Blogs from Olympos, Mediterranean, Turkey, Middle East

Note: by double-clicking on any of the photos you will be transferred to the photo gallery which provides bigger images of the photos. Saturday 1st June: a leisurely breakfast in the sun looking up at the Tahtali Dag, a mountain that dominates the coastline here. It’s 2,318 meters/7,600 feet high and is just 10K/6 miles from Cirali. Later we headed off to Phaselis, an ancient port city just along the coast from Cirali that we had previously visited in 2008 and had good memories of it (Alexander the Great also rated Phaselis quite highly having wintered there in 334/333 BC; but he rated it more for its wine than it’s tranquility). Driving there only took 25 minutes and it hadn’t changed at all except that there were a lot more visitors this time, mostly ... read more

Beer'll fix it After the entertainment of a couple of nights ago not much has been happening, really. So little in fact, that sitting about drinking a beer has become an event worth mentioning (yes, that's what I am doing now... again!) It's medicinal, helps me relax and prepare myself for any 'midnight mouse catching' duties that may come my way. As for us, we are still in Olympos, killing time waiting for my replacement shock to arrive. Hopefully it will do so tomorrow. On the upside, there are worse places in the world to be stuck. Olympos, for those who have not been, is basically a backpacker haunt where you stay in a "tree house" and sit around on pretty Turkish carpets in front of a small coffee table doing not much. Particularly when it ... read more

I have split Olympus into two sections as I would like other people to find out about the Pansiyon we stayed at in Olympus. Saban Pensyion and Tree House is a great place to get away from it all and just relax, the accommodation is either in Bungalows or Tree Houses. We chose a tree house as they looked nice and cool and airy and we were guaranteed there were no mosquito's as ther is no glass in the windows. The Pnsiyon is very well run and food is fantastic, a real bonus was that not only the breakfast is included in the price but the evening meal is as well and we are talking about substatial meals. We tried different Turkish dishes here than we had been having in the East and enjoyed them all. ... read more

Olympos, Kas Today after brekky (not for me) we packed up our gear and left it downstairs and headed off on foot to explore the ruins of ancient Olympos. To get there we turned right after the bridge, walked along the beach for a bit, and then headed in through the next valley. Paid a few lira for our tickets and right there beside the ticket booth were a couple of tombs cut into the rock. It's a long fairly narrow valley with a stream flowing through the middle of it and lots of trees. There must have been quite a community there as there are still ruins of many buildings and a few burial areas. We saw a church, a theatre, a roman baths, some water ways built of the rock, etc etc. Explored for a ... read more

We woke up early and had breakfast then drove for an hour to get to the place where we were going canyoning. We suited up with wetsuits and helmets and then started down the river. There were some parts which were deep so you had to swim through then, but most of it we waded through the water. It was so cold I was really grateful we had the wetsuits. It was fun going through the canyon and in parts the guides had to help us get up the rocks because the current was quite strong. On the way back through we slid down those parts. We were a bit disappointed because we didn't go very far, the whole thing took only about 1 hours. But by this stage it was 4 pm so we were ... read more