We have had a great time on the Mediterranean coast! Kas is an absolute darling of a town. You can walk to anywhere you want, although just about everything we have done has involved either water, which is great because it is sooo hot, or Lycian history.
While some places we have visited on this trip are a little more "asian" or a little more "middle eastern", Kas is completely a laid back European town. It's not exactly easy to get to from the airport, so while being a vacation spot, mostly for Turks it seems, it is not overrun or too "touristy". But I digress, let me talk about how we got here.
After landing in Antalya we rented a car to make the drive. Kas is only about 150 km from the airport, but we heard the drive might take a while, and to allow 4 hours. Being the smart people that we are, we rented a gps with the car, and even got it to speak English to us. Following carefully the directions she took us not along the coastal highway at all. Being a smart machine she decided that we would want to go the way the crow flies, back and forth through every side street along the way in Antalya, and then the crow must be able to fly high because she took us UP OVER the mountains instead of around them. We were traveling on single lane roads, and you know when you pass small towns and the locals look at you with a puzzled look on their face that you may not have taken the right road. The road twisted and turned, sometimes paved and sometimes dirt and at some points looked like it might fall off the side of the mountain. It was a dramatically beautiful drive though. Eventually we came out of the mountains, turned the gps off and followed signs to get the rest of the way to Kas. (Later we looked at maps of the area, and the road that we took did not show up on them)
Once we got into town I really wanted to go scuba diving immediately, but I was leery of my traveling sickness troubles. I was pretty well ok, but I didn't want to be a wetsuit, 20 metres and a 5 minute safety stop away from a washroom in case... you know. So the first day we elected to just explore town. At the same time eons ago that the Hittites were carving up Cappadocia, the Lycians were living in this area, fishing and carving giant tombs in the rocks. There were some Lycian rock carved tombs above town so we walked up to them, and then explored the nice little town. There is a very famous walk called the Lycian Way that meanders along the coast and visits hundreds of Lycian historical sites. To do the whole thing would take about 45 days, but we found a little part of it, and walked maybe 4km, just to say that we did. Ouch, the trail is narrow, rocky, and every plant around here is out to prick or scratch you. Not to mention that the weather, without humidity is in the high 30s. I can't imagine being one of the few crazy people we saw actually doing the trail with full camping gear.
The next two days we did four dives in the Mediterranean Sea, each at a different spot. The company we went with, Oceanids, was great, friendly, safe and had small dive groups. The first dive we did, we were placed in the "inexperienced dive group" because we had done less than 10 dives. However when we descended, everyone else in the group was having trouble with their boyancy, or their ears, or were simply flailing around, so we were pulled back up to the surface and taken with the owner in the smaller "advanced" group. Go us. The sea life was obviously nothing like we saw at our last dives on the Great Barrier Reef, but the water was extremely clear (20+ metres) so what there was to see was easy to spot. We saw some neat things besides fish that we had never seen before. We swam over two wrecked boats, one of which dated to the Ottoman empire. You needed to use your imagination to see the boat, but still the pile of rubble was interesting for us. We saw two little octopus hiding, and four giant squid (not Giant Squid, but normal squid that were quite large). Those are the craziest looking things, I had no idea! I was also enchanted with a 7 pointed starfish. The dive master we were with was disappointed for us with the lack of fish on our dives, but we tried to tell him that for newbies like us, just being in the water is exciting enough. The other great thing for us was that both of us were the best in our group, even over the advanced divers, at using our air. (Nate's thoughtful idea is that we were the only non-smokers). The kind owner gave the other guys in our dive group a larger tank so that they could keep up with us and we could all stay under longer.
(The underwater camera was deciding only to work part of the time, so not too many pictures from our dives unfortunately.
The last full day we were in Kas, we took a kayak trip to Kekova to see the "sunken city". A part of a town that fell down into the water during an earthquake in 100 something AD. Talk about marketing! The tour was slow, obviously catering to the lowest common demoninator; Asians who can't swim and who have never paddled before. Between getting there, getting the boats, and having demonstrations it took over 2 hours. When we finally got in the water, it was not as hot or as wavy as I feared, so the kayaking was a good experience. When we got to the sunken city though, the area was filled with tour boats using speakers to project their own dialogue, so we could not hear what our guide was saying. Also, he never once pointed out anything actually in the water, although there was supposed to be stuff. We were told "not to expect Atlantis", but we were kind of expecting something. Oh well, there were some ruins along the water's edge that we got to see and the paddle was nice.
The total amount of paddling we did was only about 10km, and we got to stop part of the way through for lunch, which was an entire fish, face and all, and the ubiquitous fries that come with everything. While we were stopped for lunch, we got some free time where we walked up to a castle on a hill, with an extensive necropolis (a graveyard of tombs) and a pretty view. Then we went for a swim in a bay and SWAM WITH A SEA TURTLE! (You may probably be able to guess what my favourite part of the day was). As we were heading down to the water to swim, some lovely Scottish people who were on our trip told us that they had been swimming with three of them, and pointed out where to find them. We found one, and had the most wonderful time observing it from above (we luckily had our dive masks with us), and then to my joy it came up to surface a couple times while we were swimming, and I got to swim right beside it! It was massive, by a guess the shell was 3-4 feet wide. A gentle giant, it just let me ogle it from an arms length away. I got way too excited, and drank a lot of sea water at this point, so I actually had to go back to shore before I wanted to. What a neat part of our trip!
Yesterday, we made the drive back from Kas to Antalya. We never turned the gps on. Again, it is about 150 km drive, but we took all day to make several stops along the way.
One of those stops was in a town called Demre. It's been interesting to see the types of people who visit the different places we have been; vacationing Turks in Kas, Asians of all types in Pamukkale, and mostly Russians in Demre. Can you guess why? It has to do with Baba Noel. St. Nicholas was born nearby and spent his time as a bishop in Demre, and his remains were interred in a church there. During his life he is credited with giving gifts of dowries to young girls so they could get married and not prostitute themselves, and after his death his remains were said to have performed miracles. That's when he was saint-ed. During 1000 something AD raiders from Italy stole his remains, but the church just replaced them with someone else and carried on. From 1000s of years ago to this day, this church has been a pilgrimage for Russian Orthodox Catholics to visit this important saint. The church was neat as it had mosaic floors and beautiful paintings on the walls of Jesus' life and the miracles St. Nic was credited with. An interesting time was spent observing the pilgrims who were pressing icons to the tomb and praying, the whole shebang made me quite uncomfortable as it reminded me of ancestor worship; praying to a departed human, and not to God. I didn't like it, but I was pleased to have visited the town of my most beloved Santa Claus.
Following the catholic pilgrim site, down the road we took a very HOT walk to the temple of Vulcan, Roman god of fire. Outside of the town of Cirali there is an "under-worldly phenomonon" you can find if you simply hike a steep hill for 1km (in 42 degree heat, it took a little while). The destination holds the Chimera which are holes in the ground that spew out flammable gases and spontaneously alight with dark orange fire. No one seems to know what causes them to light up, but they have been doing it for millennia, hence the connection with the mythical fire breathing monsters, and the gods of fire. There was a temple to those gods below the fire. It was neat for sure, but being such a hot day I thought my shoes were going to melt on the hot rock out of which fire was burning. After this we drove to the beach, hearing that it was sea turtle nesting season, but all we found were hundreds of humans laying out and playing in the water.
We are on our way to Ephasis, Kusadasi, and Selcuk, our last stop before heading home. But before I let you go, just a couple more pictures...
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