Legendary Adventures on the Turquoise Coast
Firebreathing Chimaerae, the land of the Lotus Eaters and Pirates!
Up ahead in the darkness, the sharp sinister yellow glow of fire flickered beyond the silhouetted trees dancing in the wavering light. “The Chimaera!” someone whispered, as we paused on the dark path up the mountain. “According to Greek mythology, it was a creature with the head of a lion, a fire-breathing goat’s head coming out of its back, and a snake's head on its tale” our guide had explained as we set out. I try to picture it. A fire-breathing goat’s head on its back!
We emerge from the trees into a rocky clearing, fire licks up from a dozen different places in the rock. Apparently, it is a natural vent of methane from the ground that has been continuously on fire for all of known history. I picture an ancient salty Greek sea captain pointing out the fire on the hill by the coast that was used as a navigation landmark and knowingly spinning a fantastic tale about it to some young credulous cabin boy. “Aye, and a fire-breathing goat’s head on its back!”
“Hot dogs! Marshmallows! Hot dogs!” a Turkish man strolls among the tourists who have scrambled up the mountain trail in the dark, pitching his wares. They come with free use of his roasting poles. For just a few lira you too can roast a hot dog in chimaera’s breath!
Mt Chimaera is just beside Olympos, an idyllic little valley on the south coast of Turkey. I know what you’re thinking, but no, this is not the Olympus. It turns out there are six mountains by that name in Greece, three in Turkey, one in Cyprus, in addition to at least eight in the US and one on Mars. One of them is decidedly “The” Mt Olympus but it’s not this place, which is not even a mountain but a valley.
Olympos, this Olympos, is a national park, and as such no permanent buildings can be built there, and so the numerous hostels all consist of insubstantial sheds they pitch as “tree houses!” surrounding areas of divans and hammocks under the dappled trees in which tourists lounge about all day. There were about a dozen such hostels strung out along the one road, and nearly all the guests seemed to be worldly tourists in their mid-twenties from all over the globe. At the end of the valley there are ancient ruins and a pebbly beach.
The first day, before the night journey to Chimaera, I explored the ruins of the ancient city of Olympos. Now overgrown, almost jungly, the walls still stand to shoulder height in places, and one can imagine the town street it once was. The city apparently dates back to the fourth century BC, and eventually became a stronghold of the coastal pirate Zekenites, until he was defeated in 78 BC by a Roman naval force including a young 22-year-old aristocrat named Julius Caeser.
Returning to my hostel around midnight from my encounter with the chimaera, a group of about a dozen playing drinking games at one of the tables drew me in to join them. There were people from all over Europe, a guy (from Manchester of course) who had been stabbed in a back street in Taksim, Istanbul earlier in his trip, and two separate guys bicycling across Turkey. Soon we moved on to a club up the road a bit.
Like everything else in Olympos it only consisted of flimsy temporary structures, but on a balmy summer night what more than that do you need when you have ample beer and a crowd of young backpackers. I tried to order an Efes beer in simple Turkish and the Jamaican bartender shook his head, telling me he didn’t speak Turkish. Usually, I seek the authentically local while traveling, but there was something magical about this secluded valley of tourists. Like I noted previously, in Turkey the tourists weren’t 18-year-old first-time-abroaders nor dorky middle-aged xenoskeptics but adventurous and worldly backpackers, and here in Olympos was our hidden little kingdom.
The next morning I had planned to move on but as soon as I’d stumbled out of bed I found a dozen or so of my new friends lounging about the divans. Why leave so soon? I asked the hostel manager if I could book for another day and he just waved vaguely, “just tell me when you check out.” I think continuous postponements of departure are common in this land of the lotus eaters. My friends and I spent the day on the beach playing cards and swimming.
I found a Turk sitting in a chair with a sign for Alaturka Cruises, and decided to set up my next move. He told me to come back at 7 pm to talk to his boss, but when I did so he informed me his boss had passed out drunk but it was no matter, I should come at 7 am for pickup. That night we all went out again, and I found myself getting a ride back down the mountain road in someone’s swanky convertible at 2 am. I’m not a big partier usually but this place was seriously fun.
Blue Cruise
As a sailor myself I generally disdain “cruises,” but I had been convinced that this would be worthwhile by the simple math that $200 for four days trip would be cheaper than accommodation and food would be otherwise anyway, and this would be the most practical way to see a number of places on the rugged coast. And it would be a small sailboat with just about a dozen passengers. Okay, sign me up.
When the dolmas (passenger minivan) came to pick me up the next morning, one of my new friends made an instant snap decision to come along as well — this is how you live the backpacker life properly!
The dolmas picked up people from the various hostels and then we headed to our departure point at the little port town of Demre, where we boarded the 65-foot traditional “gulet” schooner Lucky Mar.
Our crew consisted of a cheerful suntanned weather-beaten captain; his rotund jovial father-in-law as first mate, who didn’t speak any English but always had a sly conspiratorial grin on his face and laughing eyes; and the cook, a slight man who always seemed to be out of sight but could whip up amazing Turkish meals in the little galley, as we immediately found out as lunch was soon served en route to our first destination.
Our first destination was a cave on the coast the captain practically put the boat’s nose right into. A banner above the cave advertised a pirate bar, which I feel rather diminished the atmosphere.
Our next destination was a cute little village just off the coast. With no road access to the mainland, the streets were just two or three people wide between the beautiful little cottages. All three crewmembers apparently live here. The rocky hilltop above the village was crowned with the ruins of a fortress built to fight pirates. From the walls of the fortress ruin you could actually see more foundations and old paths in shallow water beside the village where either the land had subsided or the water level had risen.
That evening, anchored off some unknown cove, we passengers played backgammon or swam lazily about the boat, cans of Efes in one hand and a pool noodle in the other. The moon slowly rose over the eastern sea, a large red crescent, the very symbol of Turkey. It was so pleasant and warm that even coming out of the water dripping at 2 am I didn’t feel cold and we all slept on deck.
The next day we stopped in at the coastal town of Kaş (pronounced cash), another town of authentically beautiful Turkish architecture draped in purple bougainvilleas on the steep Lycian coast. Just outside of town a large ancient amphitheatre still stands facing the sea, one can easily imagine what a nice place it would have been and still is to see any kind of show.
At anchor in another cove that night we whiled away the hours after the delicious dinner (the things they can do with eggplant!) playing backgammon and chatting. If I can possibly get phone service I’ll find a way, but when it's just not possible as was the case throughout this cruise, there’s definitely a sense of serenity in being totally cut off from the digital world. And the way the lack of electronic entertainment forced us passengers to talk, play cards and backgammon, it was really wonderful actually.
The next day we visited Butterfly Valley, though the butterflies were apparently not quite in season; but there’s plenty of videos of when it is and it looks like quite a thing.
The beach of Oludeniz was our next stop. This beautiful beach features in most Turkish tourism montages, as a peninsula and sandbar give the beach a distinct semicircular shape. Somehow all the promotional pictures get it looking pristine and empty (of course), but we found it a thriving rookery of pale, pasty, bulgey Russian walruses in speedoes, packing every square foot of the gravelly strand. High above paragliders circled in the updraft, launching from the steep slopes around the beach is another popular draw to the place. Strolling on shore I found the road there lined with “British Fish and Chips!” shops.
From there we continued to “Santa Claus Island.” St Nicholas Island is covered with the ruins of an ancient monastery where Saint Nicholas, yes, that one, Santa Claus himself, had presided (interesting fact, the actual Saint Nicholas famously punched a priest he disagreed with in the face over a disagreement about the formulation of the Nicene Creed — so be wary of his naughty list!). Our usually-wise captain recommended we visit the ruins at sunset to enjoy the view but on this advice I’m going to disagree with him — the sun set behind a hill anyway and we just found ourselves squinting in the fading light trying to read the informational signs. I never even found where Rudolf had been disallowed from playing in reindeer games!
In the meantime, prior to the sunset, we enjoyed our usual rounds of swimming, backgammon, delicious meals, meandering conversations. Of particular note a Turkish husband and wife came along in a small wooden boat propelled only by the husband at the oars, and they made fresh crepes on a stove in their boat and sold them to us and other boats in the area.
The next day we arrived at the coastal town of Fethiye. As we tied up to the dock there my phone began to ping with the build-up of emails and messages from the entire past week. I sighed wistfully as the weight of the modern world re-descended on my shoulders, my idylls among the aquatic lotophagi were at an end. But figurative reindeer games in Turkey were far from over, but that’s for another story or two yet to come! (or if you’re impatient, I’m pretty proud of the blog post I wrote about the next stage in this already a decade ago, I think it will be hard to beat as I reformulate it for Medium)
