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.
Ruth and I were inside the cottage in the living room, doing some computer work. I felt an odd swaying sensation, and I looked around and saw the curtains moving. We didn't have any windows open, so it wasn't because of wind! Our light fixture hanging from the ceiling was moving a little bit, and I glanced out the window to see some hanging vases moving back and forth. We looked at each other and said "that's an earthquake".
It lasted between 10 to 15 seconds.
Of course when you first feel an earthquake, you have no idea if it's going to get worse. Fortunately, it settled down... for us. You also have no idea if you were feeling a small tremor, or the effects of a much larger earthquake farther away.
When we lived in our old hometown of Ottawa, we used to feel tremors every few years. Ottawa is located on a fault line. When we would get a tremor, my father would wonder if that was just a tremor, or if it was Los Angeles sliding into the ocean!
Of course back then, you had to wait for the next day's newspaper to find out what happened.
Nowadays, the information is available almost instantly. Everybody's cell phone senses the earthquake. That information is immediately relayed to where ever it goes, and as soon as I googled earthquake seconds after it happened, an Android notification came up saying that the cell phones at the island of Somos, Greece had picked it up. Amazing stuff.
The epicenter was 160 kms (100 miles) from our location at the red dot.
The city of Izmir (circled) took the worst hit.
Within minutes, there were videos circulating on Twitter regarding the problems in the city of Izmir. (By the way, feel free to subscribe to
our Twitter feed. We haven't used it much in the past, but considering the recent Facebook problems, we are making more of a Twitter effort!)
Anyhow, that was our exitement of the day on Friday.
On Saturday, we took off just after 9:00am to a Turkish National Park on the other side of Marmaris. With a perfectly beautiful day in the forecast (sunshine and highs of around 24C, 75F) we wanted to do some hiking. Apparently there was a cave to explore as well, so we set off to find it.
Can you see that ship in the distance?
It's a boat made for shipping other boats!
A place to keep your boat.
What a gorgeous area!
We found the trail that led to the cave. Only one scooter in the parking area, but nobody around.
It was only a 1/2 km walk to the cave entrance. But we got there to find it fenced off, and locked up. And it looked like it had been locked for a long time!
This has been locked for a long time!
Hmm. Too bad, we really wanted to go down there!
A cave just beckons to be explored!
But, we carried on to the next viewpoint.
More beautiful Mediterranean views.
On the way back down from the viewpoint, we had to pass by the trail leading to the caves. There were two people coming down from the trail. They said that if you go a little further on from the locked gate, there is an opening cut into the fence and you can easily go down to explore the cave.
Well that's all the information we needed! We headed back up the path to the locked gate.
Yep, there's the opening.
And, we're in!
Very cool!
Looking back at the opening.
Can you see Ruth?
Don't forget, you can click on the photo to make it full screen. Then click on it again to zoom in!
What a neat spot.
We continued back to the car park where there were now three or four other vehicles. But the hike continued in the opposite direction from the car park.
Did I mention it was a beautiful day?
Me, enjoying the view.
Looking back at Marmaris.
By this time, it as getting close to 12:30pm and we were getting hungry. We headed back to the car and noticed while driving out of the park that there were a lot more cars driving into the park. We have to remember to get an earlier start more often. It's so much more enjoyable when you have these places to yourself.
We went into the city of Marmaris and found a free parking spot. We walked to the same restaurant that we had lunch at with Heather and Volkan. It was a good, reasonably priced meal. The bill was 63 lira ($10 CAD, $7.50 USD) for the two of us.
Fake waterfall, but pretty well done.
A few people enjoying a waterfront meal.
Then we walked the path on the waterfront for a couple of kms before picking up some supplies and heading back to the cottage.
Another great day in Turkey!
Today, we are off to another ruins site. The rarely visited ancient city of Kaunos.
We walked 8.0 kms (5.0 miles) yesterday, and 5.6 kms (3.5 miles) the day before.
Total distance walked in Turkey 126.8 kms (78.1 miles).
We had a 5.2 centered just 20 miles away from our house here on the NC/TH border. You could actually see the glass in the windows shift. Scary until you realize it's over.
ReplyDeleteI meant NC/TN.
DeleteLol... I was trying to figure out what TH was! That's a nice part of the country you live in.
DeleteThose locks on the cave must be there for a reason!!
ReplyDeleteCould be. Maybe they should put up a sign saying the reasons, because we sure couldn't figure it out!
DeleteWent to Turkey briefly back in 1995. Amazing place for scenery and people. Now I want to go back! :)
ReplyDeleteI think you definitely need to come back for a visit, there is a lot to see in Turkey. :-)
DeleteGlad you didn't have any problems from the earthquake. When I heard about it on the news, I immediately thought of you two, but I did remember you weren't in Izmir. Sure looks gorgeous there!
ReplyDeleteWe are glad that we didn't have any issues with the quake as well and really we weren't all that far away from it but it definitely did lots of damage in Izmir. We feel so bad for the people there. :-(
DeleteI see your posts on Facebook, no problem. Hope it continues.
ReplyDeleteThat's good, we hope that it continues too! :-)
DeleteWe knew you were close to the Epicenter but were Safe.
ReplyDeleteWe never use Facebook tread Blogs and read you every day. Just don't always have time to Comment.
You lucked out getting to explore the Cave.
Be Safe and Enjoy the adventures.
It's about time.
Yes, we were relatively close to the epicentre but luckily we had no issues in our area.
DeleteWe really did luck out with the cave. It was funny when we first went to the cave and saw that the gate was locked, we didn't even look for another way in, it was only on our return back down from the scenic view point and saw a couple coming down the stairs from the cave did we find out that there was a hole in the fence to crawl through in order to see the cave. We think that hole in the fence has been there for as long as the lock on the gate has been there!
We have had a couple of good shakers here in the Ottawa Valley the past ten years or so. The last good one really did some damage in our house. I can't imagine the chaos in places where it is a regular occurrence.
ReplyDeleteWe remember living in Ottawa and the surrounding area that there were tremors then too! The one that we felt the other day wasn't too much different from those.
DeleteWe can't imagine what it must be like either in those areas either.
I thought of you two when I heard there was earthquakes. I follow the earthquake website every day and there's been a lot of 2.0 or 3.0 for awhile. I'm so glad you're safe. I love your blogs, never miss one.
ReplyDeleteIt was funny but I was wondering the other day how many small earthquakes (tremors) they get in this area, I know that they don't have very many "big" ones but that the potential for one is there. And, then here they go and have one and it is a fairly major one. We are glad we weren't in the Izmir area at the time and feel really bad for those that are.
DeleteThanks so much for being such a long time blog reader of ours. :-)
What a gorgeous place - great photos. And the cave was a special find, in part because you found a "secret" way to get in!
ReplyDeleteIt really is a beautiful area, we can certainly see the attraction to the coastal areas here in Turkey.
DeleteWe love being able to find places like this that aren't well know and that we can explore more or less on our own. :-)
Glad you two are having a fantastic time. Turkey looks like a very interesting country.
ReplyDeleteWe are having a great time! So far we are really loving Turkey, it reminds us of Mexico in many ways but it other ways it is so very different. It is a country that has all the things we love when we visit different countries, such as beautiful scenery, history, a very different culture, good food, great prices and wonderful, friendly people. :-)
DeleteI'm glad you decided to explore the cave.....cool pictures! Your blogs and photos make the best armchair travelogue! I know I’ll be a fan as long as you’re at it! More power to you two and safe travels!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Lynnette for those lovely comments and for continuing to follow along on our blog. And BTW, we are happy that we made our way into the cave too, it wasn't big but it was still interesting to see. :-)
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