An easy stroll from Fethiye to Ölüdeniz via Kayaköy

Saturday morning, I set out for Kayaköy, the abandoned Greek village. The road goes behind the kale, which I hadn’t visited before, so I spent some time exploring the ruins there.

It's supposed to take an hour and a half but I must have missed a turnoff or something and ended up climbin up a clear firetrail to about 475m before I met a guy named Ibrahim, who pointed out I was going the wrong way and showed me a trail that would take me back to the right road. On the way, I ran into two of Ibrahim’s fancy goats and a tortoise . I had been following yellow blazes. The trail joined the bitumen road at one point and there was a bent blaze indicating a left turn just beyond the circular structure, behind the cemetery.

After about three hours bashing through scrub, I hit a road, which soon butted into another, bigger road. I wasn't sure which way to go, so checked my position against David Carter's waypoints and determined I had to go west. From there, it was a bit of a slog and I again took a wrong fork, although it took me into Kayaköy eventually, as well, by a longer route. I stopped at a restaurant and had a nice, but overpriced gözleme. I stopped by 'Muzzy's Place'/Gavuşoğlu Yeri to enquire about accommodation. As I was the only guest, I talked him down to YTL20, including breakfast. The room was nice with a little balcony overlooking the pool. There was hot water in the afternoon.

In the morning, it was not ice cold, but not really warm enough to qualify as tepid. The breakfast was good, but Muzzy wasn't there and the old man charged me for it, after all. I had a vegie caserole there for dinner, as well, and that was very nice. There are now at least ten restaurants in Kayaköy, including some new upmarket ones. In fact, one fish place directly opposite Muzzy's appeared to be having their opening night that night and there was live music going until about 2AM. I think it kept waking me up, but I didn't mind. There was one band that I was pretty sure sucked, but I was only partially conscious.

On Sunday, I planned another easy warmup day with the 2 hour walk to Ölüdeniz. I followed the red dots and arrows through the old village as instructed in both the LP guide and the LW guide and ended up at a wine bar at a completely different bay . As you look up at the hillside from Kayaköy’s main road, you can see two passes out of the valley. The one on the right has a small chapel on each hill overlooking it. This is the one on the right. There is an easy trail up to it and it’s worth a look, at least for the view. I couldn’t find a trail to the much higher one on the left. If you follow the red dots and arrows, this is the pass you will go through. There is no trail from there to Ölüdeniz.

I had to walk all the way back up to the pass into Kayaköy. There was a tour group wandering through that part of the village, so I asked the guide, who told me to go back through the same pass, only take every left fork. After a couple of such forks I again found myself on the side of a cliff deep in scrub. I made my way back and traversed across through thick, prickly scrub until I eventually found, a couple of hours later, a very neatly marked trail, with glossy red and yellow blazes that takes you through the pass on the left, not the one on the right that the red dots go through. Apart from a little confusion over the significance of the chevron shaped blazes, which turn out not to be arrows pointing in the apparent direction, but signals to make a sharp turn, it was an easy walk to Ölüdeniz . Or would have been, if I hadn’t been buggered already.

As soon as I got to the water’s edge, I found a spot concealed by shrubs, changed, and dived into the cold water. It was a refreshing dip, but regrettably, I didn’t manage to get every grain of sand off before dressing. I stopped at the very first caravan park to replenish my lost carcinogens and electrolytes with a cold coke and met a Glaswegian woman who worked there or owned the place. As I recall, she wouldn’t go below YTL 25 for a cabin without its own shower and toilet. It seemed a long slog along a row of caravan parks to get to the centre of Ölüdeniz, which is a jumping place full of bars, restaurants, and tour operators, all very expensive. I didn’t even bother to check motel prices there, although a couple of Germans I later met in Kalkan, who were coming the other way from Olympos, but had been there before, told me there are cheap places. I considered trying to find a place to stay in Ovacık, right near the beginning of the trail, but had heard that it was quite expensive, too. So I just hopped on the dolmuş (YTL3) back to Fethiye.

By this time, I was thoroughly exhausted and wasn’t looking forward to a long walk, fully loaded, looking for a place to stay. I stopped at a nice pide place around the corner from the dolmuş depot and had a spinach pide and waited for the rain, which started while I was there, to subside.

Fortunately, the very first hotel I came to, the Funya, right near the Tourist Information Centre, had a room with bath for YTL20, without breakfast. The room they were going to put me in had a bogus light that kept flashing, so they ended up giving me a big room with a double bed, a single bed and its very own balcony, and tv. There was this scary show on the tellie that I couldn’t take my eyes off. A woman was hanging by her fingernails on the edge of a cliff, pulled herself up, and lodged some kind of clip in a crack in the rock. She got the rope into the caribiner, and then somehow slipped and the clip pulled free of the rock and she plummeted quite some way, but another rope caught her. Then something else pulled loose and she fell even further. She was swinging back and forth, apparently helpless, when somebody threw her a line. Then all of a sudden, a guy jumps off the top of a butte and starts hang gliding through these narrow canyons for quite some way.

Ovacık to Faralya

I was hoping to make an early start and pick up a nice fresh gözleme or börek on the way to the dolmuş stop. They leave literally every ten minutes, so I wasn’t too fussed when I missed one while I went to the bakery. I ended up having two ‘cheese’ poaça instead of what I’d been hoping for – everything else was shut. The dolmuş takes just about half an hour to get to the trailhead (YTL2.50) . Note that the Lycian Way sign is partly obscured by the ‘Sultan Motel’ sign. Also, it is only visible from the road as you go towards Ölüdeniz. The Sultan would be a brilliant place to spend the night before setting off, but an English couple I met a little later told me it was a bit pricey – I think they said €30 each or something. Ovacık looks like a happening touristy village, with plenty of banks, restaurants, bars, pharmacies, etc. Much bigger than I’d expected.

Anyway, I ended up setting off on my big Lycian Way adventure at about 8:30 on the Monday morning. The starting point is at about 250m. I intended to keep detailed notes and check GPS readings and so forth, but it was all I could do to keep up with the people I was trying to walk with and my resolve quickly dissipated. Most of the elevations are from the altimetre, which I no longer trust very much, as it tends to differ from the GPS altitude and seems to be off every time I get to sea level. Presumably this is due to changes in the weather. So, they could be off by up to about 30m one way or the other.

I did make a note of an undocumented stile less than an hour up the trail at about 323m (36 32.689N/20 08.067E). It was at this point that the English couple who had stayed at the Sultan overtook me.

There is considerable roadwork and new construction at Kozağaç, the high point of the stage from Ovacık to Faralya at 743m (36 31.721/29 08.794), which I reached about 10:50. There a young Belgian couple and Hasan, of George House, caught up with me. Hasan had some spray paint and refreshed some of the blazes. He said he had never walked the route before, but also painted some new blazes. The English couple later told me they thought that the trail actually crossed a field below the road and Hasan had erroneously marked a new trail along the road. Somewhat unconventionally, Hasan painted a number of red arrows, which I believe are on the actual trail and point towards Faralya. There may be other locals who are being helpful by refreshing or adding blazes or marking the trail as they see fit. Something to be aware of.

Anyway, following the road past Kozağaç, you come to a distinctive looking tree at a fork, where you have to bear right.

It is an easy walk and worth pressing on until you get to the lunch shed at Kirme at about 680m before stopping, as there is a good spring and shade there. I arrived at about 1310, but made the mistake of stopping at another spring just a hundred metres or so short of there to soak my hat and so forth.

The trail descends rather steeply from the lunch shed through Kirme village and a series of switchbacks and along a dry creekbed to Faralya which you enter at about 310m after perhaps half an hour. The first place you come to in Faralya is the restored mill. Joyce, a woman I met on the next stage, and three English blokes, Martin, Bob, and Dave, had stayed there. It cost them about €50 for a single, but they weren’t complaining, as the food and accommodation are apparently very good.

On the strength of the Lonely Planet recommendation and something I’d read on a site linked from the Trekking in Turkey site, as well as because I’d already made contact with Hasan, I bypassed all the alternatives and went straight to George House at about 270m. It’s supposed to be paradise, so I thought I’d have a rest day there. The last time they updated the website, in 2002 or something, they were charging in the vicinity of €2 per night. No longer. Now it is YTL22.50 per night for a bungalow, dinner, and breakfast. A bungalow has two mattresses on the floor and enough space at the end to get in and out of the door. There are four showers in the ablution block, two of which are also toilets. The first night I was there, there were about 35 people staying, so this was a bit of a problem. But the second night, with only four of us there, it was quite comfortable. You can camp on the grounds for free, but pay full price (YTL8) for meals. There is a pool, but I wasn’t even tempted. Breakfast is a normal Turkish breakfast of hardboiled egg, white cheese, bread, tomatoes, cucumber, yoghurt, honey, and jam. Apart from the cheese, I think they produce everything there themselves. I got the impression that there is one egg per person and the rest is more or less all you can eat.

The big attraction of George House, however, apart from the location, is dinner, comprising six or seven different scrumptious vegetarian dishes, which suited me perfectly, with bread, rice, bulgur, yoghurt, and honey. Tea and instant coffee are available pretty well all day from a vacuum flask for free. Any food you need during the day is a la carte. As I recollect, it was about YTL3 for a salad, yoghurt and honey or a plain omelette, and about YTL4 for menemen.

Right behind George House is the trail leading down to Kelebekler Vadısı ‘Butterfly Valley’. The guide books claim it’s slippery and dangerous and takes 45 minutes each way. The Belgian girl I met on the way said her boyfriend had descended in 17 minutes and came back in 22. As I was resting and it was not butterfly season, I didn’t see much point in doing it myself, but everyone else did and came back without looking too stressed, or even sweaty.

Another option in Faralya is Melissa’s Pansiyon. Nicole and Marleen, who I met in Alınca the next night, had stayed there and it sounded like a ripoff. Or at least they got ripped off.

Anyway, in strict accordance with my decision to have a rest day, I spent all day Tuesday virtually motionless. I had some conversations and gradually people left in ones and twos to catch the dolmuş back to Fethiye, and thence to the Dalaman airport.