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Intro
I thought I'd better say a few things about Turkey before I give a blow by blow account as I'm starting to get a feel for the place. I'm acutely aware that my very few blog entries so far have been quite dry, lacking the amusing anecdotes that make a good and readable story. I see little reason to change, however, because I'd first like to tell you where I've been. After that (or even before) I will be thoroughly sick of this keyboard and retire to bed.
Turkey has always been, of course, the country where East Meets West. The bus system is fantastic - you can turn up at any town's Otogar (bus station) and, more than likely, there will be a bus just about to leave for where you want to go. On the big buses your hands get a heady dose of cologne and you get fed biscuits and çay (tea). Lots of leg room.
The buses are fantastic because of Atatürk (Mustafa Kemal). Just about anything good in Turkey (or so the Turks will have you know) is down to Atatürk or his legend, which is perpetuated by his statue ın every
square and his picture in every room. Atatürk started the secularisation of Turkey - banning Fezes, stopping women who wear headscarves from getting University degrees, allowing and adopting a modified latin alphabet instead of the Arabic one.
This great man is also the reason why there are so many Australians in Turkey at the moment. Anzac day was on April 25th and the popular belief is that it commemorates the war in 1915 ('awww mate - was that world war two?') between a hardened bunch of Aussies and Kiwis and the whole of Turkey, commanded by Mustafa Kemal. I think that the real history is a bit more complicated than this, and that dear old Mustey was only a maverick Colonel. Oh - by the way - he came from Macedonia (same place as Alexander the Great Greek).
I've probably done this great man a bit of a disservice - he certainly did do a lot for Turkey. It's just that his cult seems to have grown out of proportion a bit and people have started believing what they want to believe. He'll probably be called a prophet if Turkey join the EU. A great book that has
given me a bit of an understanding about modern Turkey is 'Birds Without Wings' by Louis de Bernieres.
The Turkish people are great - 100%!f(MISSING)riendly and helpful. The scenery is breathtaking, even though I've only really done mountains and seaside so far. I've met some great other travellers - lots for the Eclipse to begin with (mostly Aussies), quıte a few Canadians (they all seem to be from Vancouver), a couple of French and Americans, a handful of Dutch and very few true British. There have been lots of the Aussies who live in London and a few Brits who live in Oz but I only met a couple of true British travellers (I'm disgregarding the package tourists) in Selçuk a couple days ago, and they were only en-route from the Greek Islands to Bulgaria.
Antalya to Olympos
I've written quite a lot of drivel already so I'm going to get on with the actual travels as quickly as possible. After the Antalya Museum and flying theatre at Telmessos (I saw a picture someone took when they went up there and the theatre was above the cloudline - amazing), I walked halfway through Antalya and its major roadworks to catch a dolmuş to Olympos. A dolmuş is essentially an evolution of the idea of a shared taxi. They are tiny minibuses, which wait until the driver thinks there are enough people and then he drives to the destinatıon on the front.
Olympos is pretty much backpacker nirvana in Turkey - pretty much everyone has been or is headed here. The track down from the main coast road, which crosses a river that leads through Olympos' ruins to the beach, has various groups of treehouses on either side. For 15 Turkish Lira (I'm afraid Turkey is no longer a country of millionaires. About 6 quid) you get a bed, a large breakfast, free çay, apple tea and coffee all day and an all-you-can-eat buffet supper. They also provide mellow music all day, hammocks and seating areas espically designed for those who want to do nothing. I stayed at Beyram's - the staff were very friendly and so were the others staying there. The beach at Olympos is a 5 minute walk down the track with ruins on either side. The ruins themselves aren't that exciting but it was fun to explore them - the site is completely overgrown so you can walk through the woods or orange groves and suddenly come upon the theatre, for example, or an old gate. The beach has great phosphorescence and so it's great for swimmimg at night.
The main attraction at night, however - apart from the beach and the various barclubs attached to the treehouses, and the focus of Olympos' hıstory and hippy population - oh yes, the treehouses should be called perhaps more properly and less romantically 'log cabins on stilts with a tree strapped on'-
is the Chimaera. These flames (gas coming out of the rock and igniting on contact with air) have been around for years and a cult and settlement has been established at Olympus since prehistoric times. Sensible really - free light and fire, high up, near the sea. As an aside, the Karain cave near Termessos has been pretty much continually inhabited for 30000 years. 2000 years ago the flames were much stronger and sailors used them as a landmark.
Legend has it that the Chimeara was pillaging local villages and that King Iobates of Lycia gave Bellerophont the impossible task of getting rid of it. The monster dropped lead on those who attacked it from below, so Bellerophon mounted Pegasus, the winged cat (some alternative versions say that it was a horse), and killed it. It crashed into the hill side and still burns...
I walked up to the flames (it's quite a walk - 2 1/2 hours - and you need a torch for the final ascent) with a great group of people - 2 Canadians, 2 Aussies and 1 Kiwi. We took Raki and beer with us as well as waterproofs, because some lightning earlier in the evening looked ominous.
TO BE CONTINUED Oh - whatever the signs say, the Olympic flame doesn't come from here and this isn't
the Olympos.
Lots more to write, about 2 weeks behind!
Google 'Kadir's -' or 'Turkmen's Olympos Treehouses' to see the type of place I was staying in.
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