The road trip continues. Despite the dire weather prediction from Ahmed once again last night, after a great day yesterday, we were pretty confident of another great day today! We said goodbye to Canada....Hotel, and zoomed back to the D400 where we soon found ourselves on another amazing coastal road. We made sure to do a periodic stop to stretch our legs, even though the total driving time today was just two hours.
The water is amazingly clear.
The kids were enjoying the relative extra space and freedom in the back seat while we piped our music through the stereo - that was a nice change too. I like some of the local music, but it's been a while since we've been able to blast something the four of us enjoy.
Beth was starting to get used to sitting in the front seat again - something she hasn't done since we left Toronto!
We got off the highway and drove down to the little sea side village of Ucagiz. Coincidentally, we'd been talking to Gram and Banka last night and they mentioned how much they liked it..... And we're here! We sat down for lunch at a little restaurant run by a friendly woman who also ran the boat tourist charter office across the street - it's low season so there's little point keeping full time staff at all of the shops. From an offer of a one hour boat cruise for 250 Lira ($125CAD) from the "friendly" guy who helped me find a parking spot, we'd eventually settled on one for half that price on a large private boat for two hours from the woman at our restaurant.
Robin manned the camera... Nice shot Rob!
We finished lunch and hopped on board our boat. What a difference it must be when this is high season - there were hundreds of empty boats docked and waiting for next year. The weather was great again today - partly cloudy and about 28 degrees.
The little glass bottom sections of the boat showed the amazing colour of the water below.
We cruised across the bay to the site of a large city that was destroyed in an earthquake hundreds of years ago. We could see lots of remnants of the city underwater, including columns, dock cribs and lots of pottery. Above the water, the ruins of the city stretched for hundreds of meters along the coast and way up to the top of the hill, maybe one hundred meters tall. At the water level, it looked like all of the stone was used as the foundations and walls, and the walls had holes at the floor and ceiling level that were probably for ceiling and floor joists. I imagined a vast wooden dock system built over the water that would serve as the work area for the fishermen of this area.
We turned and headed to the little seaside, walk or boat only access, town of Kalekoy.
Walking around the little town, it reminded me so much of the little towns on our Annapurna Base Camp trek - cobbled streets, stone steps, little restaurants and the very occasional shop with souvenirs. As we hiked up the steps to the castle and beyond, we passed a lot of shops that were closing up for the season. We saw one couple who was clearing out a freezer full of ice cream bars and Popsicles - they said either we buy them or they throw them away.... Wow, ok, for some fuzzy logical reason that worked and we did! Turns out, the woman also sold scarves (as you may have read, they are Beth's kryptonite) but after five minutes of feigned interest, we begged off.
The castle, like many of the ancient sites around Turkey, was a little short on actual historical information. It was definitely repurposed in more modern ages as I'm pretty sure the Byzantines did not have canons, but the top provided a great view of the town and harbour.
"I'm the king of the world!" Beth shouted....
There was a cool looking place to one side - it looked like a residence, not a hotel, and it was surrounded by those picturesque Tuscan trees.
The sarcophagi were everywhere - it's cool to see them placed in meaningful and perhaps decorative areas as opposed to our practice of jamming everyone into cemeteries. This sarcophagus was right in the middle of the harbour.
When we were done exploring, our captain whisked us back to Ucagiz. We said goodbye to the restauranteur woman who had helped us, and we were off.
The drive to Kas was fairly quick, though with these roads, it really makes you relax on the accelerator - there's so much to see and take in.
It wasn't too long after we turned off the D400 to the steep, winding road down to Kas, that we relaized how special this little town is. Our great little boutique hotel is located on a hill above a huge complex of cobbled streets that lead to a main square. I will let the girls explain the rest below!
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