we had been up since 3.30am. Although our single beds were rather narrow and the walls were not very sound-proof, overall we were happy with our clean modern room and slept well on our first night.

Day Two:

We awoke to rich blue skies and felt very refreshed after a good night's sleep. The breakfast spread was splendid after which we took the hotel's free shuttle down to Olu Deniz beach and the Blue Lagoon.

We hired a pedalo for an hour and this is where our fun started. We didn't need our men to be with us for a little adventure - or did we? Once away from the beach, we decided it would be a good idea to snorkel around the rocks. We found a place to tie up the boat and happily jumped into the warm water to explore - yes guys, we are so capable! When we decided it was time to head back, we swam back to our pedalo and discovered we had made a big mistake. We couldn't get back on. We slipped and we slid, we tried forwards, we tried backwards to no avail. There was nothing low enough to step onto. Eventually - don't ask me how - my daughter managed to get enough elbow strength to hoist herself aboard. She then tried and tried to help me aboard, but I was getting weaker and weaker.

The hilarious laughing at the beginning didn't help either! I then had a bright idea (yes, women have this ability guys when strength fails them). If I swam to a nearby jetty which had a ladder and my daughter could untie the boat and peddle over to there, I would be able to climb aboard in a dignified manner. Now a pedalo is a very hard boat to steer precisely where you want it to go and my daughter couldn't get it to the jetty. There was another boat moored at the jetty, so my daughter pulled up alongside it. I climbed onto this boat and was then able to walk

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