Well I returned from a fantastic trip in the south of Turkey about ten days ago. I have been a bit slow about writing the entry because I wanted to cover the trip thoroughly. I have tried to include prices where I can so that if someone else is considering a similar trips they can get an idea about how much it will cost. If you want to jump straight to the picture gallery, click here.
I started by heading to the ancient Lycian city of Olympos, near Antalya, a place I had been before (Olympos Post). My plan was to go there and to climb and get some time to myself. I took a pair of climbing shoes and a harness and was hoping to hook up with some other climbers while there.
I stayed in Kadir’s Tree Houses which is the original place to stay in Olympos. I stayed in dormitory style rooms with four people to a room. Normally you pay 25 ytl for this rooms (this includes dinner and breakfast buffet), but climbers get a discount so I only paid 100 ytl for five days. Laundry services was 7.5 ytl, and there was internet, food, beer and all that available as well. It’s a great place to stay for climbers since it’s maybe the only place that offers guided rock climbing and has all the equipment. It also has the one of only two discos in the valley. Given this, and that it is quite famous, Kadir’s is a great place to meet other travelers, to party, to do any number of adventure sports available in the area (canyoning, rock climbing, sea kayaking, diving, boating…), or to just relax. Although I did not get to climb I still had a nice time, met some cool people and enjoyed myself. Istanbul is so big and busy and stressful that it can be sometimes overbearing. I really needed to get out of the city, collect my thoughts, relax, and think about what to do next in life. Anyway, here is a picture tour of my time in Olympos:
This is a picture of the tree houses. Many of the buildings in the valley are like this. Since it’s a national park you can’t build any permanent structures so everything is pretty flimsy and weak looking. I like it though. It definitely has character. I think the people that work there said there are something like 300 beds on the whole camp. Although it’s the furthest camp from the beach, they have a beach shuttle that goes to and from the entrance to the ancient city (to get to the beach you have to walk through the city).
The funny thing about the employees here is that most of them are volunteer. If you work there you don’t really get paid, but you get free food and a free place to stay. A lot of the people working there were on very long vacations and just happened to come to Olympos and were offered jobs for the summer so they decided to stay. Anyway, this is a picture inside the Hangar bar. It’s a large two story building that acts as the hotel lobby. People congregate here and hangout during the day playing backgammon and what not. I spent a good amount of time here reading.
This is the group I hung out with while there. I am the one on top behind the guy making a claw shape with his hand. From the left is Mark, an English guy who’s Turkish wife is taking the picture, Luke, a student from Manchester currently studying anthropology in Edinburgh, Will another student at Edinburgh traveling with Luke, and David, a young German guy who just finished his mandatory military service in Germany. Luke and Mark both loved discussion politics and it became hard to keep them apart from each other. David chose Turkey as his first big trip on his own and spent five weeks traveling around. I joined him through the next leg of his trip and during his final leg in Istanbul. We had a great time together.
This is an image looking down at all the little bungalows and cafes that dot the road. They are all more or less the same. Some of them have fruit orchards behind them. Pomegranate, grapes, oranges, mulberries, and apricots are among the fruit that grow in the area. The large road like area is a dried up river bed. Since there are no plants growing there I am guessing that it must flood pretty well during the rainy season (winter). I couldn’t capture this with a picture, but it was quite a sublime experience to stand in the river bed and look at the mountains towering around you.
Being a secluded scarcely populated valley, Olympos has a decent amount of wild life compared to Istanbul, then again that’s not saying much. I saw two other types of huge spiders during this trip which made me a bit uneasy. I really hate spiders. One of them, the biggest and ugliest one, was on the wall of one of the bungalows I stayed in.
It was hard to capture it, but the valley is surrounded by pretty steep mountains. This is a picture I took after having climbed up one of them.
Gozleme is one of the specialties of the area. Gozleme is a flat crepe like thing. It is stuffed with spinach, cheese, meat, potatoes or any mix of those. It is then cooked on a large convex cooking surface which you see in the back. Underneath the surface is a small compartment where a fire is kept burning. If made right, these are so good. I recommend potatoes and Kasar cheese mixed.
This is what’s left of the old Roman bathes of the ancient city. I am actually standing inside where the original building used to be. There is very little information given in the ruins, and very little written anywhere online, so at best I can only say what each building was, and even that is difficult. Many of the ruins are grown over and scattered making them very difficult to find. I spent two days exploring the surrounding forest to find some of these places.
This is what’s left of the amphitheater. The entrance was in decent shape but once you walked under the arch very little was discernible. In the frame is David, the German guy I met there. He wasn’t nearly as thrilled as I was to be exploring the ancient ruins, but I guess he had nothing better to do.
This is what’s left of what appears to be a block of houses. The pathway is part of the Lycian Trail, a very well known hiking trail along Turkey’s south coast.
More ruins. This building had a great view of the valley. From here I was able to spot other tall buildings poking out over the tree tops, and followed up with them the next day.
An excellent find! This sarcophagus (I think it is at least), was in a clearing in the forest. It was quite far off of the path so I imagine most people don’t get to see this. Aside from the hole most likely made by a grave robber, it was in decent shape for a couple thousand years old. You could still read some of the writing on it!
This pathway is certainly not new and I don’t think people were in the business of building walkways like this back then. I can only think that it was used to channel water between areas of the city.
Again this bit of the ruins was unlabeled except for the obvious fact that it had a tile mosaic floor still reasonably intact. It’s really a strange feeling to be walking in the forest and then to suddenly find yourself walking on a tile mosaic floor that most people wish they could have in their bathrooms.
That’s me in my rugged man get up. This was another bit of unlabeled ruins.
That’s how much I love Olympos. In conclusion, this small valley is a must visit for any young traveler. Whatever you are looking for in an adventure, I promise you that you can find it here.
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