This is the last post, I promise, of swimming pics from Turkey. These are photos that were taken by Mustafah – the boat captain for the last two days. In addition, to driving the boat he would run around and take photos of us all whilst we were in the water swimming. He had an impressive Canon Digital SLR camera. Here are plenty of action swimming shots of me and my fellow swimtrekkers, accompanied by our swim guide escorts. Viva open water swimming. No boundaries. No lanes. No walls to kick off from. No chlorine. We battle the waves, the sea water and the marine life.
Here’s a few of me, in action:
One of the minor challenges of open water swimming, was knowing where our destination was. Kind of hard to tell which way to swim and having to sight. Which way? That way!
Middle of the pack:
Mr. D doing a backdive into the water. Don’t try that at home kiddies!
I forgot to mention that there were a few hand signals that we had to learn for the duration of the trip. There was a signal for ‘help’, a signal for “I’m ok” and can you guess what this one was for:
The letter “W” made with both hands. It meant you were taking a leak in the water, just to let others know around you to keep clear. No one actually made this signal during the trip. We all just peed anyway…but of course you’d swim away from the group. (Well, I hope others were offering the same courtesy!) Here’s a group photo of us yellow-cap swimmers. We look pretty happy and glowing – high on endorphins and sunshine:
Drink breaks involved treading water and having drink bottles thrown to us:
This is our group setting off for the archipelago swim:
More action shots:
And another one of me:
I took a couple of videos on the trip. They’re a bit lame. And I haven’t edited them (don’t know how and can’t be bothered). Here’s one of the water as we sail on the boat. Click link. This video was taken at Aperlae. I was in the water and taking a video of the other practising swim drills. This has a lot of noise, so best on mute. And this video is kind of crazy. I was taking footage of Mr. A freedive down to the sunken coast guard boat, but this was the failed attempt. The water was super choppy and it was quite deep in this part of the sea. After the failed freedive attempt, I didn’t realise the video was still running, so I have all this random footage of what looks like me being tumbled around in a washing machine. I’m obviously trying to stay afloat, and tread water, but my hand holding the camera is waving about under the water with the video still running. It was really nice to be able to have the luxury to spend 2-3 hours a day swimming. These swimming adventure holidays are a great way to travel. I promise, no more photos. That’s it. Got no more left to show you. My blog will resume back to its regular dribble of food and life in Japan. There are a few other companies that offer swim adventure holidays. Swimtrek is the most prominent and has the most extensive and comprehensive destination itineraries, but it’s more convenient for those in the UK and Europe. I also highly recommend booking in advance, because they book out really quickly. I booked in February this year for an October departure. I had wanted to go in September, but they were booked out. 3-6 months advance booking is ideal…also gives you time to train and get in shape! There are a few other competitors out there but are more specific to a particular locale. SwimVacations – focus mostly on the British Virgin Islands and Caribbean SwimSafari – is more Australia friendly in terms of location. They run swim safaris in Fiji and Vanuatu. Doing one of the 5km OWS races there is on my bucketlist, but they also run swimming tour holidays as well. Would like to do one of these once I’m back in Australia. And if you missed my day-by-day recount of the week-long swimtrek here are the quicklinks: Swimtrek day 1 Swimtrek day 2 Swimtrek day 3 Swimtrek day 4 Swimtrek day 5 Swimtrek day 6
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