hello! most importantly i must say happy thanksgiving everyone! we are definitely missing home and our favorite holiday today. we are now in kas on the turkish medıterranean coast. we arrived in antalya after a particularly horrible overnight bus ride. i got carsick (has NEVER happened before) and generally felt crappy and thus didnt sleep at all. but we found a really nice room in antalya old town for half price and i slept til early afternoon feeling much much better afterwards. old town antalya where we were staying was great- old buildings and walls with pommegranate and lemon trees peaking over and purple and red bougainvillea growing crazy all over the place. mon and i wandered through the new part of town and eventually found our way to the long pebbly beach below incredibly huge and rugged mountains (the bey range). i wandered down by the waves to stick my toes in (ive never touched the med) and a huge wave came roaring in and attacke me and almost ate me. luckily i made it out alive, although barely, to the chorous of monica's laughing of course. my skirt got all soaked and stuck to my knees the rest of the walk back to the hostel, scandalizing all the locals. we also had the privelege of shopping at a real live grocery store. now a grocery store is not something you think you would crave until all you have to eat is stale bread, warm sweaty cheese and cookies or expensive oily restaurant food for days and days and DAYS. and then you see the produce selection, refridgerated yogurt (a rarity everywhere else) and lunch meat. oh this was heaven. on the 23rd i think, we took the bus to olympos also on the coast. the drive was really nice- lots of bleached white rocks, little stunted pines and the bluest blue hawaii-style water. these beach scenes were divided by sections of high rocky, pine covered mountains in the clouds with bouldery little streams running along the highway. in olympos we were going to stay in tree houses, but they were shut for the season so we stayed in their nice heated rooms for half price. this place was ridiculous with space for over 250 guests. it was very similar to a summer camp. fortunately, we were the only guests although im pretty sure the guest to staff ratio was about 1 to 32. there were all sorts of turks wandering about looked at us either annoyedly or curiously. olympos itself is not a town at all, just some ruins and a beach in a national park. the walk to the beach took about 10 mins and we wandered out there when we got off the bus and settled at the hotel. the walk out there is through the old ruined city from 1 BC overgrown with pines and grape vines. once you break out of the forest, the trail opens to a little cove guarded by high cliffs and the acropolis on one side and a ruined castle on the other. there ıs a huge mountain up above the castle. spectacular. to get to the beach you have to walk under a little rock arch. we explored the castle until dark and found all sort of old structures, arches, walls. we also found pitcher plants and madrones. and the water color! the deeper parts just an incredibly deep blue and the shallower parts that turquoise color. some clouds formed way out in the sea and we watched the tops light up with purple and yellow lightning. those clouds way out there inevitably rolled in overnight and we woke up to wind blasting our walls and rain pounding on the windows. not to be discouraged, mon and i swiped two garbage bags each from the staff (one for our packs and one for our torsos, this rain was far too heavy to be contained by mere gortex). the road out front was practically flooded, but we headed out and puddle stomped our way to the beach. from the beach we walked to the nearby village of cirali and up to the infamous chimaera. on the way we got free pommegranates from a nice fellow and some slobbery kisses from most of the village dogs (all some strange mix of german shepard, spaneil, or rotweiler with a corgi- really long and short). back to the chimaera- it is on the side of mt olympos (not olympus of greek mythology) and is a strange mixture of gases that escape out of fissures in the rocks and burst into flames upon contact with air. so strange. some rocks on fire. it was really cool and well worth the stormy, muddy hike. the chimaera was along the lycian way which is a 550km coastal through-trail so mon and i went a little higher for some nice views back down to cirali and the ocean. it smelled so good up there- wet autumn pines and the i have always loved the sound of wind in pine branches so it was a really fun hike. mon and i were both feeling a little sick and the thought of one more dry bite of cracker breadstick was gag-worthy so we basically were starving and collapsed on our beds at the hotel when we got back. we tryed to sleep until dinner to distract from the thoughts of food, but i ended up dreaming of christmas cookies and woke up wholly unsatisfied. we feel much better these days though so we made it through. the next day we went back down to the beach and found some great boulderıng problems on the cliffs next to the beach. it was really fun to climb again but also a little depressing- it seems sitting in vans and hiking a little doesnt keep my upper body ın very good shape. we have our work cut out for us in bend! after some really great bouldering mon and i explored the acropolis perched above the beach. this thing must have been huge back in its day and was a great place to explore. we just scrambled up and down the rocks, peeking in different building remains and poking around the ruined walls. these were definitely some of the better ruins we've seen just because they were so wild and scenic and unrestricted (we could go WHEREVER we wanted).
Yesterday we arrived in kash via a few hours bus ride. today we went for a hike along the lycian way through little farms, old crumbly walls, goats and olive trees on cliffs above the med. eventually we dropped down past some old tombs to the beach and ate lunch next to the sea (i had a turkey sandwich because i miss thanksgiving!). the weather is gorgeous here- warm and sunny and a little windy. there are plenty of real grocery stores to keep us happy. tonight we splurged for dinner and had handmade turkish ravioli at a cute little restaurant right off the town's main square. we were the only ones at the place and it was really delicious. unfortunately they were out of pumkin otherwise we could have had a turkish pumkin dessert. tomorrow we are going to try to kayak or boulder a bit then in the afternoon we for iznik near istanbul. once again happy thanksgiving everyone! love you!
