"Can you see anything?" **pant, pant, pant**
"No, can you?" asks my sister.
"No."
"No." answers Emel who's also in the water. We've been swimming in "The Blue Lagoon" and we've been told that there are underwater ruins somewhere in the lagoon in the direction we're swimming.
We've been swimming in this direction for a half an hour. I think we've covered 3/4th of a mile. It's actually not as bad as it sounds because the lagoon is saltwater and it helps with the buoyancy. We swam in the Aegean Sea too and it is actually very salty and buoyant but really choppy.
"Ouch! ouch ouchouchouchouch!" I've found it. I've swum into it.
It's marked with an empty 7-up bottle tied down. It's walls are in the water.
In the states we joke about an enormous earthquake happening and California falling into the Ocean.
We joke about it and we never think it will really happen.
Well in Turkey, it really did. More than once. In more than one place.
I got an infection from the scratches on my stomach. But we also took a boat out along the southern coast of Turkey and saw an entire village now underwater. The earthquake not only took the village and moved it toward the sea, but it took the sea and moved it toward the village too. The sea rose and flooded so the water level rose.
Kind of like what's happening in New Orleans.
The water is clear aqua blue and people kayak over it now. The Turkish military keeps a close eye on it from across the little stretch of sea to keep divers and swimmers from pillaging the treasures underneath.
There is a special unit of military set up for tourist sites. Emel called them tourist soldiers. I don't think this is one of them though. Tourist soldiers are there to protect the tourists. These soldiers are there to protect Turkey from the "tourists."
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