For a moment, standing under the fluoro glare of neon lights, a sound like a wailing cat drifting out of a nearby karaoke bar, and a board proclaiming ‘best full English breakfast’ to our left, I wondered if my woeful navigation had somehow taken us out of Turkey altogether.
We’d heard about the package tourist onslaught turning Turkey’s south-western coast into Little Britain-on-Med, but it was still something of a shock to arrive squarely in it, particularly after enjoying the comparatively low-key tourist scenes of Cappadocia and nearby Kaş.
It’s not for nothing though that the Brits flock to this part of the world – there are far worse places to unwind than Oludeniz, with its stunning mountain backdrop, pretty pebbly beach and turquoise sea.
We took the opportunity to watch some World Cup rugby and day trip out to the World Heritage ruins of ancient Hierapolis and the calcite terraces and thermal pools of Pamukkale.
Ruins ramble followed by thermal pool reviver….the perfect day trip!
We also arranged to drive to the top of Babadağ, a perfectly good mountain…so we could jump off it. Attached to a paraglider.
Show me the way home, honey.
From nearby Fethiye, we tempted weather and fate to visit the Greek island of Rhodes by ferry. One cancellation and a threatening storm later we finally arrived at the port of the World Heritage medieval crusader city, only to find that fate had won the day and just about everything was closed due to a national strike. Travel fail.
Sorry, Rhodes is closed today.
Oludeniz, however, turned out to be a surprise highlight in the middle of what we came to call our ‘road to ruin’ – a four week journey along the south and west coasts of Turkey, exploring thousands of years of history in the extraordinary ancient sites that dot the Anatolian landscape.
Our journey actually started a couple of days before we reached the bright lights and pints of Oludeniz. Having flown into Antalya from Istanbul, we first hired a car to explore the awesome ancient ruins of Perge and the magnificent Roman theatre at Aspendos.
Epic Perge (not like that); we even find an ancient stone ‘boardgame’ in the agora.
But several tortured hours trying to find and then drive into the old pirate town of Side convinced us that we’ve probably travelled together so well for so long…because we haven’t had a car. Still, when we finally did park up, we found this:
And this:
The carguments were worth it for the places the wheels took us, like the (carpark at the base of the) spectacular eagle eyrie ruins of Termessos, a once-great walled city that even Alexander the Great put in the too hard basket (not that he didn’t try).
Test of fitness climbing up to city-in-the-sky Termessos…but worth it.
We wandered the ambient, if BYI (bring your imagination), creek-side forest ruins of Olympos, once a key city in the Lycian League, then a pirate stronghold, before being routed and incorporated by the Romans in the first century BC.
Lycians, pirates and Romans….if only these stones could talk.
And we climbed the mysterious chimaera mountain above Çirali, where strange flames in the rocks have been igniting myth and legend for millennia. There’s a practical explanation….methane gas emissions fuel the flames through vents in the rock. But who wants practical when there are melted marshmallows and stories of ancient chimera monsters to be told by the firelight?
Easiest campfire we never started….
Car (and angst)-free once more, we next made our way west by dolmuş (minibus) to the pretty seaside town of Kaş.
There, we reluctantly hauled ourselves away from the mesmerising sea and island views from our hotel roof terrace to kayak over the sunken city of Kekova, wade through the freezing chasm waters of Saklikent Gorge, and wander around the extensive World Heritage ruins of ancient Lycian capital Xanthos, with an old man who looked and sounded as though he was there when they built it.
Hard-pressed to leave our roof terrace views…but then kayaking, gorge-wading and ruins, oh, ok.
We practically dragged our feet aboard the dolmuş when the time came to leave lovely Kaş. We were off to a busy place called Oludeniz, and beyond that to the World Heritage showcase of Ephesus.