On the Road Again - To Ucagiz
Trip Start
Aug 11, 2007
1
44
68
Trip End
Nov 08, 2007
Kekova,
Turkey
Thursday, September 27, 2007
We head back up the winding steep road out of Cirali, then a few kms along the main road, we head back down the next winding steep road to the coast, which takes us to some more lovely beaches and small villages. But these have seen a lot more development than Cirali and there are acres of holiday homes and hotels and restaurants offering hamburgers and chips (clearly targeting the Brits who come here) at many of them). In the middle of summer these beaches must be packed, but now they are practically deserted - it's really beautiful
Another glorious beach
.The valleys in this area are full of greenhouses - acres and acres of them. These are full of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and eggplants. It amazes us the huge numbers of plastic and glass houses - and the amount of veges they must produce. And the vegetables taste so good - we're becoming addicted to the Coban salad (tomato, cucumber & onion with fresh herbs) - will definitely start making this when we get back home!
As we continues our journey, we came to a small town which was having their Friday market, so we stopped and after wandering around admiring all the great veges for sale, we bought some dried figs, dried apricots and some little cucumbers (we'd call them Lebanese cucumbers). Tina picked up 4 of these for us to munch on, but the guys selling them insisted we take 1 kg. We were a bit hesitant because we didn't really want to pay for a kilo - until we found the price - only $1.50!!! And it was a good thing we did buy them, they were so yummy that we ate a heap of them for lunch.
The road wound round and finally took us back to the main coast road through Kumlaca and then to Finike, where we turned off again up through a wide valley (yet more glasshouses) and into the mountains, past a lovely small village which is now a suburb of Finike, but has some impressive old farm house complexes on the side of the river that flows through the middle of the village
More fabulous coastline
. We arrive at the ruins of Arycanda, perched high on the side of a steep mountain. It's not a particularly well known ancient city, nor was it hugely important in its day, however its site is amazing. The mountainside its on is so steep, every major city building is layered almost one on top of another - the stadium is perched above the theatre, which is hanging above the forum. Its so steep that the stadium could only have one side of seating (instead of the normal seating all around the track, and the track was narrower and only about one third as long as a normal stadium. It was an excellent workout clambering up to see all these ruins, and a good thing a steady wind was blowing as it was pretty hot as well! And the view from up there was fantastic..... Back down to the coast and our next stop was Demre to see the famous Lycian tombs and ruins of Myra. We arrived around 4pm and thought that the tour buses would have long gone - but no, there were still around 5 bus loads of mainly Russians all over this quite small site. Chris was ruined out by this stage, so went and sat in a small café that preyed on the tourists while Tina wandered around. It didn't take too long - it was such a small site and she got sick of all the other tourists. And after paying the extortionate price the café asked for the cup of coffee and 2 icecreams we had, we were back on the road.
And clear blue water....
Another winding road down off the main road down to the coast and we were at our destination for the night - Ucagiz - a very small fishing village on a beautiful sheltered harbour. Of course now the lovely old stone houses along the harbour front are pensions and the boats in the harbour are more luxury yachts for rich Turks and Europeans, or they are gullets for the tourists, for Ucagiz is in the little area known as Kekova and renown for the sunken Roman/Lycean ruins that line the outer bays of the harbour and the island that protects it. Again these ruins are famous more for their setting than their historical significance. This was a coastal city that was partially submerged by an earthquake. However there are also plenty of ruins still above sea level - some right in the village itself.
We checked into the pension we had chosen - once again this worked out brilliantly - a lovely old stone house, covered in bougainvillea, right on the water front, with lovely big rooms! - then wandered around the village for an hour or so before dinner.
