Touring Around Kalkan

Saturday 21st July we left Kekova Roads heading westward again to Kalkan, definitely not used to having no wind to sail, we leisurely motored the 27NM along the Turkish coast, arriving at the relatively quiet and small harbour of Kalkan where we had to drop our anchor right across the harbour, to tie our stern up to the quay, with the help of yet another super friendly harbour master, who also organised an engineer to come that afternoon to take our outboard away to fix.

The village of Kalkan has only really been inhabited since the eradication of malaria-bearing mosquitoes in the 1950’s. Now it is a buzzing place, with the stone Greek style houses built around the harbour now surrounded by tiered ranks of modern villas on the hills. The old part is crammed with tiny shops selling every conceivable Turkish trinket, restaurants, bars and very quirky coffee houses. We loved it, soaked up the atmosphere and the general laid back feeling, partaking in mezzes and lounging around on ottoman cushions, low level tables and water pipes, but were grateful to have power and aircon, the temperature soaring up to the mid 40’s day and night!

Kalkan was so popular that on our second night, the harbour was brimming over, with catamarans double stacking and one power boat determined to squeeze into the last remaining spot!

Not being in any hurry we decided to hire a car to explore the sites in the area… however the cost of a driver wasn’t much more than a hire car, so the following day we meet Ibrahim at 8.30 and set off on our adventures for the day. The first stop was a place called Xanthos, the ancient capital of the Lycian League.

From there, we headed off to Letoon, the site of the Temples of Leto, Apollo & Artemis.

We then followed the Esen River up to the Saklikent Gorge, which cuts into the rugged flank of the 3,016m Gombe Akdagi Mountain and delivers a rushing stream of pure limestone-filled, and I might add, absolutely freezing cold water. This was a brief stop, Ibrahim feeling we needed some light refreshments, so he guided us down to the waters edge at the entrance to the Gorge where we crossed onto one of the many individual platforms sitting in the water, and had a coffee and fruit, Ottoman Style.

The Esen River

The Entrance to the Gorge.

Ibrahim was a fantastic guide, but sadly one of those professionals effected by the recent elections, as we soon learned, talking openly with him over our coffee. He was the Principal of a private school, very successful with his wife and 2 year old son, happily working one day, the next out of work for no reason, except he was smart, successful and one of many posing a threat to the current government. His teaching talents now wasting away as a tour guide, although not his knowledge which he was more than happy to impart onto us.

Having cooled off, we then jumped back in the car and made our way further up the mountain to the ruined city of Tlos, one of the oldest and most important Lycian cities, and  from which you can still make out a stadium, theatre and tombs hewn into the rock face, the more powerful and rich the family, the bigger and more elaborate the face of the tombs.

The heat now rising to well above 40 degrees, we headed back down to the coolness of the Gorge, to walk a few hundred metres into it along platforms just for that purpose. Before we set off for the day, we decided we didn’t want to walk further into the Gorge, having battered our feet for 20KM in Crete, so flipflops were all we had. Having got to the end of the platform, the site was so magnificent that when Ibrahim asked us if we wanted to walk further into the Gorge we thought, what the hell…we would try to get as far up as flipflops permitted. We hadn’t quite realised to do that was to walk across the entrance to the spring generating all the icy water, knee deep, toes curled in an attempt not to lose our flipflops and hanging onto each other for what felt like dear life (slight exaggeration!)

Flipflops still on our feet, amazingly, it was time for lunch, and Ibrahim took us off to another very quirky place by a stream channelled from the gorge, where we had a meat mezze and fed the ducks for a very peaceful hour. We are so glad we didn’t just rent a car, we would never have found these places.

Fully refreshed, we headed off southwards towards Patara, once a major port, but damaged in severe earthquakes in AD141 and AD240, the harbour is now silted up and totally non-existent, even if it is still shown on our paper charts. We first walked down to the beach with the most amazingly fine sand, blown into dunes. The beach is only accessible during the day as it is one of places the Loggerhead Turtles come to nest and  any bright lights would lead their young away from the life giving sea.

Patara was, back in the day, where the Lycian Parliament was based and the Turks have spent millions partially renovating the buildings there….

Exhausted now, we then headed back to Kalkan and Seaclusion, although not before Ibrahim very kindly took us to a butchers and supermarket and explained what was what, dropping us back to the boat with far too many photos in my camera and bags of shopping! What an amazing day and a great knowledgeable host. One day we hope our paths will cross again!

The following morning, with our outboard safely back on board and hopefully working, we left the lovely little harbour, hoping that we would be able to pick up our anchor before hitting any number of boats now moored opposite us, heading towards Fethiye.. watch this space for the next instalment!

24th July 2018