Off to Yalikavak...
Trip Start
Aug 11, 2007
1
47
68
Trip End
Nov 08, 2007
Yalikavak,
Turkey
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Our first detour on route is quite soon - into Fethiye - a big tourist town close by. Fethiye surprises us! It is an attractive town, surrounding a large harbour, with lots of marinas and yachts and even a boat building industry. We drove around the harbour for some time, trying to get to the other side to see if we could see the Greek island of Rhodes, but it was a very long winding drive, so gave up and drove back to Fethiye. On the way back round had the closest call we've had so far driving - came round a tight blind corner sticking very closely to our right hand side of the road..
The Fethiye harbour
. only to find a pink and white (indicating English tourists!) came round on a little motor scooter head on, also hugging our side of the road!! You could hear her sharp intake of breath as they suddenly realised you drive on the right in Turkey. We still have no idea how we missed them!! Our next destination was Dalyman - where a reasonable size river winds its way from a lagoon down through a small town, past another Lycian site to an 18 km stretch of sandy beach. It's a lovely site - the town is very pretty sitting on the side of the river, with Lycian tombs carved into the rock faces on the other side. Taking a river cruise up to a mud bath area in the lagoon, then down past the Lycian tombs to the remains of the old city ruins, then on to the beach has become one of the tourist list must-do's for this part of Turkey, so the banks of the river are lined with tour boats and their touts, which detracts a little from the ambiance!! We took a stroll down the river bank, which was nicely set out and saw enough of the ruins to be happy and we weren't at all interested in taking a mud bath, and we could drive to the beach, so we saw no point in taking an over priced boat tour..... The beach was quite a long drive from town - around another lagoon and over a fairly high hill, before angling down to a beautiful long curving beach. This is another beach where turtles breed, so access is limited to the day only and certain areas are roped off during the breeding season
Gulet being built
. But its such a big beach, this is no problem. We paid to go on the beach, but given the length of journey we still had to go, neither of us were interested in swimming or spending time sunbathing. We went for a reasonable walk up the cliff at the end of the beach and for some way down the beach, then headed off again.And then, after all our traveling and it all being so easy.... Our first real problem!!! The damn muffler on the car broke off!!! It was completely out of the blue, but suddenly the noise!! We drove the car up onto a high verge, so Chris could see under the car and there it was - hanging on by a thread. He decided that the best option was to take it off completely - before it fell off anyway - and for us to travel on to Bodrum as planned. We had intended handing the car back to its owners at Bodrum airport the next day and it seemed best that they get it back to Istanbul to fix it rather than us trying to get ourselves understood in Bodrum to have it fixed. So all the luggage came into the back seat of the car, the still hot and dirty ,muffler got wrapped in a large piece of cardboard found in a handy roadside rubbish pile and put in the boot of the car. And on we went - for 250 deafing kms!!!! Including up the largest steepest mountain climb I think we've ever driven.
Penny, John and Jeannie arrived at the resort a few hours before us and phoned with the directions, so it was very easy to find the resort we were staying
Tour boats at Dalyan
. We arrived (noisily!) around 6pm and they had a very welcome glass of red wine ready for us....It was great to see them all again!
We shifted our luggage into our apartment - we are in a lovely 2 bedroom, 2 bath plus living, dining, kitchen area apartment on the ground floor of a resort complex about 5 mins driving away from the centre of Yalikavak. The resort has a lot of apartments and is on a small peninsular jutting into the harbour, so has beaches on both sides, plus a series of swimming pools and other resort facilities.
Our first night here, we took advantage of the car and drove into Yalikavak town centre to have a look around, buy a few items for breakfast and have dinner - right on the waterfront at a restaurant that has a very picturesque rebuilt old windmill - all very touristy, but the food was good and the company was great!!
