Sorry or the stopping in posts, it seems the Turkish keyboard and I don’t work too well together. I can’t get into my wordpress account or even read my email!
Anyway the update is this ...
We left Antalya early on Sunday morning, cycling through a maelstrom of traffic and roadwork’s to the main road west. We were prepared or a bad road from others experiences but to our delight found a modern 2 lane road with good seal and easy gradients.
(Leaving Antalya, massive mountains before us, the tourist city behind)
This is quite astonishing as the road was only recent made, when Alexander the Great tried to come through the region he had to walk along the beaches and send some soldiers over the mountains which are huge and steep.
That day we cycled 78km, over some good sized hills to a little village called Phaselis.
Our campsite lay opposite the ancient site of Phaselis, just across the bay. To get there we climbed around the rocks and investigated the ruins.
Phaselis is the site of an ancient coastal city now with ancient ruins, they were neat to see, ruins from around 2bc to 200ad, it must have been a nice place.
Phaselis, had an aura about it, for me it was a place where I felt the people hadn't actually left, that they were still there watching over their city. That night I had strange dreams where I felt I was being rebuked for not entering the city through the main gate. I awoke feeling that the people were strangely still there.
The next day (today) we climbed for 14km up a darn steep road and descended 9km to a place called Chimaera. Here there are flames that burn in mountain clefts, fueled by some sort of natural gas that self ignites on contact with the air. This has led to lots of ancient myths.
There were a number of tourists having also made the dusk trek up the valley to the site of the flames. A great place for a BBQ yet, typically, absent of most tourist abuses.
We camped behind an empty motel, being pre tourist season, with chickens and rabbits. Cute but expensive for what we were offered.
As well we hiked around the the bay to the ancient city of Olympus. Utterly Fascinating.
Olympos is a city in a tight mountain valley divided by a river down the middle, The ruins lie on both sides of the river in the undergrowth often totally overgrown neglected and ignored by the tourists.
The tourists just walked down one road to the beach and back up it, seeing some ancient walls and stopping for a coke. But off goat trail side tracks under creepers and trees and vines were heaps of ancient ruins just waiting to be explored.
Here is an ancient Roman waterway still intact leading into the bush with unmarked ruins.
An ancient Basillica lay on the opposite side of the river
We found an ancient church, with the cross embedded in the wall.
(The place needs someone to get stuck in with a chainsaw and some roundup (plant killer chemical).
Random ruins lined the valley sides unmarked and uncared for
Hint 1 For travelers.
Petrol stations are your friend, you can walk in purchase goods and pay just like in the real world, not having to haggle over the price of a coke.