Travel with Friends III – Fethiye, Kayakoy, Tlos and Seklikand Canyon

Sadly our planned 6 day sailing trip to Fethiye and its beautiful bay was cut short by a dodgy windlass motor.  After two nights in Ekinçek we sailed (motored) back to Yat Marine and decided to rent a car and do the sights by land.

The first day in Fethiye we decided to give D & T a bit more water time with a Gulet trip around the bay.  Bob and I had done this last year and loved it.  This year tourism was down so we had a Gulet with only about half the people on it compared to last year – very nice for us but not so for the tour operators.  The staff were fantastic and the stops for swimming lovely.  We got to see different areas of the bay and had a thoroughly enjoyable day.  

Fethiye from the water

One of the crew contemplating the views

T jumping from the deck

Our lunch being prepared

The next day was a long sightseeing day visiting Kayaköy, Tlos and Seklikand Canyon.  Just 8 km outside of Fethiye lays the ghost town of Kayaköy.  The once sizeable and prosperous town was emptied of its Greek Christian inhabitants as part of the population exchange between Turkey and Greece at the end of WWI.  Kayaköy is a bitter-sweet, eerie place and that time a sad period in history for both countries.  Kayaköy was the site which inspired Louis de Bernières for his 2004 novel Birds Without Wings.  In 2014, Kayaköy also was the setting for the closing scenes of Russell Crowe's film The Water Diviner'.  The town was much bigger than I expected and I would have appreciated more signage describing the inhabitants of the abandoned homes, a way to bring the ghosts to life.

Kayakoy

Old church with mosaic courtyard

 

Could be a scene from 100 years ago

Village women making gözleme

We got lost trying to find Seklikand Canyon and ended up spending over an hour driving through winding narrow mountainous road that gave us the serendipitous opportunity to observe some fascinating examples of remote Turkish agriculture.  The lanes were lined with pomegranate and olive trees, goats roamed in the fields and numerous times we had to pull over to let tractors go by. 

Pomegranate

We went full circle and returned to Tlos.  Tlos is an ancient Lycian city with settlement on the site dating back 4000 years.  The site has been continuously occupied by Lycians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Ottoman Turks and the ruins give wonderful examples of all these periods.  New relics are still being unearthed.  Magnificent marble statues of Roman Emperors on display at the Fethiye museum were discovered at Tlos only 4 years ago.

Close-up of the sculpture of Emperor Hadrian? excavated in 2011

Amphitheatre and mountain backdrop

Old Ottoman fort

Walls and buildings of Tlos

Tombs and ruins

At the roadside cafe at Tlos we got directions to Seklikand Canyon (we were only a few km away when we circled around the mountain roads) and decided to have another go.  Taking the correct route, it only took 15 minutes to drive to the canyon.  The site was well worth the effort.  The canyon is a slit through Taurus Mountains, the water literally pouring through cracks in the sheer mountainside to join the Xanthos River.

The intrepid crossing the icy river

Water rushing through the mountainside

The canyon

Raging river under the walkway

Exciting picnic spot

Outside the canyon

Travel with Friends II – Caunos, Dalyan and Amos

While waiting for the elusive water pump to arrive from Athens, we rented a car for two days to see some of the land sites around Marmaris.  It was great to have a car and I’m surprised Bob and I hadn’t taken up this option before.  The marina has a deal with a local car hire company which is very reasonable and gives excellent service.

Our first day was to the town of Dalyan and the ancient city of Caunos (sometimes spelled Kaunos).  The ruins of this ancient city dates back to the 9^th Century BC.  It was a Carian city on the border with the Lycian Kingdom and blended the two cultures.  The city was a prosperous port but declined around the 5 - 7^th Centuries AD as the harbour silted up and now consists of reed beds stretching 8 km to the Mediterranean Sea.  Today Dalyan is a charming little town on the river and the gateway to the ruins of Caunos, the Turtle beach sanctuary where loggerhead turtles lay their eggs, and mud baths and mineral springs. 

View of modern day Dalyan in the distance

Marshes stretching from Caunos to the Mediterranean

Lycian Tombs in the rock faces of sheer clifts

T getting her toes nibbled at the hot springs

The ruins of Caunos and the views from the hillside were impressive.  It never ceases to amaze me that we are walking along paths of such ancient civilisations with no security.  Animals graze, visitors stroll around, structures are still buried in the ground yet to be discovered.  It all has been there for centuries and treated with an amazing casualness.

Ancient olive trees amongst the ruins

Treasures still buried

The amphitheatre, Caunos

I wonder how many bottoms have sat on these seats over the last 2800 years?

Goats grazing amongst the ruins

Ruins of Caunos

The next day we went to more ruins along the peninsula west of Marmaris.  After more than an hour along scenic but narrow winding roads, we first stopped off at the town of Turunç for lunch.  It was a rather tacky, touristy place that we had passed several times in the boat unaware of what it was about.  With the winding roads, it is one of the few places around that actually takes longer to get to by road than boat.   

Beaches Mediterranean style - we are so spoiled in Australia with our fantastic beaches

The town of Turunç

The ruins of Amos just past Turunç were much smaller than Caunous but the drive to reach them and the views over the sea were amazing.  Amos dates back to ‘only’ the 3^rd Century BC and was administered by the Rhodian government.  The island of Rhodes is only about 20 nm away.

On the cliffs of Amos

Another beautiful bay

Marmaris is in the distance

The bay on the other side of Amos

 I’m not sure I will ever tire of these views.  The Mediterranean is such an exquisite shade of blue in the summer.  It is inspiring

Turkish Residency – The final chapter

In a previous blog I talked about the bureaucratic run around for our Turkish residency, http://shamballacyc.blogspot.com.tr/2015/05/turkish-residency.html .  We were told we would get our residency card through the post in 5 weeks.  During this time we checked the postal boxes at the marina and even went into the post office in town looking for the elusive residency card.  After 6 weeks I rang up the clerk handling our application and he told me in broken English that there have been delays and the application decision may not occur until October.  I explained we wanted to visit our daughter in England and he said that during the review process we were allowed to leave the country for only 15 days.  This seemed crazy that it would take 5 months to review a 1 year short term residency application but I realised with his limited English I was not going to get any clarification over the phone and another face to face visit was needed.  Why people are employed in the foreigners’ bureau who can’t speak fluent English is a mystery as the majority of people seeking residency are English speaking.

So we scheduled another trip to Muğla.  We are getting to know this road up the mountain and the city quite well.

View of the provincial capital of Muğla

We managed to find the same clerk, Murat, who handled our application in May.  After a bit of searching Murat told us that we are ‘on the system’ and our application was approved on the 28^th of May.  So where was the official residency card?  Murat informed us that we should have received an SMS with the registration number which we could take to the post office in Marmaris to pick up our card.  We never received any SMS.  Murat just shrugged his shoulders and said we should try the post office in Marmaris anyway.  By this time it was mid-afternoon on a Friday so if we didn’t get back to Marmaris before the post office closed we would have to wait until Monday and we needed to book plane tickets for London but didn’t know if we could stay only 2 weeks or a month as hoped. 

So we hopped on the next bus to Marmaris (so happy they run frequently) and got to the post office with a half hour to spare.  The third floor of the post office is like some scene out of Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal.

Going Postal

We didn’t hold much hope of any joy here.  The clerk didn’t speak English, made some cursory checks on the computer but indicated that without a registration number he couldn’t find anything.  Luckily a nice young woman who spoke fluent English and Turkish translated for us and said we should go to the foreigners’ bureau at the police station.  We thought this had shut down in favour of the Muğla office but were assured it still handed inquiries.  With 20 minutes until this office closed for the weekend we hopped in a taxi and got there with 10 minutes to spare.  The police officer looked at our forms, made a phone call and said our cards were sitting in the Yat Marine office waiting for us.  All one could do is laugh at the absurdity of it all.  We caught the next dolmuş back to the marina before that office closed at 6 pm.  The man we were suppose to see had left for the day but one of the friendly female staff had our cards for us. 

We started speculating why on earth, when we go into the office at least once a week, they did not give us these cards when they saw us.  Finally we decided it was totally fruitless to try and understand what had happened -  just shrug and accept it as the Turkish way.  We are just happy we now have our residency cards and can plan a month long trip to the UK.

The elusive residency permit

Travel with Friends I – Sailing

 Our sailing forays were in preparation for the much anticipated visit of our friends from Australia, D & T.  Sadly each foray seemed to identify yet another problem to fix.  With a bit of running around the industrial area in Marmaris we were able to find an excellent electrical motor mechanic who provided us with new brushes and housing for the windlass motor.  We were also able to find a distributor for the water pump for the Northern Lights generator so we could run the refrigerator at anchor.  The distributor was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and able to get the pump to Athens within 36 hours.  We were hopeful we would get everything fixed before D & T’s arrival.  Sadly the pump sat in customs in Athens, stuck in the crazy bureaucracy that is Greece.

While we were waiting for the pump we decided to get a couple of blocks of ice for the fridge and take D & T on a two day sail south west to Çiftlik and back.  We had a lovely sail in light winds and arrived at the anchorage mid-afternoon in time for a swim and snorkel.  

T taking photos on deck

D enjoying being at the helm

Swimming off the side of the boat in crystal clear waters

In the early evening we took the dinghy ashore to support the local economy by having a few too many bottles of wine and a fantastic dinner.  The pontoons were packed with charter boats which turned out to be 120 Russian IT workers on holiday.  They all wore matching black and white striped jerseys and even before dinner looked like they had had plenty of vodka and were up for a fun night.  I love the serendipity of travel.  One never knows what craziness one will come across.

Charter boats on the wharfs

Bob chatting with the Russian IT employees

The Russians

D & T at the restaurant

Bob and D having a good time

An easy sail back to Marmaris the next day with the wind behind us.  Still no news on the pump for the generator so after a couple of days of land travel (next post) and still no pump we decided to bite the bullet, stock up on ice and head out for a 7 day sail east to Fethiye and back.  We provisioned up at the Migros Supermarket, stowed the gear and set sail.  First stop was Ekinçek.  There were more boats around then our last visit a few weeks ago but still relatively quiet.

Bob and D flaking the main sail

Another seaside restaurant

More swimming and snorkeling, eating at the great restaurants on shore and generally relaxing in a beautiful setting.  The next day when we tried to raise the anchor, the windlass was dead.  I’m sensing some déjà vu here.  Bob and D managed to get it working again but we just couldn’t risk continuing with an unreliable windlass.  So we spent the rest of the day swimming, reading and relaxing and set off the next morning.  We swung by Turtle Beach, a nesting site for loggerhead turtles.  One of these beauties had swum past our boat at anchor.  T, the marine biologist, jumped in the water to try to follow it but it swam away - Wonderful animals.

Songster in the early morning sun

Turtle Beach with the ruins of Dalyan in the background

The wind was on the nose the whole way back to Marmaris so we motored in order to get back early to do repairs and clean up.  Sadly our sailing was cut short but what we had was lovely and we were looking forward to exploring more on land

Our views while sailing