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Towards Datca: April Travels in Turkey
Day One: To Uşak
April in Turkey.
Spring with blossoms, long warm days and fresh breezes after the dark, deep
days of winter.
With the promise of
spring pouring down from a leaden sky, we set off early on a Friday morning
from Istanbul
with a boot packed for every imaginable contingency, a full tank of gas and
a week’s holiday without computers.
For only the second
time, we crossed the Fatih
Sultan Mehmet
Bridge without the
aid of a driver. At this time in the morning and going towards the east,
the usual organised insanity of Istanbul
had barely begun. With the wide open motorways, especially the toll roads,
it’s a joy to drive in Turkey. Even on the smaller
roads, the traffic is normally very good and driving more fun than
hardship. You just have to watch out for the chasms that open up
occasionally which can swallow a transmission or shred a tyre with hardly a
burp.
For this trip we were
able to share the driving which made a huge difference. Previously, driving
for up to eleven hours in one day with limited stops, I knew doesn’t
make for good judgement calls or a gracious driver. So I was happy that for
this trip we would have shorter journeys and were able to rest after only a
few hours.
The first part of our
journey was to take us off the motorway at Adapazari and down through
Bilecik, Kütahya to Uşak. The roads for the most part were fairly easy
to navigate. We were always able to find the correct direction using the
road signs, dead reckoning or following the other traffic. The hardest
trick is sometimes to just be in the right lane. Fortunately the Turkish
drivers make allowances for crazy people on the road. These are defined as
anyone other than them so you can swerve between lanes, stop and consult
maps or drive several times through a town without them batting an eye. In
fact so prevalent is the use of reverse on motorways particularly at
junctions that you’d swear it was in the road code.
The countryside as you
travel near Bilecik is lovely. Long river valleys with tall poplars, fluffy
poplar type trees (we still don’t know what they were) against steep
rocky sides of gorges. The small fields that run along the side of the road
are lush with deep black soil. The small towns through which we passed are
a little rugged with muddy streets and full of tractors and trucks but
there is a bustle about the place.
On one particularly
nice stretch of winding road going through a gorge we encountered our first
mishap. Zipping up behind a lumbering lorry looking for an opportunity to
overtake, we found that the lorry was gradually shedding its load of stones
through a slightly open tailgate. When the first few baseball sized
missiles zipped past or under the car, I hurriedly backed off. This only
gave them more space in which to bounce. I breathed a sigh of relief when a
particularly large chunk bounced under the car only to have no chance to
avoid a smaller piece that inconveniently smacked into the windscreen
putting in a nice crack about the size of a NZ fifty cent piece.
Exercising the brakes a
little more forcefully I backed off until the truck turned off a short time
later. ‘Oh well, and it’s only Day One’ I thought.
We stopped for a
toasted sandwich at a service station some time before Kutahya. In a whole
trip we tended to look at service stations before the thousands of tea
gardens, cafés, restaurants and ‘et mangals’ (meat barbecues)
that we passed. The service station cafes appeared to be quick, clean(ish)
and charge according to what they were making you rather than who you were.
As Zinta drove us along through beautiful
countryside we remarked on how like Tuscany
it must be. Charming stone houses (Taş Evleri) in bucolic surroundings
with the odd cow, herd of sheep or goats breaking up the view. What
it’s lacking is a road, electricity and water infrastructure like Tuscany, a host of
cafes where you can get a Cappuccino at any time of the day or night and
several thousand foreigners who have ousted all the locals to convert it
into their own fairytale version of a foreign country.
Below Kutahya I’d
planned a route taking us down a back road through Gediz. Zinta’s regional managers had
‘advised’ strongly that we should go the more conventional
route through Afyon. Stopping, of course, for the obligatory 5 course lunch
in a luxury restaurant. They could, of course, meet us there. Of course.
Unable to contemplate
the ritual, we agreed on a compromise. Take the road towards Afyon but turn
off, cutting the corner to go down to Banaz to pick up some petrol.
We have a mechanism in
the car called ‘Taşitmatik’, where we can fill the car and
just get a receipt from the machine rather than have to pay for petrol each
time. The bill is sent to the company on a periodic basis. It makes life a
little easier as long as you can find the appropriate petrol stations with
the system in place. Not always an easy task when we were following a map
on which the stations concerned marked were with stars that in the real
world would have measured twenty or thirty kilomteres across.
Our cutoff took us into
Altintas a little off the main Afyon road. The map we had showed a side
road leading to Dunlupinar just before you got to Altintas. We passed a
dusty road by a canal as we drove into the town but it didn’t look
promising and had no sign. Halfway though town we agreed that it must have
been the road so we turned around and drove back out. Two locals were
trying to hitch a lift but we were unable to take them as per company car
rules.
We turned down the
dusty track and got all of three hundred metres before it turned into a car
park at the Dunlupinar
University. Hard to
understand what they can study in a swampy bit of ground in the back of
beyond. It didn’t look open.
Unwilling to give up we
went back into town a second time passing the same young hitchers who
displayed no surprise at all. Correctly surmising that the map was a total
load of bollocks we drove through town and weren’t altogether
surprised that it lead towards Dunlupinar and
Banaz.
We arrived in Uşak
at about three thirty in the afternoon and checked into our hotel. We had
made most of the bookings for our holiday using the Little Hotel Book
(Kücük Oteller Kitabi) that had served us well in the past. Zinta had particularly wanted to break our
journey in Uşak because of the picture and description of the hotel
from this book.
The Dülgeroglu is an
old Han type building which was used as a warehouse later in its life. The Han, or Caravanserai is a courtyard style building with
accommodation on the top floor and an open space for camels and other
animals on the ground floor. Forward thinking managers had decided that
camel space was no longer required, put a roof over this courtyard and
occupied the ground floor with café tables where you could get a drink and
where breakfast was provided.
As we still had some
time before the end of the business day we walked to the town museum which
is known for its fine collection of Lydian grave ornaments. Right in the town
centre the staff looked almost shocked that we wanted to go though the
museum. I guess we were a little early in the season but it probably never
gets very many foreigners. It was small but the jewellery and pottery was
exceptional.
One of the tragic
things to read in the museum was the descriptions of the tombs that had
been robbed out, even recently. Like many places, they have no money to
protect the scattered remains of their ancient civilisations. The
archaeology in Turkey
is just so immense. You see it everywhere, scattered in fields and inside
towns. I think that many locals have great respect for it and are proud
that it is still there but a few see it only as an opportunity. With a
national average income of a few thousand US Dollars, it is an opportunity
that is not often neglected.
We met up with Zinta’s local sales rep and his wife in
the evening. Before dinner we went off for a drive around town. Uşak
has about 135,000 inhabitants and like many cities in Turkey, has
a great deal of vertical development. Most people live in apartment
buildings of ten or so stories. It’s a busy and bustling city but
with much of the old town no longer visible.
I had been joking all
day that we would end up in some cousin’s tea house, visiting their
farm or their carpet shop. With little persuasion Birsen, the charming wife
of the rep, offered to take us around the carpet workshop where she worked.
This was in an old factory in an industrial part of town. It looked
abandoned from the outside but we were buzzed in.
Let me tell you, anyone
who has some romantic images of carpets been made in beautiful cottages
amidst flower filled fields is kidding themselves. This was much more like
the reality. Five women or so working by hand at a huge industrial steel
loom in a dark, unwindowed, low ceiling room, with fluorescent bulbs and a
space heater. They showed us the dyeing process out in the yard where they
use natural material like onion skins and seeds to achieve their colours.
The work they produce
is fantastic but, in general, these patterned carpets are not to my taste.
The next day I tried to do a calculation to find out what a carpet was
worth per square metre based just on the labour. I figure 200 Euros would
be about right based on the pay of someone in Istanbul doing a clerical type job. This
would make a normal smallish floor rug worth about 2000 Euros. But
they’re often sold for much less. Still can’t work this one
out.
We ate dinner at the
hotel restaurant and then went out for another drive around to a tea house
they frequented. Must have been lovely in the summer with a great view over
a park but it was a cold evening so we sat inside.
Back in the hotel we
had a relaxing night, great shower in the morning and a good breakfast. The
hotel is solidly built, as a Han of course, which means it remained quiet
but there were very few guests as well.
Day Two: To Datça
We set off early again
as we had a long day ahead of us. Outside Uşak we took a quiet road
towards Denizli. It was cool and sunny but we ran into a dense patch of
morning mist a few miles out of town. The valleys before we got to Sivasli
were just glorious. You would have no difficulty imagining having a little
cottage there amidst the lush meadows.
This reminded me of a
previous days wandering of my thoughts.
I had been vaguely wondering if it would be possible to play an
endless round of golf through the countryside, pitching the ball between
the little patches of green of the fields. These are often not much bigger
than a golf green and looked just as verdant. It would make a fantastic, if
a little insane, journey for someone with a better handicap than I.
A few miles further on
the landscape changes again and becomes a huge
open plain. There the irrigation is done by large open concrete piping that
is suspended one or two metres above the ground. In the distance are the
mountains and for some time we drove towards a snow capped peak. This was
probably Kir Dag (Kir
Mountain) although
it’s difficult to tell from the maps which seem to be made often with
more artistic than ordnance skills.
As we ran alongside
this mountain range we came to Denizli around lunchtime. We decided to take
a short diversion from our route and go to Pamukkale to see the terraces. Zinta had been 25 years ago but I hadn’t
made the journey. I was not that fussed after learning you could no longer
swim in the pools. But it was only some 14k north of Denizli so we took the
opportunity while we were there.
The terraces from the
small town below them look like a huge white (well… slightly muddy)
quarry and Zinta had no memory
for the entrance. Given her ability to fall asleep instantly in a moving
vehicle, I wasn’t altogether surprised.
We drove through the
town but chickened out on the deserted road beyond it. Thinking we must
have gone wrong we turned around, went back into town and drove up a side
road pointing to an entrance. Something like Northern or Southern. Seemed
like a good bet either way. We got up into a town above the terraces with
still no sign saying ‘Pamukkale White Terraces’. There had been
a sign to Hierapolis
so we turned back and went to that.
We entered a deserted
car park where a huge roof suspended on poles covers a set of booths
selling tourist tat. All were closed and the windows papered over.
‘Much too early in the season’ we thought. Nevertheless, there
were the terraces in front of us. A
little less exciting than I had thought. We stood beside them… said.. ‘Um, that’s nice’… I took Zinta’s photo like the one she’d had
taken 25 years ago and said ‘what now?’
We thought a walk
through Hierapolis
might be OK. This is the ancient city that grew around the top of the
terraces. As we went through the old city gate we saw in the distance the
main car park for Pamukkale, filled with tour buses, bustling with
thousands of tourists and realised we’d gone to the wrong entrance.
Well, probably the right entrance for us.
We joined the throng,
declining to remove our shoes and wander about on the terrace and contented
ourselves with a very quick walk around the swimming pool containing the
ancient columns and assorted detritus, couldn’t get enthused at
having a coffee or lunch there and made our exit back to the car as fast as
humanly possible. We had definitely preferred our non-Disney version of
Pamukkale.
Now we ploughed on
towards Mugla stopping for lunch in Kale. The service station café being
closed we bought some bits and pieces from the local grocery store and
stopped on the side of the road on a steep precipice. Picnicking being in
the way of a summer national sport, nobody batted an eyelid.
We pushed on through to
Marmaris with only one holdup where there had been an accident at roadworks
on a very hair-raising, hairpin bend. Everyone was out of their cars but
the arrival of the Jandarma (military police) hastened a solution.
We only paused on the
outskirts of Marmaris to fill up with petrol before following the road out
to Datca on the Resadiye
Peninsula. Before
we’d gotten very far we hit a road that was in a terrible state. It
turned into a muddy track and we were sure we’d gone wrong.
Backtracking along two or three kilometers of this got us back onto the
hard stuff but no nearer a solution. There was no other turnoff and the
signs clearly said Datca was in this direction. We tried again saying that
if we had been in our previous car and not the all wheel drive Audi, and/or
we had not had a booking for three nights in Datca, we would have given up.
Within a few kilometres
the proper road surface had returned and I revved up and took off again.
Only to slow down and pump up the suspension to return to the mud track
within another few kilometres. This process carried on for some twenty
kilometres until we finally got beyond the road works.
We finally saw the
process in action at one particular set of roadworks. They were cutting
away at the rock slope beside the road to widen the road or decrease the
slope’s angle and layering the detritus on the road. This would then
become the new road surface after enough foreign idiots in their flash cars
has rolled the surface flat. Not the sort of thing to find out after a long
days driving.
The road to Datca is
stunning with long drops off the side and spectacular views. The passenger
is able to appreciate these things while the driver prays that the road
works will not suddenly materialise as you come around a sharp bend with
the sea several hundred metres below you.
By early evening though
we came into the town of Datca.
We had booked a boutique pension in Eski Datca which is some way before you
come into Datca proper. A short side road brings you into a very
picturesque village full of stone houses. The road then rapidly turned into
a narrow cobbled lane. A sign for our pension pointed around the corner and
by breathing in we made the turn. The next right angle from one lane to the
next was even more of the squeeze which judging by the scrape marks on the
house walls, many had failed to make.
At last we came to the
pension. We were greeted and shown to our personal unit overlooking the
swimming pool, not surprisingly, which was empty. The Dede Panisyon was a
great place to stay. Quiet, solid and clean. Only the town electricity let
us down. Seeveral times. This place would become the standard by which we
judged all other places we stayed.
The town was very quiet
when we went down for dinner. We found very few places open but settled on
a quick meal at a roadside café serving home cooked style meals. And this
was Saturday night. We were, perhaps, a little early. But after a long days
driving we were happy to get an early night in bed.
Day Three: Datca and Cnidos
Breakfasts were great
at the Dede Pansiyon. Served under the shelter of the terrace outside our
room, the young girl serving only managed one day when she beat us to
preparing the table. At some point on each morning the host or hostess
joined us and had a chat about what we’d seen in either German or
Turkish. We would also be greeted by Sarap (Wine) the big Kangol type dog
who would include us in his protected family for the duration.
After breakfast we
decided that as the weather was a bit iffy, we would go out to Cnidos. It
didn’t look like a beach bed was a real possibility. Little did we know.
Cnidos is about 40
kilometres from Datca and based on what I had read in a number of books, I
was expecting a pretty rough road. As it turned out, it was a well sealed
road with just the occasional subsidence or large hole which I was used to
seeing. Familiarity with the concept though isn’t the same as hitting
them at 70 k when you’re least expecting them.
The road leads through
the mountains and everywhere the sides of the road were blooming with
spring flowers. Details I’ll leave to horticulturists but red ones,
yellow, white, blue and so on. It’s a pretty wild place and hard to
believe you’re heading to one of the famous cities of antiquity.
There are a few
villages along the way with one, from a distance, looking like the ultimate
Tuscan dream. Loads of ‘fixer-uppers’ which you’d die to
own and would probably die after trying to renovate one.
Every village we passed
through, and indeed every village we passed through on our travels, had the
requisite animal lying in the middle of the road. Be it a dog, goat, cat or
chicken, it was like they were staked out especially. Sort of like a
‘sleeping policeman’, meant to slow down tourists. We swore the
same chicken walked across in front of the car every time we went through
one place.
Village life was also
pretty much the same in each place we visited. The men were all sitting
around in the tea-house, what little work there was, was being done by the
womenfolk. You do see men on the tractors once in a while but normally
they’re just the transport to the tea-house.
Finally we came out to
the tip of the peninsula where Cnidos lies. This city occupies a mainland
site and across a causeway, a steep island site. Between the two are two
harbours, one on each side of Tekir Burnu. There are still large walls to
be seen but much of the place is covered in grass, bushes and trees.
It was a very windy day
at the site and the reason for its existence is immediately apparent. Tekir
Burnu (Cape Krio of antiquity) is a hard point
to get around under sail. Ships must have put in at one harbour or the
other and then were fleeced in the way that still continues today in
tourist sites the world over.
The mainland and island
were said to be joined in antiquity with a causeway and a bridge. It was
obvious to me that the two harbours were joined and that you could sail
into one and out the other missing the Cape
voyage altogether. That simply left the matter of the bridge joining the
two. Was it a drawbridge or some other construction? No information is
available but I’m certain they solved the problem. There were some
pretty clever guys in Cnidos.
We walked all the way
out to the modern lighthouse where you could get blown off the walkway as
you rounded the corner. One picture Zinta
took of me shows me up against the edge of the drop with the Cape and Greek Islands in the background. The other
picture is me looking nervously where I’m backing up to.
The whole site is amazing
and one of the better sites we’ve seen in Turkey. Very atmospheric but
without the big standing structures of other places. But without the
tourists too. You immediately understand the city and its reason for being.
Interestingly
‘The Rough Guide to Turkey’
doesn’t concur with our views. To quote them:
“The catch is
that very little remains of this former greatness, and it’s probably
not worth punishing a vehicle for the full distance from Datca to see
it”
What a load of
cobblers! At this point I started to formulate the view that ‘Rough
Guide’ is written to appeal to American grad students on their summer
breaks who want a Disney-esque view of history with reconstructions,
recreations and souvenir stores. The sort of experience you get at Ephesus and which
appalls me.
We wandered
‘lonely without a crowd’ for a few hours going up to the round
temple with beautifully carved steps where may have stood the naked
Aphrodite for which the city was famous, and around much of the site until
the combination of wind, emerging sunshine and hunger got the better of us.
Then we drove back to
Datca still managing to bounce in and out of the crater that I abseiled
into on the way out to Cnidos. The rest of the day we idled in and out of
Datca having a dinner in the Kaptan Restaurant while watching the wind toss
huge waves over the promenade into a few of the bars there. A boardwalk had
been built out of planks extending the promenade out by about 2 metres into
the harbour; perhaps for tables in the summer. This was progressively
shredded as we sat and ate.
We also watched a
Swedish yacht that was stern on to the wharf with the captain getting a
little concerned that they would end up parked on the road. He waffled
along with the problem for a good hour of two while we watched, pulling in
ropes, fiddling with cleats and discussing the problem with his totally
motionless crewman. ‘Messing about in boats’ was never more
conclusively demonstrated.
Day Four: Messing Around in Datca
The day dawned a little
cool and rainy. We elected to have a quiet day and just have a meander.
After breakfast we took
a brolly and explored Eski Datca. This is behind the hill from the new town
(‘Eski’ meaning ‘Old’) and comprises old Tas Evleri
(Stone Houses). Many have been modernised with some even built in the old
style from scratch. This is unusual in Turkey where most people prefer
to live in modern houses. It is a charming village with narrow cobbled
streets and small back lanes (ginnels as in Yorkshire).
Trees and flowers are everywhere and it’s quiet and soothing.
We started off our walk
escorted by mighty Sarap, our Pension’s dog. As we got to the next
street he handed us off to the next dog who escorted us through his
section. And so it was for each street in the town. A new dog would take
over. If we failed to follow him and tried to deviate from his proposed
route there would be a long suffering ‘bloody tourists’ look
and then he would come back to try to steer us back to righteousness or make
the handover to the next guide.
Not being a very big
village we then decided to go for a drive to the next bay off the road to
Cnidos. We took the winding road down to Mesudiye and found the obligatory
truck that had fallen over when it reached a bend. Fortunately he’d
had the good sense to do this near the bottom of the hill rather than the
top where his day would certainly have been ruined.
The Jandarma were
already sorting things out as there was a Jandarma post in the village.
These guys take the role of the police in a lot of rural places and are
often to be seen sorting out traffic problems rather than trying to berate
the driver into confessing his crimes.
Mesudiye was, in a
word, closed. Not that there weren’t tea gardens and bars. Just that
they would have had to unbatten the hatches if we pulled up. Especially
after the storm of the previous night, things looked a little windblown and
wet.
We drove down the beach
front, over to the next bay and finally started going uphill just as it
started to beat down with rain. It was a tight road with no certainty it
would come out anywhere. We kept going because of my innate unwillingness
to ever turn around which was to be my undoing later in this holiday.
Through one-dog
villages, endless hairpins we ascended into the mist covered mountains.
Just as I was coming to believe we would end up in a farm yard as has
happened before, we came out on the main Cnidos-Datca road. With a little
relief and clearing skies we returned to Datca.
Day Five: To Marmaris
With just over 70
kilometres journey to Marmaris, we decided to take a detour and go out to
the Bozburun Peninsula and take a look at the
towns and beaches on this. There was a rumour in the guide books that a
loop road could take you from the main road and circumnavigate the
peninsula coming into the back of Marmaris. We had enough time and gas so
with a smile on our faces, a song in our heart and on the stereo we set off
into the morning sunshine.
Now we knew what to
expect from the roadworks on the Datca-Marmaris road we could take it with
much more equanimity. At one point we passed roadworks where they had dug
the existing road out almost two metres deep and we were forced to pass a
boulder the size of a small car that they had accidentally dropped onto the
track we were on. We sucked in our breath and our wing mirrors and managed
to get past.
The small bays on the Bozburun Peninsula are very beautiful. Glassy
blue and green waters and sheltered by high rocky cliffs. In every little
bay we came across boat builders creating their large Gulets, the staple of
the Blue Water cruises off the coast. It almost seemed piratical especially
when we would see a masthead peaking over the hills as the boat was lying
in the water.
Never being of a
sailing set of mind and having a stomach to match, I am even more nervous
having seen the thin bits of tat from which they build these boats. Later
in Kusadasi we saw someone break a stern plank for kindling with inordinate
ease. Gulp!
We stopped in Selimiye
for a drink and at a hotel from the Little Hotel Book. The Palmetto Hotel
has 18 rooms and is set right beside a quiet harbour. It appeared a very
spruce outfit and the guy, who served us, in a totally empty restaurant,
told us they would be full within the next few weeks. A great place to
write your novel but a little quiet unless you were into sailing or
fishing.
Onward, into the
wilderness. After Sogutkoy and
Bakirkoy it got a little wilder. The terrain was a lot more mountainous and
the existing poor excuse for a road, became rocky, muddy and slippery. The
suspension went up to full and I even had to take off the Stability Control
Program which stops you skidding. You needed to skid to get around some of
the corners. With very little other traffic on the road, no whopping big
trucks harassing us; it was a load of fun and therefore all the more
shocking when we came out of the mountains down into Icmeler.
Icmeler is the
archetypal ‘Turkish’ holiday resort. That is, it’s about
as far as you can get from anything remotely like Turkey
where Turkish people actually live. The old town is buried in the back
streets and the rest is modern, clean, tidy and full of bars and
restaurants with sports TVs and English signage.
After Eski Datca, our
first impulse was to cut and run. However we were starving by this time so
we decided to make the best of it. Now I have a firm view on how to handle
such a place. Do I go looking for the authentic ‘lokanta’ where
the locals eat, where you can get a good ‘kofte’ for 2 Lira?
Not a chance…
The only way to deal
with it is to face it head on and go to the trashiest, chip providing, top
of the popsing place you can find. Hence we ended up in the Lineker (famous
English footballer) Bar and ordered the Bacon Sarnie (Sandwich).
Just because this was one of the only two choices on offer that day,
doesn’t at all detract from the premise.
We left with all haste
afterwards and proceeded into Marmaris. If Icmeler was a bit flash and
trash, Marmaris is run down, trashy but huge. Who’d want to come to a
city for their holidays? Well obviously about a half a million people or
so; according to the evidence.
Fortunately our
accommodation was outside the city on a quiet bay to the east. It took us
half and hour or so to find a road going in the right direction. Once we
came to the bay it was hard to miss the hotel. We entered to find workmen
repainting the main entrance and stairwell with paint cans, ladders and
paint peelings everywhere. Our room was on the second floor and was basic,
to say the least.
After Datca where we
had a motel type unit with cooker, fridge, couch and terrace, this was just
the basics. With no hot water. I ran the tap for ten minutes or more with
it never getting beyond slightly above freezing. I was not best pleased.
We went into town for
dinner and, after much wandering up and down the promenade past hundreds of
restaurants, plumped for Pineapple that we’d seen recommended in a
book. The food was very average but adequate. But not an experience we
needed to repeat. Especially when the prices are what you pay in some of
the best Istanbul
restaurants.
A little disheartened
by the whole Marmaris experience we started plotting to escape the next
day. The charming staff in the hotel stood and talked to us, well to Zinta really whose Turkish is a lot better than
mine, while we had a drink in the bar area. The hotel is really set up for
yachties and with just us there was a little quiet and uninteresting. We
were intrigued that the hotel cat was asleep on the satellite receiver
inside the TV cabinet. Puzzling to think how it had closed the little glass
doors.
The night was not a
good one. The sheets were simply horrible and it was a little cold. I found
that I had been sleeping without a blanket which didn’t help.
Day Six: To Bafa Golu
In the morning Zinta had a first cold shower. With trepidation
I followed suit. Halfway through the hot water came through. At first I
didn’t know if my body had just become totally numb but after that I
enjoyed it enormously.
It was not enough to
change our mind however. Even if the hotel could be made adequate, and it
would never be ‘cutesy’ like Dede Panisyon in Eski Datca,
Marmaris was not what we were wanting from our holiday.
After breakfast we
broke the bad news to the hotel that we were leaving that day rather than
staying two more nights. They took it well but asked if it was because of
the painting in reception, bless their hearts. Zinta
said ‘No… it’s because we hate Marmaris’ which must
have gone down a lot better.
We set off back through
Marmaris to Mugla, Yatagan and Milas. The road is pleasant but unexciting.
More rocks, slightly less green pastures.
As we traveled we
looked in the Little Hotel Book and tried to find something suitable ahead
of us. We were booked into a Selcuk Hotel on the last night of our holiday
so we arranged for the previous night as well. With only one night to sort
out, we opted for one at Bafa Golu (Bafa Lake)
which was not far from Selcuk.
With that sorted we
only had to find a lunch stop. As we neared the lake, we saw a brown
archaeological sign for Heraclia leading us off the road. With a sudden
impulse I turned off the road and drove us down a thin winding road leading
towards the lake edge.
We drove until we
reached the outskirts of the village and a track leading down to the lake.
Knowing from the guidebook that there were some restaurants at the lake we
turned down the narrow sealed track. Of the two restaurants there, we were
summoned up to the one higher on the hill. Figuring this was the better
view we obeyed the summons.
As we often did on this
tour, we had the place to ourselves. Food was whipped up for us with speed
and in spite of a chilling wind that necessitated the donning of more
clothes from the car, it was a great place to sit and ponder the
surroundings.
The lake is large with
mountains in the distance. It was originally a bay leading to the sea but
the river silted up the bay and it became landlocked. We were therefore
sitting above an ancient port where trading ships would put to shore.
Seemed very odd that this could be so but this is the history of many
cities in the region.
After lunch we had a
walk down by the lake around the base of the huge rocks in which Heraclia
in built. From below you can’t see very much apart from a few walls
but we didn’t have time of the inclination to do the 2 or 3 hour walk
around the site.
On the track we met up
with a local woman and her husband. She was walking with the bundle on her
back of goods for the tourists while he supervised from the back of a
donkey. She quickly started displaying her wares while chatting with us
about this and that. They were puzzled why we were walking along the track
rather than finding a nice bit of monument to take a picture of. Hard to
explain that we were walking because the track was there!
After a bit we returned
to the car and set off. I suggested that we drive up into the village just
to see what we could see. Perhaps we could catch a glimpse of the old city
without having to walk too far.
Now here is where I
made the big mistake.
Having been driving
since Marmaris, my judgement was, at best, a little impaired. The impulse
to keep going rather than turning back was not inhibited by the better
judgement of my experience. And little did I know that they had moving
telephone poles in this village.
When I finally realised
that the road was getting too narrow and mountainous, I tried to reverse up
a slope and turn to retreat back down the hill. Two local ladies were on
the track and seemed disinclined to move so, in the effort of avoiding
them, I didn’t see the telephone pole jump out and bash in the front
fender of the car.
Honest, guv’.
We got turned around
with a little local help and got out to look at the damage. The edge of the
front wing was pushed in but worst, the headlight had popped out of its
socket and was now pointing at an odd angle. With the bonnet opened up, I
could see the brackets holding the light had been broken but a hefty push
put it back in position. I got the bonnet closed with a little effort and
we set off again.
I was running through
my mind what our driver, back in Istanbul,
would say when he saw it. It may not be his car but he thinks of it as so.
I was hoping it would hold out till we got back without any repairs and,
luckily, it did.
Being a bit shaken
particularly for being such an idiot, I was happy to get to our hotel stop
for the night a short while later. I thought it was a good idea for me to
get back behind the wheel immediately but I was glad the hotel we’d
chosen was an isolated one and not in the midst of some steaming
metropolis.
We pulled into the Club
Natura Oliva on Bafa Gölü and checked into our room. The hotel is made up
of two story units in blocks of 4 rooms set amongst the trees up a slope
from the lakeside. It seems to be booked out mostly by Germans who enjoy
‘Das Vandering and the Kanapsacking’ type of holiday amidst
‘Die Natur’. We looked for the obligatory sixty year old Heidi stereotype
with the pigtails but were mercifully relieved to find her missing.
The room was rustic as
was the whole outfit but the bed was good and big, sheets and duvets clean
and comfortable and the site was superb. We could sit on the terrace
outside the room and watch the sun go down over the lake.
But before dis vas das
dinner. As the Germans only seemed to come equipped with the latest hiking
clothing, the hotel had kindly helped out by putting the reception at the
top of the hill and the restaurant, where dinner and breakfast was served,
at the bottom beside the lake. Therefore they never had to walk anywhere
without facing up or down the hill. Fiendishly clever, these Germans.
There was a large
terrace at the lakeside and we soon found why everyone had gone down to the
lake at least 15 minutes before dinner was due to start. We were still
thinking in Turkish terms where nothing is ever on time. Therefore when we
arrived we were not altogether surprised to see the tables on the terrace
occupied and nary a spare seat to be seen.
The manager then came
across to us and helped position a table for us on the floor behind the
terrace at the suitable remove from the other guests. Thus we, who were
used to being the Yabancilar (Foreigners) in Turkey, were relegated to
‘foreigners to the foreigners’. But the manager took pity and
talked to us like real people, even giving us extra tidbits from the
kitchen. A little like pets, I guess.
But the setting was
stunning. The sunset over the lake is quite magical and not a boat or sign
of civilisation to spoil it from the hotel. We were quite taken with the
location. Perfect place to base yourself for time at Ephesus, Priene and, of course, Heraclia
where we had been that day.
Day Seven: To Selcuk
The distance to Selcuk
the next morning was minimal so we had the whole day to dawdle up to there.
First on the plan was to visit ancient Priene.
This is another city
that overlooks the bay that was silted up. Originally the city was down on
the bay itself but eventually moved onto a hilltop overlooking the whole
expanse.
A more
‘civilised’ archaeological site the Cnidos, the plans are
better, the books more detailed and it’s harder to get lost, the site
manages to create an atmosphere. It’s mostly the location although
many of the buildings are very complete. They have done some reconstruction
but I think that very little material was stolen from the site compared to
others. The Romans also, civil vandals that they were, had very little
impact here.
I always like the
private houses as they are more evocative than the big public buildings
like temples. You can almost see how they lived. The existing walls act
like a floor plan and you can create a 3D model in your head of what you
could put in each room. The big private house at Priene with some 26 rooms
would not be that different if you built it today. Just that you’d
have a load of council officers maundering on about earthquake regulations.
A situation that unfortunately wasn’t the case in ancient times.
Hence a lot of tumble down cities.
We scrambled here and
there on the site following the plans in our books and enjoying the lack of
crowds. Eventually we were drawn back to the theatre where a group of
tourists were singing some hymn. It resonated wonderfully in the space and
a further speech could be made out clearly even though we were outside the
main seating area. Amazing technology.
Setting off again with
only a minor detour to look through a few ‘outlet stores’ along
the main highway, we arrived in Kusadasi without further ado.
Kusadasi is one of the
main English type tourist resorts which, when Zinta
visited more than twenty years ago, still retained some of its fishing
village charm. Now it starts about 20 kilometres down the coast and just
keeps building up. We found our way into the centre without difficulty just
by blind luck. I don’t think Zinta
recognised very much until we got to the road running alongside the sea.
There we found a place
to park and wandered into town ending up at a Burger King of all places. My
choice, I fear.
We spent the next hour
or so wandering trying to rediscover Zinta’s
youth and with her draping herself over various parts of the geography so
that I could take her picture. We ended up taking tea at a café by the main
square where she had taken tea all those years ago. Odd, but the waiters
didn’t remember her.
The old han next to the
square is now a hotel on a slightly larger scale than the Dülgeroglu Hotel
in Usak with an open courtyard rather than the covered one. They are very
solidly built and designed as much for defense as comfort. Might be a
little noisy during summer but we both thought it would be a good place to
stay.
We left late in the
afternoon to make the short trip to Selcuk. Traveling out of Kusadasi and
along the coast, the final leg into Selcuk passes Ephesus (Efes) following the path taken
by ships in ancient times. As with Heraclia and Priene, Ephesus was a victim of changing
seashores and is now stranded several miles inland.
We would be based for
the next two nights at the Kalehan Hotel just to the north of the main town
of Selcuk
and below the castle on Ayasaluk Hill. The Deluxe room was in a separate
building to one side of a courtyard filled with rose bushes and trees. A
little on the old world side, it was cleanly decorated, had a good bathroom
and was a quiet location compared to the high street places. Even with the
windows open it was possible to get a night's sleep.
We had a walk around
the town before settling on somewhere to eat. I liked Selcuk on the two previous
occasions I’ve been there. It’s relatively small, the carpet
sellers and restaurant touts are friendly and don’t take themselves
too seriously and there’s some nice shops. But don’t get
carried away about the food. It’s pretty ordinary and having had a
large lunch we settled on a small Pastane (cake shop) where we had the
dessert without the main courses. It was plenty.
Afterwards we strolled
about again crying ‘Yedik’(We’ve
eaten), ‘Hayir, sagol’ (No Thanks) to the cries of the touts. I
found again my favourite store which I wanted Zinta
to see. Julia’s (actually her name is Hülya) is a jewellery store but
Julia is so effusively friendly that you just have to go inside. Zinta found a nice bracelet but we were given
little gifts that probably took the profit out of the transaction just
because we stopped to talk.
We also spotted a café
for the next day while we were watching the storks clacking their courtship
ritual on a chimney of an apartment building. We stood and watched them
outside the police station and after asking the policemen standing on the
steps a few questions, were asked to join them for a glass of tea. We declined with just a little regret
which grew as we thought that we might have missed an interesting
conversation. As I said, a friendly town.
Day Eight: Selcuk and Surrounds
Day dawned
a little overcast with a larger threat of rain if we didn’t take the
preliminary suggestion. We set off to walk down to the town museum to
arrive shortly after it would open.
Like many museums, they
close for lunch so we figured that an early start would give us, at most,
two hours to view everything. I’d been before but it was a first for Zinta.
Unlike many museums in Turkey, it
is well lit, with good information panels in Turkish and English, open and
with an excellent collection. I particularly liked the section on
gladiators showing the results of research carried out on a gladiator cemetery.
The only problem is;
it’s not very big. We were through in under and hour and still
looking for something to do. We’d agreed to stay away from Ephesus on this trip.
Too many people and outside the main tourist areas it’s difficult to
make out the various building remains. That and the cost. You now have to
pay to see the private houses that have been restored separately from the
entrance price. If I could just see them, I would be happy to pay. Miserly
blighter, you say!
So the next part of the
plan was to go and see the Basilica of St John and continue up Ayasaluk
Hill to the castle. The Basilica is simply huge. It must really have been
something in the old days. Having been to Haghia Sofia in Istanbul on several occasions, you get a
small feel for the immense power to impress these places had.
There were several tour
parties in but on the huge site they didn’t really detract from the
experience. It’s not my area of interest being into the AD timeframe
but shows clearly that continuation of the Hellenic into Byzantine
domination of the area.
As for the castle, it
was… you guessed it… closed!
Not that we were
desperate to see it, but I have been to Selcuk three times now and never
even got close to one of the Ottoman castles in the area. Ah, well.
We had a bite of lunch
at a great café near the railway station. This was an old fashioned tea
house when I was last there. Since then it’s being restored down to
stripped wood ceilings and floors, painted up and the clientele has gone
slightly up market. It was great to sit on the terrace and watch the rain
fall. If not exactly romantic, then comfortable.
Afterwards we set off
in the car northwards out of the city. First to the Mausoleum of Belevi.
I’d never heard of this until I read about it in the Blue Guide.
It’s one of the most important monuments in Asia
Minor according to some authorities but is just about unknown.
Of course the site was
closed, but this didn’t stop us taking a wander up and seeing just
about all there was to see. It is possibly the burial place of a Seleucid
King, Antiochus II Theos (261-246BC) where the sarcophagus is in the Selcuk Museum.
The tomb is a huge cube
of stone, eleven metres high with a hole for the sarcophagus cut into one
side. The cube was then covered in massive blocks to make a bigger cube and
to hide the entrance. I don’t think it fooled anyone. The closest
analogy is to a pyramid from Egypt.
It must have been very
impressive in its day but now is just another pile of rubble that people
pass on the fast road next to and above the site with nary a glance.
Turning north again we
followed the small road we were on trying to get to the coast to see a
couple of minor archaeological sites. But we kept getting turned away from
the coast and cutting a long, long story (and journey) short we ended up
nearly in Izmir.
At the final moment we found the road south towards the coast and with some
relief headed back towards Kusadasi and Selcuk.
Some time later we
arrived back at the hotel after taking a small back road across the swampy
delta that is the result of the retreating sea. I was constantly waiting
for the plunge off the missing bridge into the inky black depths of some
farmer’s choice field.
Despite traveling what
seemed like hundreds of kilometres, I felt that this had not been the most
successful day of the trip. Fortunately the hotel restaurant was
not…. Closed!
Day Nine: Homeward Bound
The day had come when
we packed up for the final time. The boot was no fuller. The gas tank was
no emptier and the day was no brighter.
We took the fast road
and then motorway out from Selcuk covering the same ground, that had taken
us hours the day before, in just a half hour. Up past Izmir, through Manissa and Balikesir
without pausing. The various detours we took due to road works added to the
stress a little but there was so little traffic that the holdups were
negligible.
The countryside goes
from open plains, to rocky mountain sides, almost alpine meadows and back
to swamp over several hundred kilometres. Some is charming with much being
monotonous, untidy and endless.
We tanked up in
Susurluk and gave the car its first wash of the trip provided by the
friendly BP station staff. I think the car actually came up on it’s
suspension by several notches as the weight of mud was sloughed away.
Somewhere near
Mustafakemalpasa (Ataturk’s name) we came alongside a huge field with
a few horses in it and a very elegant stable. We joked that it was a little
bizarre as all we’d seen until then were farmers on their plough
horses. We couldn’t envisage who could be riding such elegant beasts.
Over the brow of the
hill, the horse fields and stables continued, and continued and continued.
It must have gone on for several kilometres and was one vast breeding
complex. The mind boggles. Who could afford to run such a thing… and
for whom? I have never seen so many horses in one place. The gate signs
didn’t help any so we now need to find someone in the know.
We came to Ulubat Lake where I fancied we could stop
at some charming lakeside café for lunch. We never got closer than a few
kilometres from it and it appeared to have none of the charm of Bafa Gölü.
Pardon me, if I’m mistaken.
We ended up in a
service station café out of pure hunger and desperation. The food was hot,
plentiful and didn’t cause any repercussions. Probably the cheapest
meal of our trip.
Then came
Bursa.
I’d planned the route just so that we could see different towns and
the town of Bursa,
we did see. Boy! Did we ever.
The map shows a nice
big motorway running past the town. And it probably will, when they have
finished building it. As it was we got detoured through the town. And then
back through the town. And back through the town again. All the while
following the signs for Yalova and Istanbul.
I’d swear that we went up one side of a canal, then crossed over and
went down the other side.
I figured this was the
shopkeeper’s way of getting the maximum number of tourist drivebys.
Any sane local would have just skipped Bursa altogether and gone via nearby
towns. We were, however, committed.
After eventually
escaping the vortex, we pushed on to Yalova and the main motorway into Istanbul. What could
best be described on a sunny day as an interminably boring bit of road,
with traffic lights every hundred metres, turned into a quiet nightmare on
this miserable, rainy day.
You keep following the
coast around, bending towards Izmit and away from Istanbul which is some distance across
the bay. At first I couldn’t understand why there was a ferry
crossing from Yalova to Istanbul
which seemed such a waste of time and money. As we went further and further
into the bay hoping with desperation that they had quietly built a bridge
across without telling anyone, we understood fully.
When we at last turned
north again and joined up with the motorway, it was a bit of an anticlimax.
Suddenly we were zipping along again, crossing the Bosphorous bridge and
turning onto the road to Kemerburgaz.
Done and dusted. We
were home.
The Aftermath
Well, the car’s
due in for the front windscreen to be replaced, the dent taken out of the
wing and headlamp fixed.
We’d seen a ton
of countryside, towns and archaeology. More rocks than you can imagine.
We’d only got
into short pants once on the whole trip and the beach towels were,
laughably, untarnished.
We’d had a great
time.
Notes:
1. I’ve left off the
diacriticals for the Turkish letters except the umlauts as they will show
via the web page without problems. For example: Datca has a diacritical
under the ‘c’ which changes it to a ‘ch’ sound. So
you would pronounce it ‘Dat-cha’. Usak has one under the ‘s’ and is pronounced
‘Oo-shark’. Being somewhat inland, this doesn’t normally
present a problem.
2. I haven’t bothered with
detailed descriptions of the archaeological sites. We got our information from ‘Blue
Guide: Turkey:
ISBN: 0-7136-4999-2’.
We also used ‘The
Rough Guide to Turkey:
ISBN: 1-84353-071-6’. Good book but it’s the Disney version as
far as ancient sites are concerned. According to them, if there isn’t
a souvenir store then it probably isn’t worth visiting.
Bruce
29th April 2005
9483 Words
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