Turquoise and Aegean

From Cappadocia we took an overnight bus to Kaş. That felt about as miserable as you might imagine; Matt got a few hours of sleep, I tried to convince myself that I was enjoying the scenery as we drove through the snowy mountains. Kaş, profoundly off-season, was a good coastal retreat on the Turquoise Coast.

Surprised to see that the water was actually turquoise. Thought the name came from an abundance of turquoise (the rock) in that region.

We spent some time hiking parts of the Lycian Way, a through trail that stretches along the coast from its eastern end in Oludeniz to its western end in Antalya.

A horse we met along the trail down from Phellos.

Lycian tombs on top of the mountain.

On our Phellos hike we had a notable encounter with a lost goat who mistook us for fellow goats. What is your responsibility when a goat approaches you, wanting to be led back to its friends and family? I should add here that we had several notable encounters with nature on the Lycian trail. Bees, turtles, caterpillars, ferocious man-eating domesticated goats and horses. It was enough to make me miss hiking amongst bears.

Another section of the trail that we walked outside of Fethiye brought us through Kaya Köyu, a Greek Orthodox Christian village that was abandoned during the post WWI population swaps. A bit sad to see the old stone buildings--there is a beautiful church that nature is slowly taking back.

We had the ghost town to ourselves, then hiked up over the hill and down to a lagoon.

The seafood in Fethiye was super. Tourist tradition is to go to the fish market and pick out some fish, then bring it to a nearby restaurant and have them cook it up for you. We liked it so much we went two nights in a row, have no idea what the fish we ate were, they were silver, little and tasty when fried.

Anchovies, maybe?

Our last stop in Turkey was at Bodrum on the Aegean where we needed to catch the ferry to the Greek Island of Kos. In Bodrum we explored St. Peter's Castle, which is also conviently the Museum of Underwater Archaeology. They have an amazing number of amphoras on display (conical ceramic containers for carrying stuff) and several great exhibits on underwater excavations of shipwrecks, including one from the Bronze Age. Amazing to see the relationships between all of the Mediterranean port cities stretching back through time.

Some of you might remember that we'd planned on spending time in Greece before our return to Seattle. Well, we liked Turkey so much that we decided to focus the end of our trip there and save Greece for another time. From the island of Kos we traveled to Athens. Here, in the face of a transit strike, we hope to make it to the airport and then head for home.