This is how you find yourself in your underwear running next to the Mediterranean Sea sprinting at the very tip of Cyprus next to an Egyptian you just met yesterday. Hesham and I go to a castle in the morning (St. Hilarion castle) (it was hilarious, by the way). Hesham is a soft spoken Egyptian who is scared of heights and likes to drive aggressively fast on the highway. It's okay there's no cops out here only cameras and they let you know when the cameras are coming. When we are done with the castle he says , I was thinking we could go swimming? I know a place. Okay yeah! But he knows a most special beach "golden beach" in "karpaz" aka WAY the fuck up there aka it's a 2.5 hr road trip. We drive, the highway ends and is replaced by dirt and wildflowers and one lonely town. The sand is actually golden, the water is clear and not "warm "but way warmer than New England. I find a bone that used to be a squids backbone but then a stray dog comes and decides he is going to eat it instead. It's okay , as we are leaving we find a whole perfect orange in the shallows and we get to eat that so it's fair. Oh yeah we are in our underwear because we jump in obviously . And then we have to run because we need to get dry and there's no towels If you wanted to know, at the end of Cyprus there is mostly donkeys and one very bored police officer in a white shack who saw kids were jumping off the cliff there so he built them a diving board. There is also goats, one fox and a miraculous sunset that decides to hide behind clouds on it's way down. There is also a small hill and we climb it and feel victorious next to the Turkish flag pole. The same time next night I'm in the Mediterranean again, different beach, same toes. My feet are warm from the two Turkish beers. Ajar and Fatih think I'm crazy because "eet is not the seeeason" but the water is warmer than the air and my feet are tired of snowshoes. Ajar is my next couchsurfer. She is from Kygyrzsytan and she likes to feed me A LOT and not let me pay for anything ever. Her Turkish friend fatih picks us up and drives us around, another castle. He doesn't know English super well but he likes to try and starts almost every sentence with "By the way," We go bowling. Turkish bowling is just like regular bowling except here they only play Michael Jackson songs. They try to teach me how to suck less at it " just, try to find the meedle" , unsuccessful. Ps i learned how to say the beach is beautiful in Turkish it sounds like plash cho gazelle
