Malena in Turkey

On Thursday, our last full day in Fethiye, Kate and I decided to make our way over to the ghost town of Kayakoy. We were both looking forward to this - probably more than we should have been to be honest. After all, this wasn’t an old ghost town like, say… the ones in California. Oh no, in this land of ancient ruins the age of the town we’d be visiting was around 80 years old. That’s right, I was excited about visiting an empty town about half the age of my childhood house.

 Basically, the town of Kayakoy was abandoned after the Turkish War of Independence, when all the people of Greek descent (and practicing Ottoman Christians) moved to Greece, and all the Turkish people living in Greece returned here.  Apparently, there were more people moving out of Turkey than into Turkey, so a number of towns were abandoned.  Then, there were earthquakes and “natural phenomona” that aged the houses, and now it’s a big tourist destination!  And I have lots of pictures, none of them very good, and all of them far to big to actually put up here.  How hard is it to resize pictures, you ask?  Well, right now it’s a pain and I’m working on that.  But on with the blog!

To get there we got to take a dolmus (small bus) from the center of Fethiye. Now this bus was basically awesome, because the driver apparently didn’t understand that you could drive faster than 15mph. So we’re slowly chugging away, cement trucks and tractors and runners are passing us at extremely fast paces, and we’re freezing cold because the bus driver also seemed to like driving with the door open. Fortunately after about 30 minutes of this (and approximately 7.5 miles) the driver sped up to at least 30mph and we drove through… my favorite English resort town ever! Seriously, it’s hideous. All signs in English, no non-British people that I could see in town, restaurants with names like “The Fish and Chips Place” and “English Food Restaurant” and stores called “The Midas Touch” and “Ali Baba Carpets” - ugh. It made me cringe. I guess I shouldn’t be hypocritical because at a lot of the small towns we’ve stayed at (and I’ve really liked) everyone spoke English, tourism is the only reason the town is still around, etc… but this one just seemed different.

Eventually, despite our bus driver’s best efforts, we arrived at the ghost town. It was pretty cool, lots of empty stone buildings - but I was imagining there would be more there to remind you that 80 years ago people were actually living there. Instead, it looked like no one had lived there for hundreds of years. No childrens’ toys left on shaggy lawns, no rusted bikes lacking drivers, etc. I guess since lots of tourists come through anything like that would have been picked over long ago. So we walked around, took a few pictures, and then noticed that there were mysterious trails marked on the rocks with red and yellow paint marks. Thinking this would lead to a new church, or maybe the school, we followed the trail up the mountain, through bushes of swarming bees, occasionally losing it in the brush. And the trail just kept going, and going… until we were out of Kayakoy altogether. We decided we might as well keep following it even though we had no idea where it ended up… which was a fantastic idea until we lost the trail. Hooray for being adventurous?

Now, the best part about losing the trail was that we basically had to go up and down these steep ravines, climbing over rocks, skidding down hills, etc. It was a lot of fun and very exciting. Eventually, we caught sight of Oludeniz beach, the one where we went paragliding, and decided the trail must lead that way… if only we could find the trail. So we headed in that direction, handily aided by my compass (be prepared!) slipping and falling the whole way. My right hand suffered a tragic injury, as did the seat of my pants. Eventually (miracle of miracles!) we did find the trail again, and I think we even figured out how we veered off in the first place…  (picture incoming!)

So after a nice invigorating stroll, we arrived back at the very same beach we were at 3 days ago. With our very special friend there, Hector, who had not only sold us on the paragliding but had also taken a picture of the two of us, with him, enjoying a beer post-flight, apparently to put on his webpage. We were very excited. If by excited I mean mildly freaked out, especially we he revealed he had STOPPED BY OUR HOSTEL ROOM THE NIGHT BEFORE TO SEE US. Then he started showing off his muscles and talking about how in shape he was. Fortunately, when we started playing rummy and didn’t invite him along he sort of left us alone. So we got to people-watch on the beach another day - it was really very pleasant. (Well, except for when the people-watching included the return of skanky Speedo man from the boat the day before.)

So as we’ve started running out of time here, less time spent on the Internet and more time spent squeezing every last minute out of the day!  But I’m sure I can find the time at work to update some entries.  Heh.  However, for those wondering, a quick overview of where we’ve been since the last update:

Fethiye - spent one more day visiting the ghost town of Kayakoy (abandoned 75 years ago when all the Greeks living in Turkey moved to Greece and vice versa.)  We then sort of hiked, sort of trailblazed back down to Oleduniz (the beach where we went sky-diving) and met up with our good friend Hector there.  If by good friend I mean sketchy guy who sold us the skydiving package and then stopped by our hostel room the next night to see if we wanted to go out.  Sweet.  We then headed out to Olympos…

Olympos - Where we met up with some other travellers, saw the eternal Olympic flame’s birthplace (really cool!) and hung out in a treehouse.  And drank some beer.  Then we headed to Antalya..

Antalya - where we spent five hours seeing the sights, including a fun museum that featured exciting scenes from Turkish life 500 years ago (and you think I’m being facetious.)  We also only made our bus thanks to a nice Turkish waiter who spoke very good German but very bad English - so he actually walked us the 4 blocks to the bus station!  Because we were on the way to Goreme…

Goreme:  We spent 4 days 3 nights here, going on hikes both successful and unsuccessful, meeting even more other travellers and actually hanging out with some locals, and going scootering in the hills (to, among other things, an amazing underground city that I’ll write more about later, a castle and a winery.)  We also rented bikes and headed over to Urgup where we tried our hand at pottery (apparently they let native English speakers take multi-week pottery classes there if you just talk in English with them… how cool is that?  Gabi, you should totally do that after you graduate - you’d love it.)  Hmm, we also played a lot of backgammon, saw some ‘interesting’ rock formations, and drank a lot of tea, a lot of beer, and a lot of Cappadocia wine.  We headed out on another horrible overnight bus to Istanbul for one day…

Istanbul:  Where we’ve ridden a ferry on the Bosphorus, bought Turkish Delight in the Spice Market, bartered in the Great Bazaar, and drank the most expensive cup of tea ever.  Which was spilled on my face.  But we still didn’t receive a discount.  Grrr.  

Tomorrow morning we head back home!  Booo!  I think we’ve both had a very nice time here, although the famous Turkish hospitality is more so they can sell you things than anything else.  I plan on making a Tshirt that says:  “Turkish hospitality — No obligation”  when I get back.  I also need to find out more about the famous Ataturk, pictured everywhere here.  But don’t worry, we’ve been taking pictures.

Before I get into the meat of this entry (describing a 12 Islands boat tour Kate and I took in Fethiye) I have two random incidents that we were lucky enough to experience.

1. One night in Fethiye we went ... [Continue reading this entry]

So we had big plans for Monday... go around, lounge around on a beautiful Mediterranean beach, maybe remember to put some sunscreen on.  Unlıke in Ephesus.  Maybe those masked Koreans were onto something. Except of course, we get to the beautiful ... [Continue reading this entry]

So, apologies for the lateness on this one, but its my second try... the computer deleted my first entry!  Here goes... On Sunday Kate and I woke up early to head out to the ruins of Ephesus.  Ephesus was buılt by the ... [Continue reading this entry]

well it is time for the guest entry..... so we got back to our hostel after smokıng up and got a cab to the otogar - plans were going perfectly.  we were right on time and everything.  except it turned out ... [Continue reading this entry]

So after the long overnight bus ride wıth no sleep (that our special guest blogger will write about once I stop hogging the computer) the only logical thing to do was take a nap.  We found a hostel and pretty ... [Continue reading this entry]

Here Kate and I are post-nargileh: Me (I am horrible at this and had lots and lots of problems): [Continue reading this entry]

The promised Air Turkey gift package - note the shoehorn, slippers, and light pink eyeshades (which would have been nice had they actually been thick enough to block out any light...) [Continue reading this entry]

Alas, I can't keep my promise about uploading pictures... and it was my one goal for the day! Stupid 'vacation' getting in the way of my blogging duties. Today we planned for a nice relaxing day at the beach, but ... [Continue reading this entry]