Patara Beach

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Good Morning ! Well, it’s Tuesday morning here in Kalkan and most of you will be already sleeping of at least thinking of it. With a 10 hour time difference between here and home you could say we are pretty much half way round the world.

Yesterday was pretty much a stay at the villa day. It was too hot for wandering about and anyways it was a busy “itinerary” day. At the end of this week our group of seven splits up. Some of us will be going on to Greece before flying back to Istanbul for a couple days before the long flight home to the rainy season. (and that’s beginning to sound like not a bad idea).
Heather, Kane, Annie, and Lynn will be going onwards to Greece so there were ferry reservations to make, accommodation in Fethyie for the night before the ferry to Rhodes, a place to stay in Rhodes, and the flight to Istanbul. The other half of our group, Beth, Al, and Karen will be going to Selcek (Selchuk) to visit some in-laws before driving to Izmir for a flight to Istanbul and on to Edmonton. Selcek is North of Kalkan, near the centre of Turkey and close to the Aegean coast. Fortunately Fethyie is along the way so we will share the charter mini-bus with them that far.

Today, its not much cooler but we went off to Patara Beach anyways. The beach is about a half hour drive via the local dolmus, (5 lire/$3.50), and as a bonus we passed the site of more ancient ruins although the bus did not stop there. These appeared to be being worked on with lots of scaffolding and some heavy equipment visible. (after all these years, still a work in progress) From what is just visible lying on the ground it seems like a fairly large site and maybe in 10 or 15 years it will be an added tourist attraction for the area.

We were dropped off about 300 metres from the beach and followed the long boardwalk laid on the sand to get to the beach where there was a small sea of umbrellas, loungers, and a restaurant facility. Not just any beach this is one of those sandy beaches that stretches for miles, (18 km actually) and is shared between us, (people), 8:00AM to 7:00PM and nature (turtles) from 7:00PM to 8:00AM. It is one of the beaches in the world where sea turtles lay their eggs and is somewhat of a ‘protected’ area because of that. The water is clear and warm with gentle Mediterranean waves. A perfect picture. When I got to the part of the beach where water meets sand the embankment sloped gently, although steeply and I thought “ it must get pretty deep pretty quickly out there”. Well about 200 metres out I finally got the Med up to my shoulders.

We, and most of the umbrellas and loungers were at the East end of the beach and about a kilometer to the West you could see what looked like another area with a smaller group of umbrellas and presumably, smaller group of swimmers. Someone later told me that this area to the West was “less modest”, i.e. topless and/or optional. No, I didn’t trudge over a kilometer of hot sand to find out.

Enjoying laying in the sun and Mediterranean breeze as I looked about I thought that this beach might also be called ‘Bikini Beach’ although an awful lot was not a particularly pretty sight. But the alternate name was just a thought the zipped through the mind.

We caught the 4:00PM bus back to Kalkan, and the good thing about a Dolmus is they will drop you off just about anywhere so we only had a two block walk to the villa instead of having to walk from the pick-up point. It’s only about another two blocks, but it was about 34C and its uphill. Shorter is better when it’s not cold and raining. With 7:30PM dinner reservations we had a few hours to pass at the villa and around the pool. Dinner was at a place called the Moonlight Terrace and is a rooftop restaurant with a beautiful view of Kalkan and the harbor. It is also operated by mother and family of the young man, Osman, who looks after the villa and is here every day to attend to the pool and look after us if we have any questions or anything . Everyone raved about the food but, I’m sorry, I missed it. Guess I’m still a little “off”. Oh, well.

Tomorrow is pretty much a stay in town, low key day although I here there may be plans in the works for the Kas market, perhaps another Patara day, and maybe a moonlight dinner cruise before we leave which is coming up soon. The moonlight cruise might be perfectly timed as it will be a full moon on the Med this weekend. Could make a nice picture for anyone who can take good pics.

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