Voyages in Kebabland, Part II

Antalya --> Olympus --> Fethiye --> Pamukkale --> Selcuk

Ahoy all, hope you're keeping well.

Since I last scribbled something a lot of time has passed but not so much action. Am I slowing down? Of course.

After Goreme, I took an overnight bus to Antalya. Like all busses, this one was carefully designed to be too small for my too long legs so sleeping involved distorting my frame until I could nod off, except that I kept waking up a little later feeling uncomfortable. After rolling into Antalya, off I was to a wee hotel in the old town and then straight onto a tour of Perge and Aspendos during which I caught up with my sleep. Perge didn't diverge from the ancient site status quo (ie it was largely a series of small walls). Aspendos, however, was something else: "the best preserved ancient theatre in the world," claimed the guide. "95% of the original still stands," he emphasised. And true, it was impressive: not just the size but the fact that there were no small walls or piles of rock in sight.

Back to Antalya for the night: the old town's not bad (but very small), but the rest of the town is large and the package tourism industry's whore: billboards lining roads for miles into the city and the town itself is stuffed full of cruddy apartments. Happy to stay only one night.

Off then to Olympos. Olympos is a funny affair. No city, no real sights, just a row of backpackers' pensions along an unpaved road near a beach. Think hippy commune and that's Olympos. And it's great. One big beach a short walk down the road and nothing else save the free breakfast and dinners and the stifling humidity. The beach was, as you'd expect a great thing with the heat, except for two small problems: access to the beach was through an archaeological site (and a badly preserved one at that) which cost YTL3 to enter (that's about €1.70) and the biting fish. The first problem was easily solved, just don't walk down the main path past the ticket booth instead cutting across country (I saved YTL6 this way, the equivalent of a free kebab). The biting fish? Think of a wee sprat that persistently attacks your feet at exactly the same spot. The first time it was just strange, however being repeatedly being stalked by fish so small that even I wouldn't bother to grill one, I solved this problem by swimming way out of my depth where the fish don't go. Easy!

Aside from these trifles, Olympos was (and still is) one of the best places to just relax and be a bum for a while. And it gets better because from Olympos one can catch a gulet cruise to Fethiye. A gulet is basically a big old engine-powered yacht (23m long, I was reliably informed) with cabin space for about 15 guests and 3 crew, including captain. Ours was a good group of people where freakishly 6 other NZers turned up, along with a group of 5 Romanians and an American. Not an Australian in sight. The boat makes its way slowly from Demre (you have to drive there from Olympos to catch the boat) over beautiful blue water to Fethiye over the course of 72 hours, which leaves a lot of time for swimming; which was exactly what we did all the time except for a two-hour stop at Kas, a gorgeous wee town but one so small that even one hour was more than enough to see everything on offer. In Kas, I had the experience of being talked out of buying something by a shop-keeper for the first time in my life (and in Turkey of all places!): stopping outside a fridge I grabbed a can of Efes Dark Brown beer and took it inside to pay. "Are you sure that you want that?" asked Shop-keeper. "Sure," said I, "I like dark beers." It turned out that Efes Dark Brown is a mix of beer and coffee so I'm glad I took Shop-keeper's advice.

Fethiye is pleasant (ie not ugly, foul or otherwise off-putting) but is also a little soulless. Still, after the hardship of being on a cruise for three days, it was a good place to relax :) ... except on the second night, I was awakened from my slumber by the sound of a drum. Time check: 3:30 am, a strange time to be drumming. I listen harder: there is definitely the sound of someone beating a drum (with a good rhythm I might add, certainly not a drunk person) and from the volume this person and his/her drum is progressing slowly down the road right outside my dorm. Suffice to say I was sorely tempted to step outside and stop this drumming. Next morning, however, I asked about the drumming during breakfast: had anyone else been woken up by this nocturnal musician? It turns out that during Ramadan muslims beat drums during the night to mark the time when one is allowed to start eating before the sunrise curfew. I will exercise great patience until the end of September, when Ramadan will end.

I also took the time to do a short day trip to Koycegiz, recommended by Lonely Planet as a place worth seeing, but it was so small that I spent more time on the bus going to and from there than I did in the town. Still, it made a break from Fethiye.

Of then to Pamukkale, for a one night, natural-wonder fuelled day of sightseeing. Pamukkale (literally "Cotton Castle") was an area around some thermal springs where, over many years, calcium and chalk in the water formed a series of terraces over which the water cascaded. Ancient people built a pretty big town called Hieropolis (now rubble and a series of low walls) nearby. For YTL20 (quite a substantial sum I should add), you can walk up a track past the terraces and natural chalk formations to Hieropolis. "Huh?" say you, the reader. "A track?" Absolutely. Before getting World Heritage Site protection in the 80s, developers built a road right through the Cotton Castle, added a carpark and about four hotels on top. A bit of a bummer, of course. Then the hotels sectioned off some of the pools for their guests' exclusive use and dumped some of their wastewater in there (not with the guests, in other parts of the terraces) for good measure. Thankfully the hotels are now pulled down but all this means that in an effort to restore the Cotton Castle - remove the filth and pollution, including algal blooms for example - most of the water that would normally flow over the terraces is either diverted or blocked off. Basically, Pamukkale is a living, breathing example of how to cock-up a natural beauty spot, kind of like dying Mont Blanc green for a laugh, and one for which they still charge YTL20 (Hieropolis included).

Still, I saw what I wanted to see and, that evening, headed to Selcuk. Here I have had four nights and plenty of tours to take in the highly rated Ephesus (Efes), capital of Anatolia during Roman times. Although partly ruins and small walls, the main road through Ephesus and from Ephesus to the then harbour (now dry land as it silted up) is very much intact and quite a pleasure to walk through. The one downside to this is that two million tourists a year also happen to walk the same route and so large scrums of people with cameras often form at bottle-necks.

The next day was supposed to be the "PMD" tour - three ancient sites all in one day - except it never happened. The tour guide turned up to my humble hotel and explained that I was the only person to have booked for that tour so it was now cancelled. Quel horreur! However, she suggested an alternative trip to a nearby old Greek town called Sirence - the Greeks left a long time ago of course. Sirence is very quiet and peaceful (which coincidentally is what the town name means in Turkish) and I spent a relaxing half day there before coming back here to finish this little ditty.

Next up: Pergamum then via Istanbul to Izmit, Bursa and then Ankara again (to check out another visa).

Anyhow, that's it for now, another update will come when it comes.

Stay well,

Stephen