Oludeniz -1: Surprise, Surprise...

At rather short notice I dedided to fly to Oludeniz in Turkey for a week.
Actually it has been Ruth to suggest this as she realized I was in a rather 'lousy' mood and needed to fly somewhere. Oludeniz came up as my good friend Hartmut is presently staying here for 2 weeks and we haven't been flying together for many years; this winter we tried to get together in Arosa in March, but the weather didn't 'comply'. So far the only time I've been here was in July 1996, also with Hartmut.
At first I didn't want to go, as I assumed, that there would be no direct flights and travelling via Istambul (IST) is rather cumbersome. Much to my surprise I found out that EdelweissAir (EDW/ WK) is flying into Dalaman (DLM) twice a week from ZRH.
So together with Gaby (Hartmut's girl friend) I set everything up, in order we could surprise him today.
And what a surprise it was when I joined and greeted him in the shuttle going up to Babadag!!

pix by Bernd

my hotel: 'La Boutique Maya'

Flyingwise unfortunately I have to say that I couldn't fly, even though the conditions would have been pretty good. At first there was a cloud layer below launch but it cleared away after about 1,5hrs parawaiting. But the pain in my back came on very strong a couple of times, so I had to abandon the idea of flying to Butterfly Valley (which can be only reached by boat and of course by flying in).
So I had to take the shuttle down again :-((   Gladly the driver dropped me off right at my hotel.

Tandem taking off

Addendum

To see the pain situation from a 'positive' point of view (at least for today), I'd like to add here that the pain held me back from flying (as mentioned above) because the boat which was to take me back to Oludeniz sunk (!) upon leaving Butterfly Valley in less than 2 or 3 minutes. Hartmut told me tonight that there was absolute pandemonium and chaos while everybody tried to get off the boat.
I don't know how I would have handled this situation in my present physical state.
Luckily it happened very close to the shore, nobody was seriously injured, all the packs with the paragliders got (more or less) dry to the beach...
But they arrived more than 3 hours later than scheduled in Oludeniz,