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So the flames at Olympos were pretty amazing - we got up there fairy late in the evening and spent a couple of hours there and met some turkish people who shared their Turkish delight. Left about 1am and got back about 3 so the next day was a perfect opportunity for a bit of leisure time.
Whilst in Olympos I lost a flip-flop. I met a nice Frenchman called Julien on the beach and on the way back to the village I was absent-mindedly talking to him about the year he's spending studying in Beirut when we came across a stream feeding the river. He sensibly walked across the bridge and I walked straight through - not a problem, you may think. In the middle of the stream, (it was at least two feet wide) one of my flip-flops dislodged itself from my foot and headed into river. As I was walking with the aid of a large stick, I cleverly stabbed the shoe to stop it. This manoeveur was successful, but whilst I was basking in the satisfaction of this accomplishment the shoe from the other foot came off (I think it was the left) to be lost
Oludeniz from Above
Taken by the French-Canadian paragliders forever. You could call this snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The moral of this harrowing tale, dear reader, is not that we shouldn't reflect momentarily upon the successes of our life, but that one should not wear flip-flops to walk through fast flowing streams.
This serious incident, alongside another which I shall relate later, has been the only upset of my travels so far. Everything has a tendency of working out very well.
In order to drown my sorrows, I headed first to the Orange Bar and then to the Bull Bar at Kadir's in the evening with Julien, my roommate Ross and a few others from Beyram's. Kadir's was full of rich young Turks and it was quite good fun just to watch them dance. We tried to show them a thing or two but most likely failed.
Olympos is situated in the Bey Moutains National Park and this is why there are treehouses - all development involving concrete is banned. Consequently there is some great walking. One day I climbed up towards the 'forgotten city' and the meadow up there. The path I followed is part of the 509km Lycian Way from Fethiye
to Antalya. This trail is now famous for the flowers (in late spring...) and scenery along the way. I'd like to come back and do the whole thing one day. However, I was prised away from the path after about 2 1/2 hours by the prospect of scaling a gentle cliff to get great views of the cliff and surrounding area. I think that one of the pictures is in the previous blog. I must admit that there are many beautiful flowers I've never seen before that I wish I knew more about. The Lycian Way eventually scales Mt Olympos (2400m). If I'd more time and fewer blisters from other walks I definitely would've gone up it.
As it is, I hopped onto a 4 day / 3 night 'Blue Cruise' from Olympos to Fethiye. In fact the cruise doesn't start at Olympos at all, but you get a bus to Demre (Kale - where Father Christmas' Church was). When I booked, I was assured that the boat would be almost full. In the event, four Aussie accountants from London booked after me and so two boats sailed. The Aussies had more money than time, so were only onboard for the two days and night in the middle. This left me with a vehemently French -Canadian couple and the Captain (Ali) and his son (the cook) Mustey. They were fantastic people.
On the first day we passed the pirates cave and then the sunken city of Kekova, which was once attached to Simena on the mainland, before stopping to swim.
Once we'd moored up for the night, Ali got call from his fisherman friend, who was having a barbeque. We sailed a bit further and had a great supper - we were the only people there and it was quite special. We crossed a bit of the Lycian Way there and saw a couple of Ottoman-Christian abandoned houses. Ali had amazing light blue eyes and it turned out that his father was one of the Greek Moslems who had been brough over in the cultural exchange after WW1.
On the rest of the cruise we passed some very interesting places and stopped rather a lot for tea and meals. Kas was a sleepy fishing town that's just waking up to tourism. It used to be where political prisoners were sent. We picked up four Australians there and headed onwards. Butterfly Valley was pretty great - it is only really accessable by sea and it's run by a bunch of hippies. The butterflies were just starting to arrive. Some of them are supposedly very rare, and the guide book says that there's one type that's only found in the valley, which is enclosed on both sides by big cliffs. Theres a small waterfall that you can climb up with a rope to get to a bigger one further along. Someone died climbing up a couple of years ago and someone slipped and broke their leg the week before we were there, so nobody else had the guts to go up. It was quite easy (and very wet) to get up with the rope, but the 'big' waterfall itself wasn't that impressive.
We got back on the boat and motored along to Oludeniz (Dead Sea, 'Blue Lagoon'). This place looked really beautiful in the pictures, so I wanted to spend a bit of time on the beach there and swim in the very salty water. Unfortunately, Captain Ali was in a bit of a lazy mood and just pointed over across the beach to a slightly darker patch of water before moving on to the next place. The two French Canadians wanted to go paragliding at Oludeniz from Baba Dag (the mountain to the East of it - 2200m). It is cheapest place in the world and supposedly the second best to do paragliding - you get amazing views and land on the beach. It only costs 60 Euros for an hour but I decided not to - it gives me a good reason to come back! I found out that my camera can copy pictures from someone else's card, so I've included a picture of Oludeniz from above.
We next went down the coast to St Nicholas' Island, which gave good views of the surrounding islands and coast. The Australians left at this point to go to Olympos. On the island there's a ruined monastery and a few churches. There's a great passageway linking two ends of the island. I spotted the guys I'd climbed up to the flames with from Olympos at the other end of the Island and went to find them. I ended up on their boat (they went all the way to Fethiye to cruise back to Olympos) until the early hours with a few drinks and some guitar playing.
On the next day we popped into another remote valley to have tea with one of Ali's friends and then got to Fethiye for lunch, before disembarking. All in all, a very good cruise.
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