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Published: April 20th 2008
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April 11, 2008
Dalyan, Tlos, Turkey
Today we went to Dalyan and enjoyed a very nice riverboat ride from the town to the coast with a stop at the ancient city of Caunos. This is another very interesting site and at one time was home to many thousands of people. The city site is now several kilometers up the old river’s path from the coast but in its’ time it was an important port city before the river silted in.
The riverboat took us to the coast and one of the most popular beaches in this part of Turkey. This is a huge sandy beach and a favorite destination for many Turks and foreign visitors in the summertime. This time of year it is just getting opened up and there was almost no one there except a few foreign tourists.
This beach is a very important place for sea turtles as they use the fine sand to lay their eggs. We saw a few large (and some small ) turtles in the river on our way to the beach.
From the boat we saw many large, and very beautiful, tombs carved into the side of the
mountains. All with very fancy carvings and facades.
April 12, 2008
TLOS, KAYAKOY, Turkey
We took a drive through the county side and up into the mountains to visit yet another ancient city, TLOS, that has been occupied for thousands of years and in the 18th century was a fortress used by a local robber baron. This is a very neat site with some more tombs carved into the side of the mountain. The remains of some very large Roman baths are also at this site as well as many other sites. Apparently the traders were required to “clean up” after their long journeys by camel before entering these cities.
All of these sites are on the Lycian road that was part of the main trade route ( The Silk Road ) to the Orient that was the main trading route for silk spices and other exotic items from the Far East. This route also goes to Cappadocia, in the middle of Turkey, where it branches off into several different routes to the east.
We enjoyed the guidance of 2 young children from the local village, Nail aged 7 and his sister Fatma aged 6,
who walked us up and down the mountain and through the site. ( I think they thought we were goats as some of the “trails” were a little less than trails. The young boy was very knowledgeable ( and talkative ) about the site and in perfect Turkish he told us everything we wanted to know ( and more ). It was all a lot of fun.
We visited a very beautiful beach at Oludiniz which is now the home of many very high end villas and condos owned by some locals and many foreigners. Our finish to the day was a visit to Kayakoy, an abandoned Greek village. This was a very nice city of about 450 homes with beautiful views of the sea that was never resettled after the former Greek residents left Turkey. The Turks and Greeks have been fighting for years and over the past 70 or 80 years many Turks have been moved from Greece to Turkey and many Greeks have been relocated to Greece from Turkey.
We left on a not so comfortable “milk run”, 4 hour, bus trip from Fethiye to Pamukkale arriving late evening.
We are looking forward to
our visit tomorrow to Pamukkale.
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