So we decided to rent a little gold car and drive up the coast of Turkey in search of sun, sand and relaxation. Shawn agreed to drive from Istanbul to Antalya (12 hours for 700km due to the roads) where we would meet up with our travel friend Erfan and his friend Kyra for a week.

In front of the ancient amplitheatre of Termessos

The drive down was long, but we had air conditioning so it was not too hot. In Turkey everyone drives really agressively, so you always have to be defensive behind the wheel. Shawn has been doing great though, it seems he is a competitent driver where ever we travel.
We arrove in Antalya late at night and proceeded to drive around in circles trying to find the street signs listed in our Lonely Planet map. What the map fails to tell you is that it is a map of the ancient city, and the new part of the city (which is home to 700 000 people) does not have any street signs or any directions. Eventually we rolled down the window and asked this guy on a moped if he knew where the Sabah Pension was (our hostel). This guy took our Lonely Planet book, and with broken French asked us to follow him. We had to follow him around town as he delivered tissue to restaurants. Eventually he wanted to drive our rental car but we did not think this was a great idea. He did lead us to our hostel which was in the old part of town and down many narrow and winding streets. I did not think we were going to fit through at times, but again Shawns driving was fantastic!
We met up with our friend Erfan in Antalya. We had origionally met him on the bus leaving Wadi Rum in Jordan, and we kept running in to him on our whole trip through Syria. He was meeting another friend of his from Vancouver, so together we decided to beach hop up the coast of Turkey.
We left early the next morning (after some shopping) and headed out to Termessos. It was actually our friend Marco who had read an article on the ancient city and first got us interested in visiting. Not a lot of tourists visit the ruins, this probably has to do with the trek it takes to reach them. The ancient city is amazing and appears to be mostly unexcavated. We wandered around for the entire afternoon. There are trees and shrubs growing in and around all the ruins and scattered around are ancient pieces of pottery and stone. You can climb over and through everything exploring. It was the most authentic ruined city we have ever seen. It reminds you of what Petra might have been like in years past before bus loads of tourists and souvenirs arrived. One of the nicest moments was when we went to the theatre. Our new travel friend Kyra, who is a professional singer, gave us an impromptu concert in the ruins. The sound was amazingly beautiful. She even felt that it wast he best acoustic she had ever sung in. It definately helped to make the atmosphere even more magical.
After this we headed to the beach town of Olympos. It is a great little resort town full of tourists and hostels advertising tree houses. These are really just little huts on stilts. The true draw to the area is the beach and the beautiful scenery. We found a great little hostel with private huts and air conditioning and free breakfast and dinner. The chef was great and cooked us traditional Turkish food. We stayed for 2 nights, and spent our day sun tanning and then trekking to Chimeara. It seems that everywhere you go in Turkey, 500 meters is the distance. Following this advice we ended up walking about 6km during the hottest part of the day to reach the flames. The site claims to be the origional flame of the Olympic games, and that ancient people used to run to the top, light a torch and run down to the cıty of Olympos. Of course I am sure the Greeks would disagree, but it is pretty amazing to see natural flames burning from seemingly no where in the rocks. I think there was a scientifıc explanation for it on the sign, but the translation was really bad and we just couldnt quite grasp it.
We then left Olympos and are heading up the coast to find a new stretch of ocean to swim in. Erfan learned to swim yesterday, so we are hoping to find a calm patch of water to practice in.
Great to hear from everyone! Our trip is almost over, cant believe we will be home in a week!

Kyra, Erfan and Shawn at Termessos

Termessos

The beach at Olympos where Erfan learned to swim!

Ancient city of Olympos

The eternal flame at Chimeara