Endless Turkish journey. Akyaka, Dalyan and Pamukkale
Akyaka
Part 1. An endless Turkish journey. Bodrum
Part 2. An endless Turkish journey. Marmaris
Part 3. An endless Turkish journey. Akyaka, Dalyan and Pamukkale
Part 4. An endless Turkish journey. Kusadasi
Part 5. An endless Turkish journey. Cappadocia
Part 6. An endless Turkish journey. Cesme, Alacati and return to Kusadasi
We got to the suburbs by regular bus, we just need to get off at the highway. Then either wait for the bus to the city, or on foot contemplating all the panoramas from a bird's eye view. It is clear which option we have chosen. An important point, there are several cities with this name in Turkey, and now we are in the one near Marmaris. The city welcomes tourists with a boundless sea, into which a crystal clear river with cruising boats flows.
And all this is not just beautiful words, here the beauty of the city is really close to magic. This is Turkish Venice for the locals. The first joy here can be obtained by simply walking along the river, crossing a high bridge and delving along the path somewhere into the reeds, but this is if you are not afraid of snakes) I need to go work with snakes, I am very lucky to find them. The second joy is, of course, a ride on a boat along the same river for about 30 minutes.
The color of the water here changes even more abruptly than on the Turunc beach. Yes, he is generally some kind of unreal.
There is always something happening overboard. Either small birds nest with their chicks, or dissatisfied geese drive away boats, or underwater pits of unreal beauty.
After the boat, you need to move to the camping area, there are paths along which you can wander along the cliff above the blue sea. You can swim or just enjoy life with your legs dangling from special terraces. The sea temperature here was pleasant, although we did not swim.
But the really cool thing is how the locals have adapted everything here for relaxation. There are even washbasins with water among the forest zone. In this city, you are completely immersed in the atmosphere of a Turkish holiday. As soon as we worked up an appetite, we went to choose a cozy restaurant near the river, but so that also near the geese. On the one hand, there seem to be a lot of restaurants here, but having a menu and speaking English is already a rather difficult task. But, fortunately, we coped with it, and moreover, I got acquainted with a new dish - menemen. This, in fact, is an omelette with tomatoes, but how deliciously they cook it in Turkey. Now I have added to the list of must-have dishes of every Turkish trip.
Although the geese were more happy with our ekmek balik, and in particular, more ekmek. But the visit to this cozy restaurant was remembered for the milkshake ordered by Misha. The cocktail was brought like in the best Hollywood films. Just by looking at it, you start to eat. Tastes even better than it looks. It seems that they have already eaten and drunk, but here's the dilemma - it was strawberry and it was perfect, but if we leave now, we will never know how perfect it is with banana flavor.
Ordered another one, it tasted a little less perfect than strawberry. But, what if vanilla is ideally like the sum of strawberry and banana? We also ordered vanilla. Yes, they are all good! The look and taste of these cocktails fully reflected our impression of the newly discovered city.
Now you can walk along the river to where the boats no longer go. There, the river becomes shallower, forming another recreation area where you can wet your feet or simply contemplate eternity. Despite the hot weather, the water in the river immediately brought to the senses. The crocodile cold was chilling to the bone. Here you could even see how more and more springs flow into the river. We cooled down so much here that we even showed incredible courage - we went for a walk to the outskirts of the city in search of some ruins. It was hot, the ruins were found, they, as expected, were ruins. In search of them, we went so far that now we will be returning to the city for a long time.
It still seemed to us that it was hot outside, but as it turned out, it was only a training session before the real Turkish summer. Our conclusion about Akyaka is this: if you come to Marmaris, then this piece of paradise should definitely be on your list of what to see. Now we were faced with the task of returning back. On a dolmus, we drove out of town to the main highway, but there was a problem - the minibus runs about once every 30 minutes and if it is full, it simply won’t stop, but from Mugla it will go at any full speed. And that was a problem for many. After we waited in vain for the minibus, we had to switch to the already familiar hitchhiking. But the competition was still the same here, immediately the brave hitchhikers came running. But we know who the real pro is. For some reason, cars didn’t want to stop at this section at all.
Dasha turned out to be a true professional. She made eye contact with one of the drivers, who at that moment slowed down, but did not slow down enough for us to think that he wanted to give us a ride. Then the car drove 150 meters far enough and stopped already and it was clear that the guy simply did not have time to slow down in time. Brave hitchhikers sharply perked up, but while they were trying to understand why the car decided to stop so far away, Dasha, Misha and I were already rushing towards it with all our might. Boy, I don't know why you stopped, but we need to be taken to Marmaris. Naturally, the driver spoke only Turkish and wanted to find out something important before boarding, he said something about permission. I agreed to all his Turkish questions, and we climbed up to him. After a brainstorm, we realized that the police stop cars and everyone should have documents. For another clarification, I said “Hes kodu”, our electronic travel permit during covid, which was on our phone. The guy was completely satisfied with the answer. The driver was quite talkative. We tried to break through the Turkish-English barrier and even relatively understood each other, but either everyone understood everything in his own way. And already when we entered Marmaris, our collection of adventures almost replenished with another accident. Our friend barely had time to slow down before impact. But in general, we are very lucky on this trip, because we are alive and well? Although Turkey is clearly trying to get rid of us.
Dalyan
This is one of those rare cases when we take a tour, as it was very problematic to get to Dalyan without a car during the Sunday lockdown. Nevertheless, the quality of the tour exceeded expectations, we were not even taken to any store. Indeed, the guys organized everything from the heart. I don't remember what kind of guys they were, one of hundreds of street agencies. The first thing we liked was that the bus did not call everyone at the hotel, but collected everyone along the main road not far from the hotel. As a result, a large bus promptly assembled a full board, and we hit the road. The heart of the tour is the blue crab fishing in Dalyan. The guide, who was interested in the fact that tourists ordered crab for dinner, very actively focused on these very crabs. At first, I tried to grab useful information from an interesting story about the Marmaris region, but the number of the word “crab” in each application exceeded all allowable norms. It sounded like this. In such and such years, such and such peoples lived on this territory, they were conquered by other peoples, who, by the way, brought crabs! In the end, for some reason, any story came down to crabs. I decided to listen to music and after a while I paused to understand what they were talking about, the first thing I heard was “By the way, Dalyan blue crabs live only in Dalyan! ”. I continued listening to music. But in high society, I can now tell a lot of facts and incredible stories about Dalyan blue crabs! I am sure that on this day an absolute world record was set for the number of pronunciations of the word “crab” on the bus. So we arrived at the pier, now we are sailing on mini-boats along a spacious and picturesque lake somewhere in the distance. And yes, I almost forgot an important point, on the boat we were immediately shown a photo of a crab! An interesting fact is that this whole crab story was blocked by the phrase “My leg! ” from a cartoon that Misha watched the next day. The essence of the cartoon series just boiled down to the fact that the entire series practically consisted of repeating this phrase, but in such a way that the plot even loomed. So the very next day we had a new parasitic phrase “My leg! ”, but for now let’s get back to the crabs! Crabs are such creatures…. . Just kidding, we just sailed to the other end of the lake. Mud pools and fish peeling awaited us here!
Oddly enough, Misha didn't want to get into the mud at first. For me it was very surprising, because all children have to climb into the mud. My grandmother always told me that I have the dirtiest hands in the yard, and only me is heard! But she did not yet know that her grandson, after a quarter of a century, would take first place in the courses of oratory. Now it remains to take first place in the fights in the mud to close the gestalt. In the end, Misha did not have to be persuaded for a long time. A bad example is contagious, but parents got into the dirt. It is convenient here, after the mud pool you can jump into the lake to wash yourself. And even here the water is at a pleasant temperature. Apparently, the cold sea on the route falls right near our hotels.
After peeling with fish, we sailed on boats along the river itself. Both the river and the lake are very pretty, the excursion was just pleasing to the eye. Although in the Marmaris region, in my opinion, everything pleases the eye. On the way, the boat sails past rock tombs, as well as very cozy-looking towns.
We sailed to a place with a population of crabs. We were given hooks with meat. The crab is not caught on a hook, but clings to the meat with claws. Everyone threw their "fishing rods". For the first couple of minutes there was silence, nothing pecked. And then a rare occurrence happened. Almost the first time in my life I caught something! It was the famous Dalyan crab!
Now the catch went faster, but anyway, not everyone had the honor of catching a crab, but Dasha pulled out a few. It was fun, but not much. Then we were brought to a gorgeous spit, where we could swim in the wavy sea and watch the giant tortoise. Which reluctantly surfaced from time to time. But then the captain of the boat beckoned her with food, and the turtle began to appear much more often. As they explained to us here, turtles and crabs have a confrontation. When the turtles are small, they eat crabs, when the turtles grow up, they begin to eat crabs.
After bathing procedures, we had a dinner with crabs. On the way back, Dasha and I settled on the bow of the boat and let the passing landscapes pass through us. Every day we end up with some kind of “funny” story, this one was no exception either. The local police decided to check our boat. But he and the captain misunderstood each other and our boat at full speed rammed into the gateway of the police checkpoint. By the way, the wall of the lock turned out to be solid. From the outside, it might seem that the captain wanted to break through the wall and run away, as in films about agent 007. A ship of gendarmes moored to our boat.
We were all asked to show documents or hes codes. Then they counted something and compared it with the official lists. Then they unmoored and swam away. Our guide sat down near us at the bow of the ship and said: “We sailed, the captain caught a fine of 10.000 euros. ” It turned out that they could not take such a number of tourists during covid and in the official declaration they underestimated the number of tourists on the boat. But again, the tour was good! It was our last evening in Marmaris, we walked along the promenade trying to enjoy the evening contrasts in advance. And in general, everything is so nice here, do we need to go further? They also wanted to ride bicycles, but out of the three available, only one turned out to be normal. Misha went for a ride and drove a turn in the direction of our hotel. So where did our baby go? Why is not a single evening here can pass humanly. Fortunately, after about ten minutes, Misha realized that the places had gone completely unfamiliar and drove back. Now we are reunited again.
Morning goodbyes to the city, Misha says goodbye to his friends, now we're moving on! But first, be sure to eat at the bus station. We already have a mini-tradition of eating at bus stations. Now we can definitely go. Turkish buses with their comfort complement the cosiness during our trips not for the first time. This is one of the advantages of easy travel around the country. There are many buses, they run frequently, they are very comfortable and inexpensive.
Pamukkale
We drove here with a short change in Denizli. For some reason, it seemed to me that a city with such a name should be somehow special and will definitely go down in the history of our travels. But even gloomier and gloomier city may not be found. It's good that we only have a transplant here. I can’t even believe that literally 20 km away a miracle of the world awaits us. We got into a small bus. An interesting point is that even when only a few kilometers remained to Pamukkale, the area still did not bode anything interesting. But with Cappadocia, it’s actually the same if you drive from Kayseri. And here we are in the very center of a small town.
We will have a stop here for several nights, now we need to quickly resolve all pressing issues in order to be in time. But the answers were already running to us. The first passer-by said that he had the cheapest balloons here for 47 dollars, the second passer-by greeted us and said, oh, you are from the Bellamartimo hotel! You there! And he pointed in the direction of our hotel. It seems that savages come to Pamukkale so rarely that all the inhabitants of the city already know about our check-in at a local hotel. Then, another man tried to lure us to his hotel, and he drowned us at the price of his persuasion, I still didn’t understand who would have to pay for accommodation))) In our hotel, we were also greeted with joy. As soon as I connected to the Internet, a message arrived from German colleagues from “HELP” work.
Yes, by the way, I took a three-day vacation in Pamukkale. When I started to get into the essence of why someone needs to be urgently rescued, I began to realize that that boiling reactor is now reaching the point of explosion. In 15 minutes, I managed to coordinate the actions so that everyone understood each other correctly and the project stopped flying from the cliff to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. But as it turned out later, I just managed to delay the “reactor explosion” for a short time. Now you still need to find out where the balls are cheaper here. On the
map shone a lot of travel agencies. But none of them seem to have survived the pandemic. Finding an agency with balloons turned out to be a really difficult task. But in the end, we paid $ 43 per person from bus ticket sellers. The only problem was during booking, we couldn't remember the name of our hotel. But as it turned out in the end, it was only a warm-up of the language before our next hotel, where the name is not something to pronounce, we could not read it. We even had a competition later on who would be the first to remember all the letters of the name of the Erciyes hotel. The next important task is to find a restaurant that will always be a joy to return to after our long trips. There are a very large number of restaurants here, but the main thing is to find one that you will be happy to return to after a year. We found such a restaurant for ourselves, it was Mehmets Heaven, although for some reason it has a rather low rating. But most likely the management just changed for the better.
It was that format of a meal when you are bombarded with compliments and you part with the hostess almost hugging. Misha said in general that for the sake of this restaurant he wants to return to Pamukkale. But again, who knows what it will be like in time. For example, in Cappadocia, we “removed the golden plate” from one of the restaurants on this trip. In the meantime, all our dinners will be held with a view of the famous mountain. We have already come here once as part of an excursion, but these are completely different emotions to live here and come for a short time on an excursion. When you are here by yourself, the white mountain is available to you around the clock and from all sides, that is, not only where the routes are laid. And the mountain was big. Already from the first evening rise we were completely delighted. The evening sun here has a dull golden hue, the whole valley from the mountain looks like an autumn landscape painted with strokes of oil paints on canvas.
So look and you can discover the talent of the artist in yourself. We tried to climb the mountain in such places so as not to damage the sides and structures of the baths - travertines.
The second reward for wild travelers will be wild animals. After sunset, the foxes come out to hunt! Although they try to keep their distance from people, finding them here is not at all difficult.
We even had a moment when we looked into the twilight darkness, and from there a fox cub looked at us from a hole. Once again, admiring Turkey, we went to the hotel for an evening swim in the pool and a night watermelon. Aunt toad, mother cat and her kitten were waiting for us at the hotel. Dashin's challenge continued successfully for a day without a watermelon. True, it was harder and harder to look for these watermelons.
Especially here, when almost everything is closed. But, oddly enough, in one of the shops, a watermelon, which was waiting for us, came from somewhere. And the next morning we were waiting for a flight on a balloon. In fact, we discussed for a long time whether it was worth flying a second time, because we had already flown among one and a half hundred balloons in Cappadocia, and here it will be less than ten.
But, firstly, Misha has not yet flown, and secondly, the price of $43 per person per balloon can be considered free, considering how much balloons cost in pre-Soviet times and how much it costs to fly in Ukraine. We took off, there was no less magic and delight than in Cappadocia!
It was just as beautiful and magical. And most importantly, the views, here they are no worse! White Mountain is doing its job. Even the captain of the balloon gave me a little fire. The captain himself boasted during the flight that this was his first flight and he was very afraid! At that moment, everyone was afraid. My first thought was that sometime pilots also fly for the first time in an airplane, we just don’t know it. Although there is clearly a co-pilot who is experienced. But the balloon has only one pilot. The captain was quick to reassure that he was joking.
But now you don’t understand, he joked to calm him down or really joked) In general, we flew great! If you have already flown in Cappadocia before, it also makes sense to repeat here. Then the captain prepared us for a hard landing, but at the last moment he changed his mind and told everyone to relax. The landing was so soft that for about five minutes we just hung above the ground without falling. Did you fly? Now you can have breakfast. Breakfast at this hotel was great! Or I'm just tired of all-inclusive breakfasts. Oddly enough, but you can also get tired of the all-inclusive.
The next advantage of wild travel is the right of the first exclusive entrance to the paid territory of the mountain. That is, all the travertines with water in the literal sense of the word were personally ours. There were still some tourists, but we practically did not intersect in such territory.
Misha immediately took a fancy to a bath with a waterfall and said that he would stay here to flop while we went around the neighborhood. Over time, they began to bring up buses of tourists, but we had already swelled enough here, it was just possible to go on walking around the territory. We went somewhere quite far away to the ruins.
Meanwhile, Mr. Badger was going about his business downstairs. Moreover, it looked so business-like that the question arises: “What did you achieve? ” against the background of this business badger. Let's call him Eugene. Meanwhile, Eugene somehow saw our surprised look and hurried to run back into the thicket. Of course, we were really looking forward to Eugene returning, but he was not interested in our company, or he simply did not know English and was shy, although he looked quite self-confident from the outside. Further on the route we had a turtle. And judging by the direction, she was in a hurry to meet the badger. Oh yes, we also saw the ruins, but, to be honest, after the local fauna, they have already faded into the background. Although the amphitheater here is definitely good! All in all we spent almost 4 hours at the site.
And we were charged with solar vitamin for months ahead. By the way, an interesting point is that during the whole trip I never even burned out despite the merciless sun and my sensitive skin. It is very important to smear the cream on time and everything will be clear! Since we have already seen enough of white travertines, now we can safely go to the neighboring town of Karahay? t to look at red ones.
Karahayat
Red travertines are the complete opposite of beauty. Pamukkale was very lucky that they got the white ones. Although if you are already traveling here, then you should definitely look into another small Turkish town. At least rejoice at what pleasantly low prices are in Turkey. In this city, we fulfilled one of the goals of the trip - to try kokorech. This is a stomach dish. We didn't really enjoy the dish, but the experience was definitely fun. The second culinary discovery was mulberry juice.
We haven't seen him on our trails before. Unlike kokorech, mulberry juice I definitely recommend! Under this juice, even red travertines look like nothing) Now a cup of Turkish coffee with tea and we can move back to the base. Even though we got up at 4 am today, it would be blasphemy to miss the sunset in such beauty, so after a hearty meal we are back at the top of the white mountain among the oily landscapes. Now the night pool and you can definitely sleep. Well, the water is so cool everywhere, even in the night pools.
Kaklik
From early morning we packed our things and drove to Denizli to the bus station. There we left things for free with a man we didn’t know who was selling some tickets and went to look for a minibus that would take us to Kaklik. And from there you will need to somehow get to the underground travertines. The driver of the minibus said that he would completely solve our issue if I'm not mistaken for 30 liras for everyone ($ 3.5). We went with him on a regular minibus. After 30 minutes, he dropped us off and handed us over to a man in a car. He took us straight to the cave and said that in exactly an hour and forty minutes he would pick us up right from here. And so far no one has taken money from us. During this time, the minibus driver will have time to get to the final stop and will again pass Kaklik in the opposite direction, and his friend with the car will put us right on the return minibus. The scheme worked just perfectly, but the minibus driver asked for another 5 liras ($0.6) for taxi services. It’s hard to believe what life hack we just did for $ 4, although yesterday we couldn’t even imagine how to get to this cave and return. Now about the cave itself. To say that it was cool and unusual is to say nothing. I have never seen such a miracle of nature and did not even know that there is an underground “Pamukkale”. It is better to leave shoes at the entrance.
Since the water on the paths in some places is ankle-deep. And there are underground rivers and a waterfall. Wow effect we caught here to the fullest. And at the same time cooled down from the hot weather. At the very beginning of the descent there is a small lake with crystal clear water. Of course, 30 minutes would have been enough, but in pre-Covid times there were also thermal pools. Now you can admire the lake with a large population of turtles, which with a hungry look are waiting either for food or for one of the tourists to fall down.
We definitely recommend visiting the cave, in addition to the road there is also an entrance fee, but it is somehow quite symbolic. And this ends my mini-vacation and we are waiting for another location. Let's go further! Just take our things from the Turkish uncle.
