Turkish Delight Part II: Mediterranea

Flying out of Istanbul and renting a car in Antalya was definitely a good decision. Winding down the coast in the dark, we soon found ourselves sitting by a bonfire with a hearty brew thrust into our hands by a couple of hearty aussies whose self-proclaimed employment was “making jokes and acting like jerks”. They “worked” (using the term loosely) at Kadir’s Treehouses where we spent our first Mediterranean night, shivering underneath piles of crusty blankets in a 3-bunk shack built up in a tree with the girthy trunk running right through the middle and taking up most of the space. The novelty of the lodging and the company were worth the poor night’s sleep, but we were thankful for the warm sunshine in the morning. We awoke to find ourselves a 10 minute walk from the ancient city of Olympos, a town that centuries ago had been expelled from the regional government on the grounds that it harboured pirates. The ruins were situated along a narrow stream that led us straight to the beautiful, secluded, pebbly beach of the Mediterranean sea. We had to swim. Yes, it was cold. But we had to. And really, like the Newfield gorge in early summer, once the initial shock passes and the cold seeps in, you feel emboldened by it, and strike out swimming more strongly than you thought you could. Once in I didn’t want to get out, but I soon was chilled to the bone and shivered back into my clothes with salt in my hair and a gnawing void in my stomach. Luckily, not too far down the beach an old lady in a split skirt and headscarf was shuffling around some tables laid with faded red tablecloths.
She looked like the kind of lady whose food I wanted to eat, so we sat down and ordered calamari and 2 different whole fishes, beer, and fresh orange juice from the trees out back. Perfect.

That night we hiked up a hill to the Chimaera, or eternal flame, where some sort of petroleum product seeps out of the rocks and fuels several small, natural fires that have been burning for centuries. We made our way to the flames around dark with a bottle of wine, crusty bread, cheese, olives, and dried figs for our dinner. We laid on our backs and looked up at the stars for what seemed like hours and stumbled down the hill in the dark with only the light of our cell phone screens to guide us. We found accommodation at a humble little guesthouse with the best breakfast we had the whole trip, and picked some oranges from the trees out back for the next leg of the journey……which wound up into the mountains through hairpin switchbacks lined with olive groves decorated with grazing goats. We drove first to the ruins of Arykanda and then to Kas, a little tourist town on the coast where the mountains plunge into the sea. After accidentally buying 2 kilos of honey from a dude on the side of the road earlier that afternoon, we decided we better find some good bread to go with it and a vantage point to watch the sunset, so we again scrambled in the fading light up a hillside on the tip of a tiny peninsula and feasted on random things scavenged from fields and street corners and passed around a bottle of cheap red wine. The next day we decided we wanted to get on a boat so, because it was the off season, we found the only boat making excursions that day to a small island belonging to Greece just 40 minutes away. We joined a group of 6 others, but since the boat was only authorized to carry 8 passengers, Eric had to be smuggled in the cabin of the boat and his passport hidden from the authorities.

The island was dreamy. Like, an actual dream. The colors of the buildings and boats were surreal in their muted brilliance, and the whitewashed stone path winding up the hillside that led past herds of sheep and goats to a bird’s eye view of the entire bay was like something out of a fairy tale. It was spring in the Mediterranian, and wildflowers burst from between the white stones and scattered themselves over the windy hill-top. Looking out over the tiny islands and the tiny gleaming boats in the cobalt water, the beauty made my eyes sting and my chest feel tight. After a meal of calamari and fresh grilled mackerel, we headed back for the mainland.

As we approached the marina, Eric was gruffly ordered to leap onto the deck of a neighboring ship before the police arrived to check all of our passports. The boat captain, I think, felt bad about this and made us coffee and shared his cigarettes and we fell into easy conversation. He invited us to stay the night with him on the boat, and offered to make us his famous fish spaghetti, but alas our flight was leaving from Antalya very early in the morning. He did insist, however, that we take the keys to his moped and motor up the road to see the ancient theatre built into the hillside and overlooking the sea. Autumn was the only one amongst us with moped experience, so the three of us clung precariously to the bike and we teetered through the town past old men clucking their tongues and shaking their heads with disapproval. The theatre was like the one we saw in Arykanda only smaller, and positioned perfectly to catch the rays of the evening sun.

After returning the bike and saying our farewells, we headed by car back to Antalya, scoring the LAST room in a city filling to the gills with hippies in town for the solar eclipse that we missed by 3 days. Tired, scruffy, gritty-eyed and delerious, we cracked one last Efes in the Istanbul airport at 5 minutes til 11:00 am. As mom would say, it was noon somewhere in the world.

The Turkish Mediterranean is so beautifully not-quite-European, like the city of Istanbul. A bit rough around the edges and un-self-conscious, like we aspired to be on our journey. I think what is so fascinating about Turkey is that it isn't European, it isn't Asian, it isn't Arabian... It is just Turkey, with its own aesthetic and aura that defies categorization. Like the Turkish language that occupys its own tiny language group whose closest relative is Uzbek, the country itself is un-analogizeable. And its beauty is all the more poignant for its singularity.

And so, with a fuzzy head and peaceful heart I have returned to Doha. Be well my queridos.
Love
Emelie