90 The South coast of Turkey

Saturday 12th Continued....

Once arriving at Fethiye, having been pulled over by the Police who waved us on when they realised how stupid we could act when need to, (actually we were very polite and so was he,) we booked into the hotel Dedeoglu after stopping another police officer for advice on a suitable place to stay.

Could be one of the many places we have seen.

We then fought over who got to have the first long hot shower.  I had to concede, as Ray was poorly.  We went out for dinner and a walk around and ended up in a lovely little restaurant which had a woman from Manchester working in it, it helped with our choices of food and then we went to find the night life.  We stopped at a small shop and Ray needed some tissues.  He went off to the back of the shop and picked up a packet of Kotex panty liners.  I can only assume that he saw the K and the X and decided Kleenex, (old age, eyesight deteroration is a bad thing),  anyway as soon as he realised he burst out laughing and threw them back on the shelf, the guy behind the counter couldn’t serve us because he had collapsed behind his ounter in fits of giggles. Me I did what any sane person would, and walked out of the shop and into the first bar and ordered something very alcoholic.  Ray found me by following the “oh my god, what did I do to deserve this?” mantra. 

Ray blowing his nose with his Kotex

 After a little light refreshment we headed back to the hotel.

Sunday 13^th November.

The woman from the restaurant had given us a couple of ideas for places to visit on our way to Antalya and we carried on along the coastal road to Kalkan and then Kas. Both are again sea side towns and mostly closed down for the season.  The road is really windy and again the scenery was amazing.  The colours of the water and the waves breaking on the shore, all white sandy beaches was quite breath taking. 

We stopped in Kas for some lunch and met two writers, Michael and Hannie, from Melbourne, Australia.  They have been here for about a month and hoping to stay for another couple of weeks, apparently they have deadlines to meet.  We all put the world to right over tea and coffee and Michael if you do read this, we think you copped the bill for the drinks, ours was really cheap, so thank you.

From there we headed further east and decided to stop off at Olympus and the beach.  It had started raining by now and the waves were really quite fierce. 

We discovered that there was a hillside where there are eternal flames, so we went in search of them.  We had to climb up hill for about 1k and there they were. 

A mythical explanation of the Fires of Olpysos. They are the origin of the current day Olypic Torch ceremony.

The daylight was fading and spots of rain fell gently, it was so peaceful and mystical.  There were ruins up there and with all the flames coming up from between the rocks, quite awesome and worth the walk.

On the way up...it was a long steep slog....

Mystical. Looks like a dragons last breath.

It was peaceful and serene.

...and warm too. Dusk was upon us and the temperature was dropping. This took the edge off the pending nights cold...

Once at the bottom we had a beer and the guy from the souvenir shop was quite taken with Gromit, so after he and the rest of his family had had a tour of her we thought we would head off to Antalya.  We grabbed some food at a local cafe and then changed our minds again.  We had seen a grassy area near the beach that had several motor homes parked up obviously wild camping, so we did that instead.  We were the hard core element in the tent, not the softies in a proper home.

We lit a fire and read for a while and then egged on by Leon, it was time for bed.

Monday 14^th November

We had quite a good night, although it was very windy. I woke up a couple of times thinking there were people dancing on the bonnet as we seemed to be rocking from side to side, however they had gone when we woke up.  We packed off and set off early to get to Antalya.  It rained most of the way there and although I’m sure it’s very pretty in the sunshine, it was just another big resort, so we pushed on.
We came across this fellow.

He said " Go West", we ignored him...went East and this is what happened...

We drove over the mountain and reached 1825m and were accompanied by this lot...

Then we got stuck behind this....

Even the wipers froze solid with encrusted snow and ice. It was -5 deg C. In Antalya, it had been about 15 deg C

On arrival at Karaman, Gromit was feeling the cold.