Kas, Turkey - the off season experience

---

When I woke up this morning I felt a cold coming on, but then I went out on my balcony and; Voilà! The sun was out and in a jiffy all my symptoms were gone. All night Kas had been as under siege with constant power cuts, flooded houses, thunder claps and a very angry sea. So in the morning there was a feeling of culmination for the Kas-villagers trying to tidy up the place. I had no appointments to keep so I took my time over breakfast; reading my legal philosophy book and sipping numerous coffees. I have a new - quite large -feline friend; it is a male cat of some kind of oriental pedigree and most likely with an owner somewhere. I started feeding him under the table (as you do not to upset the staff or other guests who don’t like cats) but being such a large and well-fed cat he was more interested in having a cuddle. Now he jumps up onto my lap and nestles every time I come into the restaurant, which makes it impossible for me to hurry (or go get dessert from the buffet– which I suppose is a good thing).

Any how, after breakfast I rushed to my room to put on shorts and sunblock (for the first time this trip). Then I had a walk around, taking pics and just enjoying the scenery. It was always warm, even with the downpour, but with the sun out it got really blazing hot in no time. Finally I headed for the Kas Amphi Theater just outside of town. The original theater is from 200 A.D. but apparently one of the walls came toppling down last year and it has just had a more modern extension. It is still used for outdoor concerts and plays and such. I thought it would be an appropriate place for a bit of a Kelsen read (German legal scholar/philosopher). I spent 3 nice hours at the top of the theatre and even got a bit of a tan (read: burnt)...Around two a clock I went for a lovely, although simple, lunch of Lentil Soup, bread and salad (typical Turkish meal) at an Locanta (cheap diner style eatery). I also had time to buy some hand made books in leather; good to use for note books and photo albums - and really original.

After that I had to rush back to the hotel since my ride to the Patara National Parc was coming to pick me up at three a clock. Very slightly late (having called and excused himself), Mehmet from www.patarahorseriding.com came to pick me up. Looking in the direction of Patara it was easy enough to imagine that it might come to rain...I brought my rain coat to be on the safe side...The drive to Patara takes about 45 minutes and is yet another winding and slightly nauseating experience. Arriving at Patara I was introduced to a nice American couple from Seattle who was also going on the ride. So we set off down to the coral where Mehmet kept the horses. His own horse was a four-year old hot headed stallion which made me slightly nervous; "They are not all stallions are they?" But, no; the rest were his mares. Being the more experienced rider (of the three of us) I was given a skinny and very jumpy whitehorse mare. The reins and saddles where medieval and once we had settled up on horse-back it suddenly occurred to us that we were not wearing hard-top hats. So we asked for some and Mehmet made the same gesture that he had made earlier when I spoke to him while he was driving the serpentine roads and writing sms-messages simultaneously, meaning something like; "que sera, sera; whatever will be, will be..." So we were off; "top-less", so to say. Let me tell you that these where no experienced tourist trail horses; but rather nervy and only half-broken in horses.

And naturally, making this my first ever "bull theme trip"; we ran into a herd of cows lead by a rather protective bull. Mehmet seemed slightly taken aback by this development and got off his stallion to lead the horse by the reins. Fortunately my mare - who had earlier been jumping, bucking and threatening to scamper off with every car sound, every moving straw of grass and every cry from the wild didn't seem to mind free roaming cattle. Also, fortunately I had had the 'Dalai Lama of horses' in front of me all along and a brown gelding that seemed to calm the others down. Then, of course, it started to rain. Not a nice little drizzle; I am talking a wall of water together with thunder and lightning striking all around us; and NO, the horsed didn't much like this! Now my fellow riders and I made the decision to cut the ride a bit short and turn back, rather than chancing it. Half-ways home it was so wet and there were to many cars and to much traffic; the horses were going crazy with every bend of the road. We got off and lead them by the reins the last 500 meters. Now we were shaking with cold, soaked from head to toe. The grand father of Mehmet fixed us some Turkish coffee and Chai while Mehmet tended to the horses. Unfortunately I didn't even get a photo of the them, or of Patara. My horse was just not the "hold-the-reins-with-one-hand-while-you-take-a-photograph" kind of horse; you definitely had to focus on staying ontop of the horse and keeping her back.

Mehmet drove me back to Kas; I could tell that he was really very tired now and it was still raining heavily. In Kas I forced him to drink some coffee before taking off again; I do hope he came home to Patara in one piece! At the hotel I jumped into the shower and stood there forever, and it seemed impossible to get warmed up again. Then I went, half asleep, down for dinner. Some how I manged to cause a bit of a controversy among the staff being gifted a rose. All evening I've been carrying the rose in my lapel, because in this world such a sweet gesture should be rewarded. All in all, Today's Patara excursion was very slightly too exciting, but I am not sure whether it was the car ride back to Kas or the actual ride that was the most scary. 😉 I never expected to have so much used for my lucky charm evil-eye amulets.

---

Photos

Hotel Linda beach
The offseason view of the beach where I was diving earlier this summer. A bit too rough for a swim today for my taste.

Stray dogs
Sweden should take a leaf out of Turkey's book when it comes to stray dogs; here they are neutered, vaccinated, health checked and id-tagged.