Sunday morning, we drove about 40 kms (28 miles) west to Patara Beach. I hadn't done any research into the place, and knew nothing about it other than it was a wide long beach and there were some ruins nearby.
So we were a little surprised to find that you actually have to enter the ruins site in order to get to the beach. We bought the ticket that was 30 lira ($5 CAD, $3.85 USD) in order to explore the ruins, and visit the beach. Many people come just for the beach and pay a little less.
We had a note the other day from another traveling couple who are also here in Kaş. They invited us over to their balcony for tea, and we quickly agreed. Joe and Josee just finished doing a five year trip in their XP Camper Overland rig from Canada down to Ushuaia, Argentina so we knew that we would have a lot in common.
It was a beautiful morning, so we decided to walk the 4.5 kms (2.8 miles) over to their place.
On Friday, we went for a hike that leads up a trail to the top of a cliff high above the town of Kas, Turkey. It wasn't a long trail, but from the bottom you can see some flags that somebody put up there, and it sure did look a long way up.
My mapping program told me that it was a 1.7 km (1.1 mile) trail, but that it would take an hour and twenty minutes because it's pretty much straight up. It gains 350 meters (1,200') in that short distance.
Lots to talk about today!
First off, happy 59th birthday to the better half of this website... my beautiful wife and traveling partner Ruth! She figured out the other day that she has spent her birthday in 7 different countries since we set out 13 years ago.
Next up, we received some photos of our new European motorhome. Unfortunately they aren't the best quality and they are just low resolution iPhone photos, but I'll show you a few of them.
Just a lazy morning yesterday, although we should be saving those lazy periods for next week when there is a fair bit of rain in the forecast. They did say that rainy season is in December, but we didn't think it would begin so accurately! They say it's going to start Monday and rain every day, but it is yet to be seen if that means a steady rain all day, or just a thunderstorm for a couple of hours each day.
But, we have rain coats with us, and we won't let it stop us from getting out there and doing things.
We had a busy day yesterday and there is a lot to share with you. It was moving day, and we stopped at another interesting and quite different ruins site along the way, so we have quite a few photos of that. And, our fantastic little apartment where we are staying for the next two weeks.
Overall, it was a great day... but it was made even better when we got some exciting news... our new motorhome has arrived at the dealership in Germany!
The Lycian Way is a 540 km (335 mile) long hiking trail along the southern coast of Turkey between Fethiye and Antalya. It is internationally recognized as one of the world's top long distance trails.
It normally takes people about 30 days to hike the entire route. We had thought about it, but we don't have all the right gear and so we would have had to pay a company to bring our bags from one overnight stop to the next. Also, we have no ambition to be out hiking in bad weather, and rainy season (although apparently a bit late getting started this year) is just around the corner.
Yesterday was supposed to be a day of rest. And for the morning, it was. We sat around and did some computer research.
But we needed to pick up a few things and go to an ATM, so in the afternoon we went for a walk. Our day of rest turned into an 8.5 km (5.3 mile) walk. Oh well... we needed the exercise.
Someone asked the other day why we don't spend more time in one place. Well number one reason is that we like to explore. We aren't "destination" people... for us, the enjoyment is in the journey, not the destination.
But it gets more complicated than that from a logistics perspective. When we are traveling in a motorhome, we rarely need to make plans for where we are going to overnight. But traveling by car and using Airbnb accommodation, we need to book onward lodging. We've learned that we normally like staying in one spot for at least a week, but possibly two weeks depending on how much we think there is to do in the area.
A beautiful day yesterday with a high around 20C (68F) and lots of blue sky and sunshine. So we hopped in the car to go for a drive around the Bodrum Peninsula.
I had mentioned in another blog post that the only reason we are here is to break up the drive back to Fethiye. I had read about the city of Bodrum, and didn't think it would be our thing... too busy and touristy. But the area looked like it would make a good stopover for a couple of days just to see for ourselves.
Like almost every other country in the world, Turkey is experiencing a spike in Covid numbers. The other day, they announced new measures to help curb the spread. These measures go into effect today (Friday the 20th) at 8:00pm local time.
Among other things, schools will be closed, lot of various curfew hours put in place especially for people over 65 or under 20, and in person restaurant dining closed.
Fortunately, not very much of it affects us at all.
Mighty. Colossal. Massive. Huge.
Some of the words describing the Temple of Apollo in the coastal town of Didim, Turkey. And since it was directly along our route yesterday, it only made sense to stop in and see it!
We got packed up and hopped in the car around 10:30am. There was no direct route to either the temple, or our destination at Yalikavak, so we first had to drive around the industrial city of Söke.
Tuesday, we relaxed for the morning and then drove the short distance into the national park on the other side of where we are staying. We had done a short section of the trail last time we were there, and we wanted to do some more.
It's actually about an 18 km (11 mile) hike one way, but you have to either have someone meet you on the other side, or take a Dolums (local minibus) back home. It would have been an all day event and you would have to get an earlier start than we did. Still, we managed to do an in and out hike of 12.2 kms (7.5 miles) so we were happy with that.
Monday was a busy day for us, so I'm going to break it into two separate blog posts again. Check back later today for part two!
The ancient city of Ephesus is the most visited archeological site in Turkey. In 2019, two million people passed through the turnstiles. That's an average of 5,500 people per day. Many of them are on cruise ship day trips because the port of Kuşadası is nearby.
We had asked our hosts here when the weekly market is so that we can buy our fruits and veggies. They said there is one in nearby Davutlar on Sundays, so we stopped in there yesterday morning. It turned out to be quite a bit larger than any of the other markets we've been to, and it included many other goods besides fruits and veggies. Ruth bought some socks, and I bought some shoes!
And, of course we got our supply of fruits and veggies.
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First of all, thank you so much for your supportive comments here, on our facebook page, and on our MeWe page regarding the passing of Ruth's father. It means a lot to us.
On Saturday, we decided to go for a hike up in the hills of the national park behind where we are staying. There is no official access to the park at this point... it's simply a bunch of old dirt roads and paths, and in fact we're not even certain that where we were is part of the actual park because there are no marked boundaries at that part.
Ruth's father, Tony Crowe, passed away peacefully in his sleep on Thursday night. He was 85 years old.
We knew it was coming, and in fact there is a bit of a feeling of relief that it has now happened. Of course it's still sad, but he had no quality of life the last year or so. If any of you have ever dealt with a family member with Alzheimer's disease, then you know that it doesn't get better... only worse. And the worst part of it is that many people can hang on for many years while their minds and eventually their bodies slowly disintegrate.
But we have two more to go! We feel like we've seen a lot in our one month here so far, but we haven't done as much hiking as we would like to have done, despite the fact that we have now walked a total distance of 220.1 kms (136.5 miles) in Turkey.
But much of that has been walking in ruins sites, doing a power walk, or just out exploring. The last week of November, we move to Kaş where we will have access to the 500 km (300 mile) Lycian Way hiking trail. We plan to do several day hikes on the trails in that area where we plan to stay for two weeks.
Wednesday was a travel day as we drove from Denizli to Güzelçamlı. I had looked at the route ahead of time, and it didn't look very exciting. Mostly four lane highway that went through some larger towns. It was not a limited access highway, so when it went through towns you had traffic and traffic lights to deal with.
So I had found a stopping point around half way where there was supposed to be an interesting looking 2,000 year old Roman bridge. I didn't do any further research, and just dropped a pin on my mapping program.
I've mentioned several times the problems that we've had with Facebook. I got into detail about it in a blog post titled Facebook has some big problems, and I've mentioned a couple of updates recently about our ongoing issues with them.
What Facebook now offers is not the same as the Facebook we signed up for ten years ago. At that time, what you saw in your newsfeed was what you wanted to see. If I "followed" a page or a group, it's because I was interested in it. Now, Facebooks algorithms only show me what it thinks I should see. Along with hundreds of advertisements.
This is the second blog post today... if you missed the first one, you should really read it before this one...
https://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2020/11/the-travertine-calcium-pools-of.html
So yesterday we went to the calcium pools at Pamukkale. But at the same location, and included in your ticket price, is the ancient city of Hieropolis. To us, it makes sense to explore both, but it seemed that most people were only interested in the water and the calcium formations.
When most people come to visit Turkey, they have three things in mind... Istanbul, Cappadocia, and Pamukkale. It's almost like nothing else matters.
Something like visiting Machu Picchu in Peru, or Niagara Falls in Canada.
And normally, a popular tourist attraction is popular for a reason. There is something about each of the places mentioned above that makes it worth visiting. That is, if you can put up with the hoards of tourists and the inflated prices that go along with it.
Although we totally enjoyed ourselves at the Aphrodisias Ruins site on Friday, we didn't really get much in the way of exercise. We had to make up for that a little bit on Saturday, so we had a bit of an early lunch and then walked over to the big Adalet Park here in the city of Denizli.
Adalet Park is the largest city park here in Denizli, a city that prides itself on its park space. There are sports facilities, a cafe, a large picnic area, a duck pond, walking paths, and lots of places to just sit and watch the world go by.
There's no easy way to get from Denizli to the Aphrodisias ruins. You can either take the longer but faster route on the main highway around the mountains (which is what almost anybody would do), or you can drive the slower but shorter narrow curvy roads through the mountains.
But you know us fairly well by now. We are not "almost anybody", so you should be able to guess which route we chose!
We relaxed for the morning and then went for a walk over to the big 5M Migros store. It was 1.6 kms (1 mile) each way, and we made a bit of a detour into a covered market area just to have a look.
We needed some things for lunch, and the plan was to go out for a drive in the afternoon and then stop in with the car to pick up some more stuff that would have been difficult to carry that far.
We got the car packed up and we were on the road just after 10:00am. It wasn't that long of a drive... but we ended up doing some detours and back roads and we had told our next host that we would probably arrive around 3:00pm... which we didn't because we found a few interesting places to stop along the way.
First stop was for gasoline. The price of fuel has dropped a bit in recent days, plus the Turkish lira continues its downward slide, making our fuel stop a few dollars cheaper than the last time. It was 6.73 lira per liter ($1.04 CAD) compared to the last time we bought it when it worked out to $1.18 CAD per liter.
It was a little bit cooler here yesterday. High of 20C (68F), and sunny for the morning, but clouding over in the afternoon. Far better than the odd mix of early winter that Canada is starting to see! Looking at Cabri, Saskatchewan where the park is that we worked at for four summers, the high today is supposed to also be a mild 20C (68F). By Monday, five days from now it's supposed to go down to -17C (1F). Yikes. Talk about flipping the switch from summer to winter!
We relaxed for the morning, then after lunch we walked over to the kite boarding beach to see if we could get some up close views of the action.
We didn't do very much on Monday. We're trying to take a day off every now and then! But that doesn't mean we don't have things to talk to you about. Besides, it took forever to get yesterday's blog post online for you. Our internet connection is overall not bad, but the upload speed is a little slow. So with all of the pictures we had to show you, it was a time consuming process.
But we did some reading, and got some exercise and went out for our 5 km (3 mile) power walk. And of course there is a never ending supply of onward travel research to do on the internet.
Well, we knew that October was going to be an expensive month. We spent $3,182 CAD ($2,405 USD) for the month.
But, considering that we started the month in Ottawa, Canada and ended the month in Turkey, I suppose that's not bad. And, since our Ottawa to London airfare was actually paid for way back in May, it doesn't actually feel as hard on the bank account.
Here's how it all broke down...
Too many photos! We took over 100 photos yesterday. I've whittled them down, but there is so much interesting stuff to show you that this is going to be a long blog post.
Sunday morning we made our way over to the ancient city of Kaunos, which is located beside the modern town of Dalyan. For whatever reason, not many people visit Kaunos. It's a little difficult to get to, and most tourists who go to Dalyan seem to go for the river boat tours.
Thanks for your responses and comments regarding yesterday's post. It feels good to know that most of you will find our daily blog posts without clicking through facebook. Because we post every single day when we're traveling, all you have to do is to manually check in here (either by booking marking this site, or typing www.travelwithkevinandruth.com into the address bar above, or searching "Kevin and Ruth" on Google)... and you will be brought right here without the need for facebook. If you do that every day at around the same time, you can't miss a post!
Most of you will know by now that parts of Turkey and Greece experienced a fairly bad earthquake on Friday afternoon at around 1:50pm local time.