After the stress of nearly missing the boat to Greece, we got in to Patras and drove round the coast to Piraeus for another overnight boat to Chios (an island off the coast of Turkey).

Straight off of that one, we drove round the port and onto our ‘car ferry’ to Cesme in Western Turkey. Not the biggest ferry we’d been on. Room for us and one other car on deck.

Real fuss at the port as the boat was due to leave at 8am with us, another car and 5 touring German bikers on board. We had a good chat with the Germans for the 2 hours it took to get all of our paperwork done. By 9am the skipper of the ferry was getting really grumpy with Turkish Customs people who were giving us a real grilling so, as soon as our car was on board he cast off – and left the Germans still arguing with Turkish immigration control. I guess they had to wait for the boat the next day – never found out if they actually made it!
Arrived in Turkey to lovely sunshine….

….. and another 2 hours of form filling, rubber stamping, chasing round the port to get us and the car through Customs.
There’s nothing the Turks seem to like more than a rubber stamp and a car search. Customs, police, insurance, passport control etc are all complicated, without instructions, long-winded, unhelpful and pretty aggressive. Each of the officials behave like Kings of an Empire. Fortunately, the Turkish travellers themselves were really helpful and did what they could (in a combination of sign-language and pigeon English to point is in the right direction). Thank heavens.
Some time later (and £200 poorer) due to import taxes, car insurance, visas, entry permits for the car, etc we left the port, entered Turkey and looked for our first campsite.
Seeming all closed up, we came across a nice place by the beach in Selcuk (10 minutes from Ephesus) which we planned to visit the next day.
Cracking site, and once again we had it all to ourselves.

After a good dinner of grilled chicken and salad, a super sunset before bed (about 8pm – boy we must be getting old).