Lycian Way

We had breakfast a little later this morning. The muezzin had gone off at around 4.30am, so we had been awake in the early hours. There were breads like piroshki at breakfast as well as toast, eggs, savoury bits and pieces, and lots of homemade jam. Turkish tea was aslo available and freshly squeezed OJ. We watched Pat and Robin march off on the next long trek; we will see them again in a couple of days time. After looking at the photos on the TV, we also set off to the ruins of Olympos down the beach. A lot of dark looking cloud hung over the mountains, obscuring the peaks, but it was quite pleasant walking with the sea breeze. We walked along the road parallel with the beach as far as possible, then swung round onto the beach road and the beach, which was fairly soft and not easy to walk along. We crossed a small stream and as we approached a second stream we could see the start of ruins up in the rock face. We turned right up by the stream and paid our entrance fee of TL3 at the kiosk. Anyone coming to the beach from this end must pay to walk through the ruins. These are extensive and we spent a good hour and a half wandering up side tracks looking at collapsed sarcophagi, roman villas and whatever all overgrown with centuries of neglect. As we walked up the main path by the river we saw some sort of heron/bittern fly into the bushes upstream. This seems to have been a little bittern. It was very interesting, but by now we had reached the point where we needed to cross the stream to look further. We decided to get a drink before we did this and there were two small cafes with lounging tables where we could get a glass of freshly squezed OJ, sitting on our elevated platform with our legs up under the table. This is a Turkish Kush, and very jolly. One could easily fall asleep lolling against the cushions with your legs horizontal. There was the cook making Turkish pancakes just to the side of us, all very interesting. It was very soporific in the shade of the trees, but we had to move on so as not to fall asleep, and we paid and made our way down to the stepping stones. This is where we will cross tomorrow at the start of the long trek. There were a couple of white egrets pecking about on the other shore that soon flew off as we approached. We splashed across and up the far bank, tuning left, away from the Lycian Way path. Along this side of the stream we found more mausolea, the theatre, the hammam and the harbour walls (looking like Inca walls, all stone blocks, fitted together eccentrically without mortar.) It was very interesting and it must have been amazing at its heyday with arched walkways along the quayside, villas etc. and a prosperous port. All this seemed to have been ended by earthquakes, which are not infrequent.


We now crossed the stream again by another set of stepping stones and strolled back to the beach. There was a sort of pirate boat anchored off shore, which we discovered was for some Russians that had been visiting the ruins. The boat was a gulet, a wide-beamed traditional boat that can be hired for 'blue cruises' of about four days to explore the coast.
It was hot strolling along the beach, so we eventually took shelter in a shady cafe serving gozleme, or turkish pancakes. We ordered chocolate filled ones with homemade lemonade - rather like the fresh lime we used to have in Oman. It came with sprigs of mint and a slice of lemon and was so refreshing. After Alan had a cappuccino and I had a turkish coffee which is very tasty, but very small and very thick at the bottom. I was glad of the water that came with it - surely not from a bottle! Further walking along the beach we spotted what we think was a masked shrike on the telegraph wires, but he was soon gone. Then the road back to the hotel for a quiet hour or two before dinner.


Near the start we also saw a crested lark (in a cafe!) and a big lizard.
Tonight we met the other walkers, K&K, who only took 6hrs to do the walk! For dinner we had leek and cucumber soup with dill, turkish salad with stuffed peppers and something, then grilled dorada. All very tasty with our left over wine.

Olympos on Wikipedia