Another beauitful Turkish coastal town mixed in with good clean fun

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Fethiye is another beautiful Turkish coastal town. Many of it’s ancient structures, notably the Lycian tomb lie atop the hill overlooking the city. The tomb’s construction is dated back to 4 BC, when Fethiye was known as the ancient city of Telmessos.

The history of the name of Telmessos goes something along the lines of:

The god Apollo falls in love with the youngest daughter of the King of Phoenicia, Agenor. He disguises himself as a small dog and thus gains the love of the shy, withdrawn daughter. After he reappears as a handsome man, they have a son, whom they name 'Telmessos' (the land of lights).

As we walk towards the start of a 6km uphill hike, and plot various ways to trick dad into walking the trail a dude pulls up next to us on his moped and starts talking to us about Fethiye - more or less the history of the city.

He takes us on a tour of other tombs scattered throughout the city, which happen to be located in the local folks backyards.

He takes us to the castle ruins and the tombs and gives us some random history that kind of reminds of me of the little boy in the castle in Ankara.

This guy is more comprehensible but in the end I’m not too sure what he is talking about. I think he was giving us a bit of a history lesson with Ataturk and the Greeks?

We crawl through the castle and the scrub surrounding - throughout which the guy has quite a few good phlegm harking up sessions - where he possibly harks up a horse and a half. Of course this all adds to our random Fethiye hiking session experience. At the end we all have a turn riding on the back of the dude’s bike to infinity and beyond!

Me and Ivan want to pay him. He’s given us a grand old tour of the ruins of the Fethiye hills, a cruise on his moped and best of all we’ve or rather he has gotten dad to hike part of the 6km walking trail.

We decide we’ll be generous well give him 15 Turkish lira. We were thinking 10 but we thought ok well splurge. I thought ill even give him my bracelet for memory.

Unfortunately this dude is up with all the times and currencies and all and asks that we give him another 15. We umm and ah for a while and then dad reaches for his wallet and says all he has is 20. The guy is super happy and takes it and says he will name his unborn niece after me.

All in all were pretty satisfied (well at least me and Ivan are with the tour). Me and Ivan decide to rip and eat some oranges off some random trees on the way down in celebration. Unfortunately they are pretty bitter and our victory is short lived.

Note: As I couldn't locate my photos for this trip I have used some of my brothers photos. They are much the same as my photos and memories from the trip. Please have a look at his blog here.

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