Sailing Turkey

Day 12 Kaputas, Patara and Butterfly Valley

This morning we left Kas for the last time this trip and we wanted to show Leah and Ian one of our favorite spots in Turkey, Kaputas beach.  This is how we remembered it…

And this is how it looks now…

A little disappointing, but we came, we saw, and then we left.  We decided to go to Patara, which we actually didn’t like as much last time, but this time we loved it.  The wide sandy beach was a welcome change of scenery from the majestic cliffs and mountains we were used to seeing. 

As we anchored the boat off the shore, we saw an adventurous young couple in the distance.  I leave you to find them in the picture. (NSFW)

Also, last time we were here we didn’t go to the ruins of Xanthos, which were really something.  Every time we see different ruins, we remark on how different they seem from each other.  These were being rebuilt to look like they once did, it was so interesting to see the process.

We had a long sail ahead of us, so we pushed off and went along our way to our next eventual stop, Butterfly Valley.  On the way there, though, we saw what looked to be a restaurant tucked away in the landscape and we decided to scope it out.  As we got closer we noticed something not quite exactly right, so through the binoculars, I tried to read the signs in the distance.  It was a backpackers hippie camp, filled with interesting characters… dreadlocked young men, fit older men with long hair, leathery skin and exceptional frisby skills… free-love, organic, granola, bean baggers with questionable hygiene.  We didn’t exactly fit in coming in from our yacht anchored off the shore, but they accepted us just the same and we broke bread together.

While sipping on mojitos, Leah and I remarked on a very attractive woman in a sexy bathing suit, Leah said, “what great shoulders,” Ian noticed some “unfortunate” acne which he attributed to her youth, then Jason chimed in by saying, “I’m pretty sure that chick pees standing up.”  Once that was on the table, we all saw it, too.  And it was all accepted in hippie camp.     

After the nice little stop with our young friends, we set off to see Butterfly Valley, and boy what a sight.  The stop at hippie camp meant that we would be turning the corner into butterfly valley as the sun was setting, which made it a stunning entrance.  The orange glow of the low sun gave the mountains an even more majestic feel as we slowing made our way.  It was breathtaking.

For perspective, we came around from the left of this picture toward the beach in the video

We dropped anchor and sat on the back of the boat in this magical spot and watched the sunset.  Our most beautiful anchorage yet.

Sailing Turkey

Days 9-11 Kas and Kekova

Day 9

Ian and Leah woke before the sun and got us the hell out of Greece. We sailed all day back to the Turkish side of the world, more specifically one of our favorite towns – Kas. The sail was long and (I’m not going to lie) a little boring.  We read, did some laundry, Ian and Jason did some MacGuyver-esque electronic repairs to our faulty GPS display, read some more, and really just tried to stay out of the sun as much as possible.  There weren’t any other boats around, we couldn’t see land, and we couldn’t really sail because there weren’t any winds, so we just put it on autopilot and motored for 10 hours.  You read that right. 10 hours.

The destination was worth it, though. Kas (pronounced kash) is our favorite town in all of Turkey.  It’s a little bohemian resort town with a lively downtown that has beautiful little shops, restaurants, and bars.  

It is a tourist town, but they are a mix of Turks, wealthy yachtees and vacation home owners and backpackers.  It’s San Diego meats Cannes, meats Positano without any pretension whatsoever.  Ian says, “ritzy, but laid back ritz,” there were over 100 fully crewed superyachts that he was drooling over, and beautiful homes built on the edge of the cliffs with infinite pools overlooking the Mediteranean that I was drooling over.  

We walked around town, did some shopping (Leah and Ian bought a carpet) and we had our best dinner yet at a little restaurant where there was live music played on an oud. Just beautiful!

Day 10

Jason and I enjoyed a delicious traditional Turkish breakfast while Leah and Ian went back to pick up their rug from last night, then we left Kas to head to Kekova.  None of us had ever been and we were all excited to check out this spot with sunken ruins and ancient towns.  As soon as we got there we hiked a small hike to ruins that proportedly dated back to 2^nd Century AD. 

Then we found an anchorage right next to some sarcophagi and ate dinner at a little restaurant nearby.

Day 11

In the morning we took to the dingy and the paddleboards to explore the sunken ruins.

It was really amazing, but the noodlers became too much to bear, so we got the hell out of there.

Noodlers (n. pl):  Sunburned Northern European tourists packed tightly on a large, loud boat which takes them to beautiful spots throughout the Turkish coast.  The tourists themselves cannot (or choose not to) swim, so they float in the water on pool noodles until a loud horn is blown and they all swarm back into the boat ready to be unleashed in their next beautiful spot. 

We had planned on two days in Kekova to explore, but we decided instead to have two days in Kas since we loved it there so much and the noodlers were overtaking Kekova, so we went back to our place.  This time we pulled into the marina like grown ups and filled up our water and power and took long luxurious showers in the marina.  In town, we did some more shopping and had another lovely dinner with a fabulous view, then back to the boat to sleep.  

While sitting at dinner, Jason and I decided (read: I decided and just need to convince Jason) that we should build a house here.  Honestly, I think it’s a great idea.  We could build it to our specifications, with an inlaw suite for my mother, and rent it out to offset the cost.  Stay tuned for more on that as I do some research, and then you too can vacation here by renting out our perfect little house on the hill.

Tour of Turkey

Day 9:  Kas to Gocek

I was so sad to leave Kas, I loved it there so much I wanted to stay longer, but we had to move because we're meeting my mother in Selcuk on the west coast in a few short days, so we need to make our way west of here.  When we woke up, Jade was a little sick.  I think she drank too much of the salt water yesterday, so she and I stayed behind and I started our packing while Jason explored the ruins we saw yesterday.  If you look at the picture with the sunset from yesterday's post, you will see a stone wall next to our hotel.  We looked on our map to see what it was and it was another theater!

We were supposed to take a one hour hike along the way to see something called the butterfly valley, but since Jade wasn't feeling all that well, we decided to drive to Oludeniz instead, a touristy resort town, to see if we could take a boat there instead.  That way Jade wouldn't have to hike and if she felt like she couldn't swim either, she could just sit on the boat.  I'm sure our GPS took us the wrong way to get there, but it was fine by us, we drove up and over some mountains, past some beautiful small farming villages with iron gates to their homes covered in blooming flowers, rows and rows of crops that I didn't recognize, some kids riding dirt bikes down the road, and everyone we passed looked at us as if to say, "What are tourists doing here?"  It was really such a nice drive.

Unfortunately, after that lovely quiet ride, Oludeniz sucked.  It's literally filled with tourists crowding the streets, everything is expensive, all we wanted to do was get out of there.  I don't know why anyone would want to go to a place like that when towns like Kas exist.  We found out that the tour boats to Butterfly Valley all left in the mornings, but there was a shuttle that would drop you off there at 2, so we decided to get some lunch and wait, but after all that, it was full and we never made it.  That was fine by me, I just wanted to get out of there so badly, it was claustrophobic.

So we moved on toward Gocek (pronounced gochek).  I didn't know what to expect from this town, I wanted to stop someplace halfway between Kas and Bodrum for one night to break up the drive, and I thought Oludeniz would be too touristy (boy I was right), and heard of Gocek, a small yacht harbor town.  I found a hotel that had some nice reviews, and rolled the dice.  Now getting to a hotel in these towns in Turkey is kind of tricky, you need to GPS yourself to the center of town and then look for small signs for your hotel and follow them.  The GPS generally doesn't know these little streets.  We did that for the Forest Gate Hotel and when we drove up to it, we were astonished.  It was a little oasis in this small town.

Lush with flowers, a beautiful pool and bar, friendly staff, they even upgraded our room.  We had a huge patio and lovely room decorated with flowers on the beds.  I can't express enough how much we loved it here.  There was an immediate feeling of calm, the sounds of the cicadas in the forest next to us and the  lovely music coming from the bar were the only things to be heard while dipping in the warm, calming pool.  I wanted to stay here forever.  Seriously.  Jade said that she wanted to plan a vacation for me someday so that I could be surprised by each place we stopped being better than the next. So sweet, but I'm the planner!

We decided to pry ourselves away from the calmness of this place and check out the downtown area.  It really is a yachting town.  The downtown is a stretch of stores lining the harbor selling expensive clothes and trinkets.  There was an abundance of markets selling fruit and groceries and restaurant after restaurant after restaurant.

At the harbor, some boats were letting people off and I approached and asked where they just came from, they said they toured the islands in the area, so I asked if they were going out again this evening and they were not going until the next day from 3 to 9pm, too late for us, so we decided to walk along the marina there to see if any other boats had tours that fit our schedule better.  It's about a 2 hour drive to Bodrum tomorrow, so we needed to get out of here sooner than 9pm.  Many of them were full, but we found one that would take us from 10am-6pm, seeing 12 islands, stopping to swim and explore 6 of them, includes food (Jade and Jason ordered the chicken, I chose fish) for about $30 per person.  How could we say no?  We bought our seats on that tour and headed back to the hotel for dinner.  Even though the town is filled with restaurants, our hotel restaurant manager told us about this fish that they caught, a large sturgeon, which has been marinated for almost a whole day, that they were planning on kebabing for dinner.  I didn't want to pass that up and I'm glad I didn't.  It was fantastic.  We ate poolside with some wine and candlelight.  It was absolutely perfect.  Why would anyone go to Oludeniz?

Tour of Turkey

Day 8:  Kas

I can't describe how much I love Kas (pronounced Kash).  The towns of Kas and Kalkan (the next town over) reminded us a lot of Amalfi and Positano.  Both were once fishing villages turned into tourist destinations, built into the the side of a mountain right onto the bluest Mediterranean Sea, but these overlook Greek Islands and the Turkish people are so warm and friendly.

So after breakfast on the roof deck of our hotel, we ventured out for a day of swimming.

breakfast with the Greek island of Kastellorizo directly ahead

First stop was Kaputas beach.  Oh my God! That's all I can say.  This beach was much like the one yesterday, when we pulled over at the side of the road, except it was farther down from the road and the water went from Turquoise near the beach to a purple-blue out farther.  It took something like 189 steps to get down to the beach and once we were there, it was spectacular.  Jason declared it one of the most beautiful locations on the planet.  Certainly it's the most beautiful place I've ever been.

Since there is nothing at Kaputas except beach, we decided to pry Jade away and head to Kalkan for lunch, where we found a little spot with a view and sat down.  We were the only customers there, so the owner chatted us up; he was a very nice man who told us all about the growth of this town.  He said that when he first moved to Kalkan 17 years ago, there were no homes to the right and left of us, but now the mountains were full of homes.  The British are building them at a rate of 400 per year, he tells us, to live there in the winter months.  In fact, in the months between November and March, the populations is 50% Turkish and 50% British!  While it's quite hot in the summer (today was 100 and tomorrow will be the same), in the winter it only gets down to the 70s.  He say this February he even went swimming in the Mediterranean.  Not a bad life!  This man loved Jade, too.  He brought her over to the aquarium he had and let her feed and hold a small turtle.

This little turtle is from Patara beach (our next stop).  They close the beach at night for all of the turtles that come ashore!  Patara was nice, but nothing we would recommend to any Americans, especially from the East coast, because it was sandy and wide with waves.  The locals and Europeans love it, but to them it must be exotic because they are so used to pebble beaches, but to us, it was like going to the Jersey shore.  Of course Jason and Jade went and played in the waves anyway and I took a nap under an umbrella.

We left Patara to head home and decided to check out what everyone was calling "the platforms" in Kas.  There is no real beach to speak of because the mountainside descends right into the water, so they've built platforms to dive from and lounge on.  I don't know what I was expecting, but this was so much better than I imagined.  We didn't even bring our camera because we assumed it would be nothing more than a big cement slab with a ladder to the water...  duh!  Everything here is beautiful!  Actually, it's a few levels of wooden decks off of the back of a restaurant with these white bed like chairs and white umbrellas overlooking the bay with steps down to the rocks and a ladder from the rocks into the water.  It was glorious and I don't have a picture.

After that little surprise, we got washed up and watched the sunset from our roof deck and headed into town for dinner.

The theater ruins next to our hotel

view to our left

We've got quite a day planned for tomorrow, so early to bed and early to rise!

Tour of Turkey

Day 7:  The Mediterranean

We woke up early and tried to find the house my grandfather was staying in, but found ourselves quite lost and I think it was too early anyway, so after some disappointment, we decided it was best to get moving.  We had a long journey ahead of us, we were hungry and tired and we knew our next bed was far away.

After what felt like an eternity driving through mountains on roads that were actually just being built, we finally reached the seaside resort town of Antalya. 

We weren’t planning to stay here, though.  We just picked up some beach towels, hit the ATM, ate a very late lunch, then drove on.

Not far from Antalya we stopped at a town called Phasaelis, which was an ancient Greek, then Roman, port town.  It dated back to the 2^nd Century BC.  There was this beautiful bay to swim in where the water was so warm.  From the water we could swim to some ruins and see the aqueducts just off shore.  The coastline was amazing, too, with caves and the cool road and ancient ruins all around us. 

We decided to dry off before getting back into our car by walking around the ruins and much to our surprise, this little harbor town went on and on.  There was a theater, bath houses, a commerce market, and more.  What a treat!

We went on our way, traveling West along the coast.  It was a spectacular drive, to say the least.  Much like the Amalfi Coast, we hugged the edge of a mountain overlooking the Mediterranean, but unlike the Amalfi Coast, at times this road dipped back down to sea level.  Also, along the route there were entrances to the water.  We pulled over at one of these and climbed down these stones to a little pebble beach where Jade and Jason decided to jump from the cliff sides. 

After some more driving we finally reached the town of Kas, where we will be staying for two nights.