Dalyan

When I talked Maria into coming to Turkey to pick up Pekka, she took the opportunity to plan an amazing whirlwind tour of the country with stops in Istanbul (of course), Dalyan, Cappodoccia, Antalya and Ephesus.  I asked if I could go along to the Dalyan stop and she kindly put that on the weekend between my last day of classes and the start of final exams.  All of this was arranged before the protests started but that is another story.  At the time I bought the plane tickets, my biggest concern was when the chemistry final would be.  In my three data points it had never been on Monday (the first day of finals) so I made my reservation for Monday night with my fingers crossed.  By the time we left, the chemistry final was set for Tuesday and finals had been all but canceled anyway, so there was no problem.

We left after a short stop and the TGSO (thank goodness school's over) gathering at bizemtepe and then took the bus to Besiktas and the ferry to Kadikoy followed by the Havas to Sabiha Gocken Airport on 'the other side'. It took us forever to get there and when we did, we had about 30 minutes before our flight left.  Fortunately the self check in kiosk was working and printed our boarding passes and then we scurried down the hall (the wrong hall it turned out) to the last gate (twice) only to be held on the bus for 15 minutes, suggesting that we were not only not the penultimate passengers, but that the plane would leave late as a result of someone else, not us.

The rest of the flight was uneventful and we landed after dark in Dalyan.  Maria had the Havas schedule and the fact that we were late didn't seem to matter.  There was a board listing taxi prices to various places and to Dalyan was to cost 80TL.  That seemed like a lot to us, so we got on the Havas and asked to be dropped off in Ortaca, from which we could supposedly take a dolmus to Dalyan, but in reality, we were too late for the dolmus and were dropped of at the side of the road where a taxi magically appeared.  I don't know if someone called the taxi to say we would be there, or if he lurks waiting for suckers who thought it would be cheaper to take the havas part of the way.  In any case, we were stuck, so we got in and went.  Maria had the address, but the guy didn't know it so he took us into town and asked someone before back tracking and getting it right the second time.  The meter said 70TL, which in addition to the 15TL each we paid for the 15 minute bus ride to Ortaca meant we would have paid 100TL instead of 80 if we had just gotten in the taxi from the airport.  I didn't have broken money, so we asked Kaya (the bartender/hotel guy) for change and when he came back the taxi driver took 50TL and gave us 50TL.  That was the first time I had ever been undercharged by a taxi driver, but I think he felt bad about getting lost, and I appreciated the gesture.  

Kaya turned out to be a very nice guy.  After showing us to our room, he sat us down for a very late dinner and then gave us lots of tips about where to go and how to get there.  His place is rated #1 on Trip Advisor in the B&B section of Dalyan.

This was the view from our room in the morning.  

Maria, showing off the egg shaped salt and pepper shakers in our sweet suite.

 The Brits we met there come back for a week twice a year, but sadly we had just one night.  The place was booked for the rest of the weekend, so we needed to move on.  Kaya gave us several suggestions for what to do and then drove us through town (so we knew where to go) and then to our next hotel.  What kind of crazy nice is that?

Central Dalyan, with a statue of sea turtles in the fountain.  

 As per Kaya's suggestion, we walked through the Saturday market and then took the Dolmus from the center of town to the turtle beach.  (I was looking for a new wallet to replace the one that was stolen on the bus last Wednesday, but no luck.)

A map of the area.

 The beach has two touristy ends, separated by about 5km of beach.  The end that the bus lets off at has the turtle hospital and Kaptan June's Hut as well as a snack shack and lounge chairs and umbrellas for rent.  (We learned later in the weekend that the best time to go to the beach is early in the morning before the wind comes up.  By mid day when we were there it was very windy and it was hard to walk with the sand blowing in our faces.)

Dalyan's Turtle beach, east end.

 There are still sea turtles in Dalyan thanks to the efforts of Kaptan June, a British woman who moved to Turkey back in the day, before there was much development going on at the beach.  The sea turtles would come to the beach, lay their eggs and depart.  A couple of months later, the eggs would hatch and the baby turtles would follow the moon back to the sea.  (This theory bothers me since, depending on what time of night the turtles hatch, and what phase the moon is in, the moon isn't necessarily over the sea.  It seems very unlikely to me that all sea turtles hatch during the right combination, but maybe since we are in the northern hemisphere and the beach is roughly east-west, the moon will almost always be over the water...)  The problem was, as development increased, there were more and more lights on the beach at night, confusing the baby turtles and causing them to walk the wrong way.  June campaigned to keep hotels from developing huge resorts on the beach and she was successful.  Every year all the sea turtles throw a big party in her honor (not really.)  We saw her driving her old VW bug in town and we visited her hut where we learned more about her story and how we could help support her plan.

Kaptan June - savior of the sea turtles.

 Near by was the sea turtle hospital, run by Pamukkale University.  There we met a very nice university student from England who is volunteering there, talking to tourists and taking care of the turtles while learning more about them himself.  He also goes out at night to find and mark the nests so they do not get disturbed by the tourists.

Sea turtle hospital.  

Turtles are brought to the hospital when they need time to recover from injury, some have lost a limb, others have damage to their shells.  Since turtles have very slow metabolisms, they live a long time, but heal very slowly. 

This turtle had a head injury.  Her head is covered with bees wax and then an ace bandage.  She mostly floats, which was a mystery to our young guide.  I wonder if she just wanted to save her self the effort of coming back up when she needed air.  

 We walked from the turtle hospital, along the beach, finding the wind bearable if we were close to the water.  Along the way we saw tracks made by mama turtles on their way back to the sea after laying and markers on the beach to show where the nests were and when the eggs were laid and when we sat to rest and eat cherries we saw sand crabs as well.

Turtle tracks

Nest marker.

Future turtle food.  

At the other end of the beach (accessible by boat rather than bus) there is another touristy place where I introduced Maria to the wonders of the magnum ice cream bar and we used the bathroom, notable for the following features: 

The stream of water doesn't reach the basin.

Lego people need to go too.

Very clear bathroom signs.

We took the boat dolmus back to town, which was very pleasant, relaxing and breezy.

Maria on the boat back to town.  

 Along the way up the Dalyan river we saw the Lycian rock tombs carved into the cliff face.

Due to vandalism, tourists are no longer allowed to climb up to these rock tombs.  

 That night and for the rest of our trip, we stayed at the Asena Motel on the other side of town.  When Kaya dropped us off, no one seemed too interested in our arrival and since we were early, our room wasn't ready.  They were kind enough to allow us to drop off our stuff so we didn't have to travel with it for the day.

The very pleasant bar area at the Asena Motel, and the view from our room's balcony.

After our day at the beach, we spent some time at the pool and then went to dinner and to sleep, still no one really took notice of us.  In the morning we met Walker, a Turk, but not my first guess by looking at him.  He was very helpful and suggested a plan for the day (Sunday).  He even walked with us to the river and helped negotiate our use of a paddle boat and gave us directions to the 'secret' mud baths across the way.  I am always skeptical of anything free and secret in a tourist place.  Either it is not as good as it is reported to be or it isn't legal, or else, why doesn't everyone else know about it/go there?  We had just met Walker, why would he give away his secret mud baths to us if they were any good?  

We pedaled across the river and towards the lake looking for the 'secret' entrance while watching another motor powered boat dock at a place directly across the river from our launch, clearly heading to the same place.  We saw lots of wild life along the way, fish of three different sizes, ducks, turtles, dragon flies and other small flying creatures.    

Wild life of the Dalyan river

Dragonfly voyeurism? or just waiting his turn?

 When we got to the pools the German tourists were just finishing up.  It ended up being very fortuitous that we overlapped with them because they gave us the heads up about where to find the mud and what to do with it.  Maria had more luck reaching under the rocks to find fresh stuff, but we both found some left over clumps that could be reconstituted (kind of like rubbing a bar of soap over your body, except it had the opposite effect) and we smeared ourselves with it, hung around until it was dry and the washed it (and 20 years) off our skin in the water.  The pool it self was interesting.  It was fed by several springs along the mountain side, but the water coming in wasn't very warm.  In fact, the water was quite pleasant, it was the bottom of the pool that was warm.  It is hard for me to believe that it was just heated by the sun, the rocks were too warm for that.  I wondered if there was geothermal activity underneath the pool.  In any case, we floated around and washed ourselves off at a leisurely pace before drying off and pedaling back to return the boat.

Maria and the pool.

Heather with a muddy face.

Our transport.  

After we returned the boat we sat for a while and at gozleme.  This Turkish snack food most closely resembles a quesadilla, but is by no means limited to containing cheese.  We had a cheese one (kasar rather than beyaz penir) a meat one and for dessert a seker ve limon one, which was crispy and sweet and delicious!  Maria practiced her Turkish by ordering bir bira and got just what she asked for (-: We enjoyed sitting by the river watching the fish and turtles swim by.  Several times the waitress offered us bread to feed the fish, but we declined, knowing that bread is not good fish food and that there was plenty to see without attracting more.

Two of the three sizes of fish we saw in the river.  

This is not the big sea turtle like at the hospital.  Perhaps it is a river turtle.

This is my best dragon fly picture.  He was resting on the under structure that held our table above the river.  

We still had some time after lunch and before dinner at the hotel, so we took the woman's cooperative row boat across the river on the other end of town (by the moskee) and walked from there to the ruins of Kaunos.  It was a nice road, well cobbled, along pomegranate orchards and old folks selling fresh orange and pomegranate juices.

Pomegranate orchard. 

Grasshopper on thistle in really nice light.

Thistle seeds

too fast to catch

My museum card would have worked to get into the ruin, but unfortunately it was in my wallet which was stolen, so I had to pay for admittance.  We wondered the ruin, saw the market place, the theater, the temple and the baths.  My favorite part was the animals.  We saw several large lizards and starting in the theater we saw tortoises as well.  (I am trying very hard to use turtle for water beasts and tortoises for land beasts, but other than the big sea turtles, they all pretty much looked the same to me.)  This little guy, Maria spotted in the theater.  I picked it up for the picture, but when I gave it to her, it peed on her.  Oops!

Got her revenge by peeing on Maria.

The view from the cheap seats.  Just 1500 years too late for the show.  

 More tortoises, held carefully to avoid accidents...











On our way back to town we bought a bottle of freshly squeezed orange and a bottle of frozen pomegranate juice.  We had to drink some straight to get enough space in the bottles to mix them, but once the sweet/tart ratio was right it was delicious and so cold on that hot day that they were delightful.  Back in town, but on the wrong side of the river, we sat on the dock and waited for the woman's cooperative to come get us.  It was the same woman who took us over, maybe they do that on purpose so everyone gets fair pay?

The woman's rowing cooperative.

 That night we had dinner at the hotel.  A friend of Walker's had caught some levrek and the hotel was grilling.  The mezes were good and the fish was pretty good, but no one beats how Alex can grill them.

Monday morning we thought we would go to the lake to see what we could see.  The boats in town offered a trip to the Monday bazaar on the lake for 20TL each, but we didn't really need to go to the bazaar so Walker suggested that we get someone to row us across and then we could walk from the other side.  We walked up the river but the only person we found willing to take us across wanted 10TL each and was in a motor boat.  Thinking we just hadn't gone far enough, we walked around a big pomegranate orchard to another resort, but still no crossing.  Giving up, we returned to our gozleme place and settled in for lunch, reading, relaxation, snack, reading, day dreaming, dessert and chilling.  It was a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

Again, we got two savory gozleme and then some sweet ones.  

Mostly we just relaxed in the shade along side the river.  

 My flight went out from Dalaman in the evening so I had to go, pack up and join a van that was going to the airport, which Walker organized for me.  Maria had one more day and two more nights and she got to spend the following day on (and off) a boat in the Mediterranean.  I was mighty jealous, especially since I had to go back to proctor and mark just five chemistry exams, but I should be grateful that I had the chance to get away, hang out with Maria and relax a little in the chaos that is the end of the school year.