21 September - Konya to Egirdir

70 k’s out of Konya the landscape started changing for the better. As usual we have tried to avoid the highways, preferring to travel the slower and often more scenic roads.














The town of Beysehir lies on the beautiful turquoise lake of the same name. We stopped for a chai before taking the road out of town, which snakes along the waters edge.

This road, like all we have traveled on, was under construction. Ancient trees are being felled to make way for the new road, so I suppose we can count ourselves lucky that we are seeing the area before the roadworks take their toll on the landscape. After a good few kilometers the road starts the steep ascent of the rugged limestone mountains. The verdant green forest of Pine, Cedar, Spruce, Oak and Juniper cloaks the mountains that seem to reach for the deep blue sky above.

A wrong turn finds us in a small farming village on market day. From the looks of the villagers and the giggles of the young girls, we are definitely a novelty. With only sign language to communicate with, we manage to buy a feast of sun-ripened peaches, plums and grapes.

We have noticed that every few kilo’s along the roads there is a water point and a drinking trough for animals, which are still used to this day. We stopped at one shaded by some large pines and washed and ate our fruit banquet, picnic style.

The road continued to wind its way through the mountains, before descending to Egirdir and the quaint little Pension Charley, our bed for the night. Aside from reversing into a telephone pole slap bang in the middle of the parking lot, we had a great trip. Fortunately, I opted for the no excess option on the rental.

The pension sits high on the steep cliff, with uninterrupted views of the lake and a variety of different levels, steps and sloping floors.

We strolled along the lakeshore before returning to a meal of local trout, aubergine filled with a tomato based filling, peppers stuffed with spicy rice and salad. In Turkey you always get something extra at meals that you neither order nor pay for. At Charley’s we had a variety of dips and a bowl of olives as an aperitif and two baklava with our thick, slightly bitter Turkish coffee. Actually the freebies would have sufficed alone (but then we did have a couple of baklava with our tea earlier on).

22 September – Egirdir to Çirali

Egirdir lies in a valley surrounded by high mountains, similar to Ceres in the Cape. The road out of town is lined with apple orchards, their branches straining with massive red and green fruit.

The scenery becomes more dramatic as we enter the Yaziki Kanyon. Once again the beautiful mountains are about to be destroyed by roadworks. Sadly rock spill and scarred rock faces are the price of the wider roads. Litter is also a huge problem in Turkey, wherever you go plastic water bottles, bags and millions of cigarette stompies, litter the area. It seems as if every male smokes here.







 
Continuing, the dramatic mountains give way to agriculture. Herders with small flocks of rather tall, longhaired goats are common and small patches of land are being prepared for the winter crops.

All too soon we hit Antalya. Like all large sprawling cities the roads are lined with motorcar showrooms, petrol stations and all the normal shops and offices, I suppose this is called progress.

Heading west along the coast we come to the well preserved ruins of Phaselis. This ancient city situated on a small peninsula jutting into the aquamarine Mediterranean, is believed to have been established in 690BC.

It consisted of 3 ports, an agora (meeting place), a theatre and a wide street with bath houses on either side. Devastating earthquakes rocked the city in 141 and 240AD, but the city continued to prosper until 1158.

A section of the aqueduct

 

The wide street that forms part of the Agora

The Teatro

The sleepy higgle-d-piggle-d seaside town of Cirali, pronounced Cher-ah-luh, lies at the end of a serpentine round that winds its way down the mountains for 10k’s. Lorna was upbeat, but I wasn’t happy with our tree house accommodation. Firstly, it was not in a tree, nor off the ground. Instead it was a wooden bungalow, which in SA we would call a zozo hut. But we tend to judge too much on external appearances, in reality it was a house made from trees, it was spotless, just like all the accommodation in Turkey. Once settled you start to get into the place and by the time we ate breakfast in the garden filled with pomegranate, orange and other fragrant smelling plants, we loved it.

After dark we climbed the broken down stairs ( a million of them and each with a larger riser than the previous) to a place called the Chimera.

Here methane escapes from between the rock and spontaneously burns, you can only imagine the legends that surround this place of the eternal flame.

 

Three kilometres down the beach from Cirali lies the ruins of Olympos, a pirate city.

Now these were not your run of the mill Somali pirates, at Olympos they built an entire city. Time has taken it toll, but you can still see that Olympos was an impressive city.

Built on the banks of a river, which they canalised, there is a theatre, churches with mosaic floors and domed roofs and perimeter wall with an entrance gate 4,88m high.

Various sarcophagi’s can be seen, the one depicts a family tree and another a ship and has a poetic inscription.

Floating in the warm waters of the Mediterranean, the scent of fig heavy in the air, one can only imagine what life must have been like when these ancient cities prospered.

We thought of Dean, who turned 50 today, while we ate our casserole of beef and vegetables, happy birthday and many more.

Çay boilers like this are common throughout Turkey and ensure that fresh chai is always available.