The Lycian Way 2

Oh my goodness - I can't believe it's been only five days since I last wrote. So much has happened!

We had our first long, difficult day of walking. We knew when we left Fatma that there was a long slog down a steep, rocky slope. It was difficult with the large pack but the views, once again, were amazing.

We finally made it to the village at the bottom of the hill at lunchtime - and nothing was open! We had an orange with us so that was lunch. What we weren't then expecting was for the next section to be quite difficult in parts as well. At one stage we were scrambling over boulders - not easy when you're tired, hungry and getting unbalanced by the pack. We had fantastic views over Patara Beach though. We were heading for a town at this end of the beach.

Much to our frustration, the track took us way past where we wanted to go and we had to double back. We finally got to the pansiyon we had to stay in (there was only one) and this is what it looked like from the road. We had just had 7 hard hours of hiking and this is what we were greeted with.

To get to it, we had to turn at the sign and walk along a muddy track through a swamp. We then had to walk (very carefully) over a rickety home-made bridge to the decrepit-looking hotel. Anyway, the room was actually ok and the food was really good so looks can be deceiving!

The next day we explored the old fort nearby.

In our planning that night, we realised that there was nowhere to stay the next night and the night after that was a bit iffy. We decided to head to the small town of Patara and head out from there each day for a few days, still doing the walk but returning to Patara each night. What a brilliant plan this turned out to be!

Firstly, we arrived at the pansiyon and found out that both our New Zealand friends and our Dutch friends were all staying there! We liked the town immediately. Everyone was friendly and it was a really lovely place. On our first exploration we saw a cool-looking cocktail bar. We wandered over to check it out and learned that it was owned by Olivia, a British girl, and her Turkish partner Suha. They were still getting ready to open but managed to come up with some pretty mean cocktails for us anyway. We then followed this up with decent Turkish wine and raki back at the pansiyon and ended up dancing on the balcony until we were asked to keep it down!

The next day we explored some of the amazing Lycian and Roman ruins nearby. Letoon was cool - small and quiet. I loved the old theatre.

The Turks have so many ruins that they don't seem too fussy about protecting them. These goats were climbing over the ruins at Xanthos.

I loved the old theatre at Xanthos.

Back on the trail, we passed through a really old cemetery.

For a large section of the trail, we followed a 2,000 year old aqueduct. A stone aqueduct ran for 15kms. It was largely an open, stone-lined drain but in a couple of places it had to pass over a bridge like this one. In some places it was still being used today!

The most incredible part of the aqueduct though is where it had to go uphill! They managed to form a syphon using nothing but rock and lime. The lime in the water would have soon filled any small leaks. It really was an engineering marvel!

Patara itself used to be the capital of the ancient Lycian world and the ruins here are truly amazing. There are so many buildings here in various stages of discovery, ruin and restoration. Numbered stones stretch on for miles. All around the site, people still farm. It's quite obvious that there are more ruins underneath the paddocks and houses.

The main street would have been amazing in its day.

I think that one of the reasons we've enjoyed Patara so much is that we've had a lot of helpful English speakers. Bekir, from our hotel, and Olivia told us all about the festival that would happen on Saturday. We were supposed to leave that day but changed our plans and stayed an extra night.

In a nutshell, there is a festival that is a re-enactment of the nomad walks when people move from hot Patara before summer, high up into the mountains. They take everything with them - goats, chickens, the lot. They traditionally used camels, donkey and horses to cart everything.

This festival walks along part of the Lycian Way (a bonus for us!) and camels, donkeys and horses join in. The most obvious feature was the musicians and dancers that accompanied the trek though. Bekir gave us a lift to the start of the trek where everyone gathered for music and dancing. There must have been 300-500 people there.

The dancers all wore the orange shawls showing they are a part of the Lycian nomads. Mustafa, the owner of our pansiyon, was one of the dancers and he gave us one of the shawls!

After lots of music and dancing, we all headed off along the Lycian Way back to Patara.

Several times along the way we stopped for more music and dancing. We then stopped at one point where they had set up food for everyone. There were huge pots of stew, rice, salad and a desert.

One thing I've noticed about the Turks is they have a great knowledge of plants and they use them for food all the time. Oranges, lemons, figs etc are just plucked from trees. I don't think people actually buy many of these things in shops. All along the trail, people were picking herbs - thyme, rosemary and sage were everywhere. People were also picking certain flowers to make beauty oil with. Some were picking wild weeds, which is used as a spinach. Again, the wildflowers were amazing.

The Lycian Way brought us all back to Patara where there was yet more music and dancing plus free camel and donkey rides.

We loved that one of the main dancing ladies was (presumably) checking out her Facebook while sitting on a camel!

The dancers' costumes seemed pretty authentic.

There were local TV crews there and John and I got interviewed! They wanted to know what tourists thought of it all. Anyone involved in tourism in Turkey is struggling at the moment and they need all the help they can get. You couldn't get anywhere much safer than this area.

We've already had such a big day but tonight we're off to a wedding! I think we go to the reception rather than the ceremony but we will see!

I'll leave you with a pic of the wonderful owners and staff at our pansiyon - Mustafa, Bayram and Bekir.

Til next time!

Heather