Blogs from Antalya, Mediterranean, Turkey, Middle East - page 2

Last evening we saw what my ornithologist friend in the UK said was likely to be a short toed snake eagle – very impressive & massive. We also saw a couple of butterflies the size of small birds but this place is moth central in the evening before it goes dark... I was looking forward to a good night's sleep as it had cooled & breeze had started up; after we'd gone to sleep it turned into a storm & tree's branch was bending over & whacking Billy's roof most of the night, grrr! After some tyre inflating off we went to Termessos, only a few kilometers away, situated on top of a mountain at c. 1100m. We drove most of the way but then had to walk the final mile or so up a steep ... read more

After short flights, we arrived in Antalya, a beautiful city situated on the Turquoise Coast. We exited the airport and searched for our name being held by one of the several shuttle drivers. Hmmm. No luck. We waited and kept looking as new drivers arrived. Still no sign bearing our name. Not quite sure what to, do one of the shuttle drivers noticed us and asked where we were staying. He immediately called our Pansiyon and within about 5 minutes a driver was calling out to us. We followed him and soon piled our bags into a taxi. Antalya is a huge, modern city. The drive took about 30 minutes and then we entered Kaleici, the old town of Antalya. Here the streets narrowed to cobblestone lanes. Our driver was a little unsure of where our ... read more

Photos of Finike...... read more

Photos of Perga...... read more

Water is always a fierce issue in the American west. Through the doings and undoings of the last century, we have managed to steer our course to a place where few of us are immune to the concerns of drought, water rights, gerrymandering of vast drainages, and their consequences on our often overabundant lives. This becomes especially evident when one or more of the core elements in this increasingly strained system fails to fall into climatological norms. Nowhere is this more evident than in California, where the largest agricultural nexus in the US and several of our largest and most sprawling cities must compete for water that comes from as far away as Colorado to keep the machine wet. When winter does not produce snow for the great ranges of the west, nearly everyone in California ... read more