Sunday (4/17). Today’s forecast called for gale force winds and rain. In other words – perfect biking weather, not! We opted for a “rest” day exploring the ancient city of Patara…as well as just resting. In spite of only using human power to travel and being outside all the time, we have a hard time allowing ourselves permission to not fill every day with activity. “We should explore this town. We should visit that ruin. Etc.” After getting blown around most of the day, we finally relented and hunkered down in the hotel room with some good books. Ah, luxury!
Monday (4/18). Patera to Kas. In addition to all the ancient cities and ruins, this stretch of rugged coast was at one time home to a large and active pirate fleet. It was such a problem that the Roman general Pompey was given unlimited resources to finally deal with the issue. Which, by the way, he did by resetting many pirates as farmers. The rest? Well, you can guess… Cycling along the coast, in and out of the countless bays and coves, it is easy to imagine pirates laying in wait for juicy merchant vessels to lumber by.
It is also easy to see why Kas, along with so many other cities along the coast, have become tourist magnets. Kas is fronted by more of the unreal Mediterranean blue, and backed by a mountain ridge named Sleeping Giant. The town itself is charming in spite of being given over entirely to charming the cash out of throngs of tourists.
At dinner we started chatting with the couple at the next table. They were both taking full advantage of working remotely by traveling extensively. Tomorrow they leave for Iraq…next month Iran. Having backpacked in Asia previously, she argued strongly that Indonesia should be our next destination. Maybe! Super nice folks. By evening’s end, they’d offered us their flat in London if we should make it that far. That may seem hard to believe, but is just another example of the kindness and generosity we’ve experienced in our travels. It is also why we open our home from time to time wandering souls. What goes around comes around.
Tuesday (4/19). It’s hard to make progress when every place we visit begs to be explored. Kas was such a place, and explore we did. I hiked up Sleeping Giant while Sharon wandered around town. We spent the evening with Chris and Patricia and somehow managed to find both a disappointing pub and restaurant.
Wednesday (4/20). Kas was hard to leave! Literally! It was hard to leave.
The huge day of climbing was worth it as we coasted 13.8km downhill into Demre and a choice camping spot.
Thursday (4/21). In our time here we’ve grown accustomed to endless steep climbs. It was an unbelievably pleasant change to have relatively flat cycling most of the day. Per usual, the scenery ranged from pleasant to breath taking. A major uphill late in the day led us to call it quits at a funky beach town of Andrasan.
Friday (4/22). Long day yesterday, so we set our sights a bit shorter today on a (supposedly) quiet cove south of Kemer. The ride was great. The cove was pretty. We met Atilla and Zelda when they invited us for evening chai (tea) and snacks. In spite of the language barrier we had a great time pantomiming stories and laughing at our efforts to communicate. Unfortunately, half the population of Antalya had also discovered this quiet cove. For this crowd “camping” and “sleeping” did not necessarily go together. Our night on the beach felt like camping on a carnival midway on the infield of a Nascar race. The icing on the cake was that during the rare quiet moments I got to enjoy Sharon’s spot on imitation of the classic Husqvarna chainsaw sound. (To be fair, Sharon’s often been on the receiving end as well). On balance, we may have chosen poorly.
Saturday (4/23). Thanks to all our ‘considerate’ neighbors, getting up early was no problem. As soon as the sun cleared the horizon, we said gule gule (good-bye) to Zelda and Atilla and headed off.
A few weeks ago, Antalya seemed like a distant dream. There was so much to see and the terrain was so challenging, it seemed we’d never arrive. Yet with our early start we’d covered the 30 miles of coastline before noon and entered the outskirts of Antalya. We have no special fondness for any city of 1.2 million people. But for us it marks an important milestone. After a few days to rest and regroup, we are heading away from the popular tourist areas to head inland. This likely will be an entirely different Turkey.
This seems like a good place to end for the week. Just shy of six weeks on the road, we’ve covered almost 800 miles. The very difficult terrain has been more than offset by the 25 hotel nights vs 15 camping nights, the amazing/affordable food, and as always, the interesting folks along the way. Until next time, do as Sharon says, “be reckless and take chances!” STC!
