Nice views and more rock tombs

On Friday we drove inland, up into the mountains. I had scouted out three possible things to see along a route of about 100 kms (62 miles).

From our village, we can see the first ridge of mountains rising 3000' above the Mediterranean Sea. We had seen a major roadway leading up into that area, and I used the maps.me app and google satellite view to find things to do in the area that we might not otherwise know about.

Ruth packed some snacks and we hit the road at about 11:00am.

We are headed to the top of the mountain directly in front of us.

Surprisingly, it was a fairly busy four lane road that headed up the side of that mountain. It climbed 3000' in 9 kms (5.5 miles). We turned onto a gravel road near the top and headed towards a lookout near some antenna towers.

Our rental car and the view inland.

Ruth, 3000' above the Mediterranean Sea.

What a view!

Google translation of the sign says "Dangerous to approach".

Looking west.

Looking down on the town of Akyaka.

Lizard. He was about 8" long.

There were some trails in the area, so we went for a walk. We only did about 4 kms (2.5 miles).

Scenery looking inland.

So we are wandering back along the path when a snake quickly slithered by about two feet in front of me. I startled him and he was just trying to get away, and he was really fast at it. He was maybe two feet long, light green in color, and very skinny. 

We had read about the various critters that we might come across in Turkey. There are 39 different types of snakes in Turkey, and 10 of them are venomous. The most common venomous snake is the black viper, but it is mainly found around the northern Black Sea area.

There are also lots of different spiders and scorpions too, but most of the bad ones are in the dry eastern zone. There is one spider called the Flesh Eating Camel Spider. An adult grows to 15 cm (6" long) and can run at 16 km/h (10 mph). Fortunately it is non venomous, although the bite can be painful.

There is also one section of Turkey that has bears, but it is in a north east zone that we won't be visiting.

We made our way back to the car and headed further north. I had found a listing of a cave that looked to be about 1.5 kms (1 mile) off the main road but first we had to make our way through the busy city of Mugla.

Heading into Mugla.

Ruth didn't take any photos going through Mugla. It's a busy little city and we had to drive right through the middle of it. No problems, but boy you sure have to watch out for the pedestrians, the scooters, and the double parked cars taking up your lane. It's every man for himself!

As we exited the city we drove up another steep hill.

Scenery along the way.

We drove another 10 kms (6 miles) or so to the turn off to the cave. Now keeping in mind that this was just something I found on maps.me... I hadn't read about anybody ever visiting this cave, and maybe it wasn't worthwhile to visit anyhow. We were simply out exploring.

There was an open gate at the single track dirt road, and a sign beside it. I used the google translate camera app to find out that the sign read "Caution Open Shooting Range" or something like that.

But we had seen another car in front of us turn up the road, so we carried on as well.

We got up there and sure enough it was a gun firing range. There were about 6 or 7 guys milling around (some with pistols in hand) and I got out and went to talk to them. I asked if anybody spoke English, but they did not. I used google translate to ask about a cave that was supposed to be nearby, and they asked each other but nobody seemed to know. I think he went on to explain that this is area is for police and military only because I thought I heard those words mentioned in his Turkish. Anyhow, no luck with the cave so we turned around and went back the way we came.

Heading back down to Mugla.

On the other side of Mugla, we stopped in to a big 5M Migros store. Migros is a grocery store chain in Turkey. They have various sizes of stores and you can tell how big the store is by the number of M's in front of the name. The 5M store is the biggest, and we hadn't been in one yet. We stocked up on a few things which is easier to do now that we have a car with us.

Then it was on to our last stop. I had read of an out of the way Rock tomb location that hardly anybody goes to called Thera Antik Kenti. We turned down another dirt road and drove about 3 kms (1.8 miles).

Good thing there is no other traffic!

We found an information sign and it actually had English on it.

I went up for a closer look.

Inside.

Still some detail to the rock work.

Interesting stuff, and we could have wandered the area quite a bit more but it was starting to get late afternoon by this time. It seems like every day flies by very quickly!

We think today we will just hang around the village. There is a Turkish flag on a nearby hilltop, so there must be a way to get up there for the view! We are due for a decent walk.

Friday, we only did about 5.5 kms (3.4 miles).

Total distance walked in Turkey 79.5 kms (49.3 miles).

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