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Miss Berzek was a pioneer of Türkbükü 30 years ago, when a single woman from Istanbul setting up a hotel in a remote fishermens village was considered odd behaviour.

Türkbükü has meanwhile changed; but Tomris still runs the Cactus Flower as ever, in pricky personal style, and takes pride in welcoming the second - even third - generation of her guests. Her courtyard is cluttered with antiques and bric-a-brac collected over a lifetime. The rooms are without pretensions, but they have canopies of brilliant bougainvillea, and they lie directly by the beach. To right and left lie the swankiest small hotels of the Turkish coast, charging 400 dollars a night for a jazzed-up cubicle; so Tomris - no doubt to her own surprise - was forced to raise her rates to at least half that.

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