Hot, hot, hot. It was 43degC yesterday, too hot for any part of my brain to work.
I just can't imagine how Michael Davies managed to do the Marathon des Sables in the Sahara - it's all I can do in this heat to lift an icy bottle of water to my mouth so it was pure joy going up into the mountains where the snowmelt has been channelled for millennia into pools and waterfalls.
There's an ongoing competition at the local restaurant whereby if you can stay in the pool for five minutes, you get a free drink, and 15 minutes gets you a whole meal.
The icy water has worked its way through everything: even the knots in the trees have water pouring out of them.
The town of Tlos has records dating to 1400BC and I am sure the residents from those days loved spending their downtime near the water as well.
That is, if they had any downtime ...
They were an industrious bunch and not just busy building buildings for the living, but for the dead as well.
There are giant treasure-chest-shaped sarcophagi all over the place and elaborately sculpted tombs carved into the cliffs.
Lazy people just carved a person-shaped hole in the rocky ground to squish granny into.
My parents are with us on the boat at the moment and I eyed my dear old dad up as we went for a walk round Gemiler Island.
There was a grave carved into the rock and I calculated that hacking a dad-sized hole would probably take me a good few years, so I hope he doesn't kick the bucket over here.
Luckily for me (and him), he's looking in rude good health.
We will be very annoyed if our plans for a big bash for his 80th in November get derailed.
And on the subject of 80ths, happy, happy birthday to Dorothy Williams.
I'm told 80 is the new 50 and with all the 80-year-olds I know who are travelling and skiing and playing golf and tennis, I think it might be true.
Lots of them are mastering their computers as well, which is far more than I could say for myself.
Maybe when I am 80 I will learn how to cut and paste.
Quite a lot of people aren't 80 this week but are past the halfway mark: happy birthday to Willy Roberts and Jill Egerton.
Even my darling is racing towards his 80th this week.
Time's flying by here. We are feeling a little bit like locals, especially revisiting places with new boatloads of friends and family.
The tiny, wobbly, wet camel calf we saw just after it was born three weeks ago is now skittering around driving its already crabby mama crazy, and the most amazing salesperson I've ever met - an 11-year-old Turkish boy with one huge, black eyebrow - greeted us like long-lost friends at Tlos.
It's school holidays here, and this little guy works in the family cafe and souvenir shop by the Tlos ruins.
His English is brilliant, all learnt from tourists, and he is so funny and charming you can't help but buy whatever he wants to sell you.
There's no social welfare here and everyone works, children included.
Tiny boats pull up alongside us with whole families on board selling eggs and cake and bread and cigarettes and sarongs; anything you can think of.
Some of the boats have big flat hotplates and open fires underneath so you can buy a freshly made pancake. It looks terribly dangerous but they seem to have it all under control.
We had a huge Cargill family reunion in Dunedin about 15 years ago and met so many great people.
One distant relation is the very elegant Diana Bedini whose family set up the famous Babington's English tearooms on the Spanish Steps in Rome.
She has joined us on the boat as well and is as happily engrossed in Owen Marshall's The Larnachs as I was.
This is a novel based on William Larnach, one of the early Otago movers and shakers who built his own castle.
When I am away from my favourite place in the world, I like nothing more than reading about home.
I read the ODT online each day and make myself a little homesick each time.
Reading this book has had the same effect.
Just reading about Dunedin and New Zealand names and places gives me big nostalgic shivers.
Owen Marshall is one of New Zealand's greatest writers and this nearly factual account of the domineering Larnach and his beautiful young wife Connie is brilliant.
It's a little stressful given the subject matter of a pretty young stepmother and her ever-loving stepson.
Now that I have read it, I want to know how much of the story is based on fact, and will have to go and do some research when I get back.
Or maybe I could do some serious nostalgia and start poking around on the wonderful Papers Past website ... Now there's an excellent way to waste many hours on the computer! Next book on the pile is Goodbye Sarajevo, and an email I just got tells me the authors are coming to speak at Dorothy Browns in September.
I'll get more details and let you know as soon as they are available.
Everyone tells me it's fantastic.
