Faralya to Alınca

I planned to get an early start on Wednesday, but got involved in conversations and it was 8:30 before I managed to get moving. Hasan gave me a huge lump of bread and some cheese and a couple of tomatoes and a cucumber for lunch on the way out. From George House, you walk up to the intersection and turn right, downhill, to get back on the trail. When you reach the Lycian Way sign, it’s rather confusing. There’s one dirt road intersecting the main bitumen road from the left right next to the sign at a very acute angle, and another ten or fifteen metres further along and going virtually straight, as the road curves at the point. This second one is the one you want. I wasted some time checking out the first one, looking for the ‘G3’ trail to the left after 20 m described in the book. If you take the correct turnoff from the main road, of course, this is quite obvious. I had gained about 100m when I realised I’d left my pole behind at George House, so I hightailed it back there, said goodbye to everybody again, and started off again. By the time I was back on the trail, it was well past 9.

On the way back to George House, I ran into the three Englishmen I mentioned before. And on the road, photographing a tomb, was a vanload of other tourists, the ones I later caught up with who had the different guidebook. Anyway, I kept wandering off onto side trails, then retracing my steps, meeting up with that group again. At one point a lone woman came storming past. I caught up with her and asked if she minded if I joined her. I obviously needed help to follow the trail, and was real pleased to have some company for the walk. That was Joyce, a retired phys ed teacher of Glaswegian origin, although she now lives in some other part of Scotland.

We were taking the shortcut that bypasses Kabak Beach. The trail ascends to about 440m, then descends again to about 250m. The directions tell you to turn left before you reach Mama’s Restaurant, but of course ordinarily you wouldn’t know that until you had actually reached it. On this occasion, however, we ran into two Dutch couples who had just come from there and assured us that we were near it. From there, the trail ascends gradually until you come to a washout, where you have to ascend to the left for about thirty metres before the trail continues on the right. There were a couple of guys surveying there when we passed. I don’t know what that was about, but I think it’s safe to anticipate further changes to the trail in that area.

Joyce had been over this section before and missed the turnoff going up to Alınca. I don’t know if this is the point for a lesson in Turkish phonology, but rest assured that Alınca is not pronounced ‘alinka’. Anyway, she was understandably paranoid about repeating that error, especially as the timings in the book are wildly deceptive. As I recall, from the Mama’s turnoff to the spring was supposed to have taken 80 minutes, and took us about 30. From there to the Alınca turnoff was supposed to take 20 minutes and took us over an hour. And for good measure there are no blazes for at least 500m. The English blokes spent quite a while walking back and forth trying to find where they’d gone wrong and were sure they discerned a clear trail much higher up the cliff.

When we got to the dry creekbed described in the guide, however, I felt pretty confident we were on the right track and it was about then that the blazes reappeared. We never saw the cemetery mentioned in the book, although clearly David Carter found it last year, but when we finally arrived at the right turnoff, it was pretty clear we were there and Joyce was relieved. From there, I don’t recollect any further dramas as the trail ascends to Alınca at about 750m.

As you enter Alınca, there is a sign pointing to the Dervish Lodge on the left. A few metres further on, a guy accosted us, now five in number, and offered us tea, which we were all happy to accept. He also made us ayran, which is watered yoghurt, much like lassi. Then another two English guys arrived. We had passed them trying to make a fire for their lunch earlier in the day. We went on to Bayram’ın Yeri, Bayram’s place. He has three little bungalows with two matresses and a candle in each. He was asking YTL30 for bed, breakfast, and dinner. A couple of girls I met at George House told me that he had asked them for YTL25 and that they actually paid 20, as his wife wasn’t there and they had to cook their own dinner, and his. I went looking for a cheaper option, but it soon became apparent that there was none. I had heard that the Dervish Lodge was posh, so it never occurred to me to check. I think it was Dave who mentioned that the Millhouse people had recommended it, which also suggested it would be out of my league. By the time I got back, two Belgian sisters, Nicole and Marleen, had checked in and I got the last cabin. There are two squatter toilets in a separate structure and a shower room with a handheld showerhead. The water is too hot, but with a basin of cold water, we all managed to get clean.

Anyway, once we were settled in, Joyce and I wandered over to the Dervish Lodge to see how the Pommies were getting on. They were all lounging on sofas and beanbags on an open deck with a great view of Yediburun, drinking beer and rakı and munching on snacks. Two aging hippies run the place. It also has a few bungalows and some new ones seem to be under construction. The lounge room is full of drums and a tenor saxophone and I gather they like to jam. When the English dudes decided they would like to clean up, it turned out that the posh Dervish Lodge doesn’t have a shower at all. There is a kind of small hamam about the size of an ordinary shower cubicle. Actually, as there is no pool, I think it’s really more of a sauna. It took one of the guys quite a while to get the fire going and I’m not sure what they all did to clean up in there. Somebody said they were charging YTL40, so not that much more than anyone else.

I had mentioned to Bayram, who is the muhtar of Alınca, that I was a vegetarian, so I guess he thought that meant everybody was. Dinner was quite satisfactory. Not up to George House standard, but a lot better than I’d expected. They seemed surprised that we wanted tea after dinner and it took about half an hour to prepare. Bayram’s wife was not that thrilled when we asked for breakfast at 7:30, but she did comply.

Alınca to Kalkan

On investigation, it looked like there was no reliable accommodation in Bel. Marleen and Nicole had no camping gear and I was only planning to camp in emergencies. So we kind of decided to bail out at Boğaziçi (the map has Boğazıcı) and hitch or catch a dolmuş to Kalkan, with a view to walking to Patara the next day.

One leaf of the Lycian Trail sign has fallen off, so it’s not obvious which way to go, but the book said downhill. The trail is not well blazed with the standard red and white marks at this point and it’s hard to stay on if you look for them. But there are blue arrows that actually mark the right trail up to a point. The trail descends through switchbacks for a fair way, with lots of great views of Yediburun and the turquoise Mediterranean, until you get to the terraces around Üçkeçi Tepesi ‘Three goats Hill’. The book says to say to the right of the terraces, but we didn’t know what that meant and wandered around for some time trying to find the trail. We ended up just following a big road just above the terraces. With the benefit of hindsight, I think Üçkeçi Tepesi is just a little rise. The trail probably just skirts around between it and the terraces. When we got to the intersection, it was cetainly obvious where the trail was, going the other way.

As I recollect, not far past this, we had to scramble up a short steep washout and came to the tank mentioned in the book. This is not a good place to stop for water. It is better to follow the black hose about 20 or 30 metres further and get it directly from the spring that feeds the tank.

In April 2007, there was a lot of water. Many more springs are running than the book mentions. On the whole I tend to trust spring water, but wouldn’t drink cistern or well or creek water without treatment. On this particular trek, most of the time I was carrying tap water from the previous night’s hotel. But I did have a bit of spring water here and there with no ill effects. If there was anything to fear from those springs, I almost certainly would have got it.

From there, you follow the road to the turnoff for Gey. David Carter took the route via Boğaziçi and said he liked it. He mentions that he met someone who had taken the Gey route and didn’t like it, but couldn’t remember why they didn’t like it. When we got there, Joyce headed off for Bel, while Marleen and Nicole and I continued on into Boğaziçi. We met a woman who invited us for tea. The tea was actually quite refreshing, but it was a bad idea. We planned to hitch out to the main road at Eşen. While we had our tea, three utes went past. There was absolutely no other traffic on that road until we actually reached Eşen, exactly as I predicted on the basis of Murphy’s Law. So we ended up slogging about eight kilometres along a boring road in full sun. Just as we were coming up to Eşen, a car stopped for us and drove us straight past Eşen, where I was keen to stop and have a cold drink and possibly a meal. He dropped us at his house. We weren’t sure what to do, but it was a fair way back to Eşen, so we walked on and soon came to the main road. We didn’t get far before two guys picked us up. They were going to Kaş, but had to stop and meet someone in Kınık. Nicole was sure they were drug dealers. But they had a pansiyon in Kaş and gave us brochures. They asked us why we wanted to go to Kalkan. It was too expensive and we should come to Kaş. I was ready to take them at their word and go all the way to Kaş – it’s only about 25km further – and catch a dolmuş back in the morning. But Nicole and Marleen were determined to stop in Kalkan, so I decided to stick with them. We stopped for about five minutes at the turnoff for Kınık, but the guy they were execting never showed up, and they took us on to Kalkan and dropped us at the bazaar, as it was market day. They said they were going back to Kınık to see if their guy showed up.

As we were walking through the market, I got a call from Esin saying that Nur was frantic because she couldn’t get through to me the previous day when I was out of range. So I rang Nur and it turned out that she had rung the Dervish Lodge and Bayram and called out the Jandarma to look for me! Anyway, we stopped at a gözleme stall. The guy tried to overcharge us. A woman had come up while we were eating and asked how much they were and they told her YTL2, so I was pretty pissed off when the guy gave me YTL5 change from my 10. But he soon rectified his error. Then we went off looking for a place to stay. We stopped at the very first pansiyon we saw, the Moonlight, and I managed to bargain them down to a total of YTL50 for a double room and a single room, without breakfast, which suited me fine.

Nicole and Marleen are much fitter than me and ready to go out and do things after a day of walking. So after we’d all showered and rinsed out stuff, we went in search of a bank, as they were short of Turkish currency. There was an ATM nearby, so that was no problem. I had noticed in the Lonely Planet that there was supposed to be a lighthouse, so we went looking for that. It didn’t take long to find, just wandering through some side streets. But it was not very exciting. We stopped at a restaurant and they had beers and I had a rakı while a stray cat purred in my lap. Then we went down to the beach. Marleen had a swim and Nicole lay in the sun, while I retreated to the shade of an umbrella at the beachside bar.

While I was sitting there, two German guys came up with rucksacks. They were doing part of the Lycian Way backwards from Olympos. I said I found it hard enough following the directions going forwards, it must be a hell of a job going the other way, but they said the blazes were easier to follow going west.

When Marleen and Nicole were done on the beach, they came up and talked to the Germans for a little while, then we went off looking for dinner. We couldn’t agree on a place and decided to split up. Then a guy came up to me and tempted me with a free drink if I ate at his restaurant which was just there. I was actually planned to go to the Istanbul restaurant, which looked very good, but Marleen and Nicole had rejected on the grounds that the tables were in the middle of the street and the traffic and exhaust would disturb them. This place had a nice balcony. I ordered a vegetable omelette and some chips. The chef peeled a tomato in one piece and curled the skin into the shape of a rose. He substituted mushrooms for zucchini, but otherwise it was quite a nice omelette and the chips were good. I thought YTL15 was a bit steep, particularly as the free glass of rakı turned out to be less than half a glass.

After dinner, I found an internet cafe and checked my mail. Then I returned to the pansiyon and went to bed. The rooms are nice, the proprietors friendly, the water pressure is good, there’s a view of the harbour and a roof bar, but I can’t recommend the Moonlight, as the mattress was horrible.