Advertisement
Published: December 8th 2012
Turkish delight
Part of Fethiye's beautiful waterfrontAfter landing at Heathrow (monday 2nd May) and passing a couple of hours at an internet cafe near Victoria station in the centre of London, I once again left it to the last minute to make my way out to the airport (Stansted - not far from Harlow - this time) for my afternoon flight to Dalaman on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. And then, typical of Easyjet, after I had managed to check in and clear security within ten minutes of arriving at the airport just one hour before my 'scheduled' departure time, our plane was then left waiting on the tarmac for almost an hour before we even backed out onto the taxiway! So after the four-hour flight - combined with the two-hour time difference - it was 11pm by the time we had touched down on Turkish soil; and well after midnight by the time I had made it to my hostel fifty kilometres away (back to the metric system thankfully) in Fethiye!
Nevertheless, it was pretty cool to find myself lying in bed - actually more like a collection of cushions on a raised section of the hostel's glassed-in rooftop terrace than a conventional dorm bed
Standing proud
Turkish flag flying above a ruined hilltop castle - looking out on all of the lights glittering away across the bay, only 26 hours after I had been sitting in the grandstand at Yankee Stadium in New York!
Tuesday started out with plenty of clouds hovering over the mountains around Fethiye (some of which I was shocked to find topped with snow!), but eventually transformed into exactly the sort of day that had been forecast for pretty much the entire length of my stay in Turkey - sunny and warm (about 23 degrees). So after donning the same summer attire that I had worn for most of my previous week in New York, I set out to explore my newfound surroundings - and found a beautiful, tranquil coastal town whose picturesque harbour announced it's most prominent industry: tourism. Having said that, with the peak tourism season still at least a month away the atmosphere along the waterfront was decidedly relaxed; as it was in the water where the odd sea turtle could be seen swimming only metres from the shoreline!
After checking out the ruins of the Roman theatre (right beside the main street through the centre of town - or at least the narrow strip
Monumental tombs
Lycian rock-cut tombs above Fethiye of town squeezed in between the water and the hill behind it) I stopped at a little restaurant for lunch, before heading up the hill behind town to take in the wonderful views of Fethiye Bay, whilst passing the ruins of a hilltop castle and some rock-hewn Lycian tombs carved from the cliff-side behind the town. And just when I thought the scenery couldn't be any more pleasant, I managed to time my return into town to coincide perfectly with the sunset, so that I found myself walking west alongside the river and back towards the waterfront just as the sun was slipping behind the mountains directly in front of me. :-)
Wednesday saw me taking a dolmus (minibus) to Saklikent, which despite being only forty kilometres away took an hour-and-a-half to reach, since the dolmus driver spent the first half-hour driving from place to place within Fethiye, seemingly at the behest of a gentleman in the passenger seat who would duck into building after building running errands! Eventually though, after finally making it out of Fethiye (whose less-than-scenic suburbs sprawl for miles beyond the city centre) and passing some impressive snow-capped mountains, we made it to one end
Crack in the mountains
Approaching Saklikent Gorge of Saklikent Gorge - a spectacular gash in the mountains that extends for eighteen kilometres and reaches heights of over three hundred metres. And that's where the fun (I use that word loosely) really began...
Having seen pictures of a man-made walkway built into one side of the gorge (whose walls are pretty much vertical on both sides) I was most disappointed to learn that the walkway only extended for about the first hundred metres into the gorge, before a small clearing signalled the end of the path with a warning sign reading 'it is forbidden to go into the gorge without a guide and help'. So after admiring the scenery for a little while, I was about to turn back when I suddenly caught sight of two men walking towards me through the river that has gouged out the gorge; and after consulting the guide, who despite sitting nearby clearly had no intention of getting wet, I was soon making my way upriver with my belongings (including camera, phone and wallet) in a small backpack on my back.
After making it through the tricky initiation (where the river is joined - at right angles - by a
Into the abyss
Following the cliff-side walkway into Saklikent Gorge second torrent of water flowing straight from the rock at the base of the cliffs) I managed to make it a few hundred metres further up the gorge in knee- to waist-deep water before coming to a set of rapids that I deemed too difficult to pass without getting my belongings wet, so I left my backpack behind on a little ledge in the rock and proceeded with nothing but the clothes on my back and the flip-flops on my feet - which were reduced from two to one when one slipped off as I made my way back down the rapids to retrieve my backpack, after deciding it wasn't as difficult as I had first thought! Needless to say, I then cut my losses and left the backpack where it was after all...
Unfortunately though that wasn't the last incident to befall me. I had barely made it another hundred metres upriver when the gorge suddenly narrowed dramatically in front of me (from between five and ten metres wide to about two metres wide), at which point I wisely decided to turn back - only to then lose my sunglasses that had been hanging from the front of
Inside the belly of the beast
Continuing upstream through Saklikent Gorge my singlet! But even this wasn't the end of my troubles, as I slowly made my way back downstream, first collecting my backpack and then continuing back all the way to where I had left the path - only to be faced with the same tricky cross-current that I had only just managed to negotiate without getting soaked at the beginning of my trek!
And sure enough, after trying a couple of different ways to tackle the opposing currents only to find myself in the centre of the river and only barely able to keep myself upright, I made the regrettable decision to take off my backpack and hurl it the few remaining metres across the river - only for my hand to get caught on one of the shoulder straps as I threw it, thus sending the backpack straight into the river only a couple of metres from where I was standing! What a dickhead!
Thankfully the guide - who had been nowhere to be seen as I was tackling the difficult river crossing - then sprang to life and rushed into the water just as my backpack was rounding a bend in the river, and managed
Perfect pit-stop
Swimming break on the Twelve Islands cruise to grab hold of it just before it disappeared downstream... though predictably once I had dried everything off as well as possible neither my camera nor my phone were in working condition!
Thus my dolmus ride back to Fethiye was a somewhat sombre affair, though admittedly my mood was lifted considerably by the various goings on around me in the crowded little van, as one older Turkish woman donned a wide straw hat belonging to a younger English woman that I had befriended at the gorge; whilst another older Turkish woman and her young granddaughters (one of whom spoke a very small amount of English, and was celebrating her 12th birthday - though she would only be eleven years old by our standards, since one's actual day of birth is considered to be their first birthday in Turkey) tried to work out how to receive a picture message on their mobile phone that another younger English woman (who spoke a very small amount of Turkish) had taken on her mobile phone! Once again, a much more interesting affair than anything you would find on the underground in London!
Thursday was predictably spent wandering the streets of Fethiye far
Beautiful backdrop
More stunning scenery on the Twelve Islands cruise and wide in search of a new digital camera, though happily I managed to walk so far north of town - probably ten kilometres in all - that I then had a most enjoyable walk all the way back along the waterfront in the afternoon, before settling on a Canon camera for 280 Turksih Lira (about $180 Australian dollars) that was reduced from 400TL because it was the last one of it's kind in stock, and therefore their display model. (I was later able to get a 25TL refund from the tax-free office at the airport upon my departure from Turkey, which paid for a half-litre bottle of duty-free Scotch whiskey - though that is most definately a story for another day...)
Having also managed to replace my sunglasses and flip-flops, and with my mobile phone miraculously working again by the time I made it back to the hostel that night (though no longer able to be used for calls, which I would only find out a week later!) I was finally able to make the most out of the continued good weather on friday by taking a '12 island tour' - which is the popular name given to
Paradise found
Returning to Fethiye harbour after the Twelve Islands cruise each of the different boat tours that take visitors around the bay and it's dozen or so islands, stopping off at different spots for a swim and/or walk ashore along the way. And despite the clouds rolling in later in the day, by the time we made it back to Fethiye the sky had cleared once again, leaving me quite content with my decision to embark on a four-day/three-night sailing trip - popularly referred to as a 'blue cruise' - along the coast the following day...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 13; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0301s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
