Saklikent Gorge

A little more driving, and one of Tom Tom's more interesting short-cuts, took us up to the mountains and the Saklikent Gorge, a huge gorge that cuts up into 9,895 foot Gombe Akgai. Access to the gorge is only by foot.

A boardwalk leads a few hundred feet into the

gorge; after that, you walk in the stream...

Gorges are really tough on cameras and

photographers--no perspective to lend the

3rd dimension, very difficult lighting

Plus, we did not want to get our feet wet, nor risk any more

debilitating injuries; so we stopped here



Looking up; I would guess it's 300 feet deep at this point,

deeper further in

Bolder explorers can rent head and foot gear from the

concessions



Or dine in platforms in the creek (somehow, farm-raised

Turkish trout didn't quite appeal)

The creek, which is actually quite a gusher

even in this dry part of the year

At the mouth of the canyon



The creek, from above; this is how harbors get silted-up!

We drove on in the direction Fethiye, stopping for a couple days' rest on the beach in a campground in Olu Deniz.

Xanthos

Only a few miles from Letoon is Xanthos, which, near a hill-top, was the capital of Lycia.

We had Xanthos pretty much to ourselves (as with so

many of these sites)

Main street, Xanthos, one of the wider boulevards we have

seen in this part of the ancient world

Typical of the stones laying around by the hundreds

Agora and theatre

Huge stele; the top part is in the British

Museum, of course

Several Lycian tombs adorn the theatre area

Remains of the large Byzantine church elswhere on the site

Nice mosaics in the church

"Heart" detail

Around the hill is the necropolis and a number of ruined

tombs and house tombs



Most pretty tumbled down; despite the ruination, both

Letoon and Xanthos are World Heritage Sites

Letoon

We had planned on spending the night at the parking lot at Letoon, another Lycean/Hellenistic/Roman site, but that proved not feasible, and, rather than wandering around in the darkness looking for the beach, we halted at the nice MaxiWax gas station nearby...where you can not only wash but also wax your vehicle, free. Very nice, accommodating people. We filled up the next morning. The station was within range of three different mosques, so we got a nice early start on the day. With the days getting shorter and shorter, this is a
good thing.

Leto was another consort of Zeus, so to speak, who bore him

Apollo and Artemis; Hera, Zeus' "better half," didn't like this,

so she condemned Leto to a life of wandering, right here in

Lycia; she became the local patron goddess, apparently

replacing Cybele, the Mother Earth of previous aeons, and

Letoon is her shrine as well as religious center of Lycia;

pictured above is Leto's temple

Interior of Leto's temple; as you can see, they're doing a

bit of renovation here and there

Renovation parts

Three in a row: the temples of Apollo, Artemis, and Leto

Within the Temple of Apollo is a very nice mosaic of his

symbols, the lyre (music), the sun, and the bow and arrow

(OK, I took the picture upside-down)

Me playing the lyre

Really nice stuff in the spare parts yard

Ditto

Theatre

Really old olive tree nearby

Scenic and Other Driving in Turkey

Scenes from the last two days' driving...we probably didn't cover a hundred miles, but they're all interesting...

We've seen many of the world's scenic coasts--a few

more to go--and they are all spectacular in their own ways--

but Turkey's Mediterranean coast rivals the best of them

Sea camel

Nearby islands, many of them



The clarity of the water is exceptional

The great Kaputas chasm, right on the road--

only a few feet wide, a couple hundred high

Issues in this small isolated beach

Actually, animals on the road are pretty unusual for Turkey,

but the bridge here framed such an exceptional shot, I had to

do it

Turkey has some 70 million citizens and some 150 million

restaurant/cafe/snack bar seats; they line the roads, they

are at every intersection, every rest area...

Here's a pastry shop on wheels, baklava and all those other

good things; yes, we did; how can you not support this

kind of entrepreneurship?

We have been astonished at the number and variety of gas

stations in Turkey; most of the traffic is commercial, trucks,

buses, maxitaxis (dolmus), relatively few private automobiles

in sight; diesel is running well over $8 a gallon, and gasoline

way more than that; yet there appear to be thousands of gas

stations, nearly all of them quite new and quite nice, nearly

all with little markets or cafes; all of them offer you free tea

or coffee as well as trinkets with larger purchases; and--this

seems to be the major competing point--all of them offer free

car or truck washing facilities; Turks are fastidious, not to

say obsessive, about keeping their cars and trucks clean; we

once watched a young man take 20 minutes to rinse, lather,

wash, scrub, rinse, and rinse again, his motor scooter; we

should have videotaped it; anyhow, under this kind of social

pressure, we have now ourselves washed the Grey Wanderer

more times in Turkey than in all other countries combined;

free

And then there are Turkish drivers (very nearly without

exception, males), who are on the whole quite good, if not,

um, linear, if you get my "drift"

Myra and Santa Claus

From Olympos we drove on, across mountains and then into some of the coast's intensively agricultural zones, citrus and tomatoes mostly, the tomatoes mostly in plastic-covered greenhouses, acres of them, miles of them in the valleys, reminiscent of southern Spain, whole towns covered in plastic wrap. We stopped at Demre, to see the Lycian/Roman ruins at nearby Myra and also the shrine, etc., of St. Nicholas, who was bishop of Myra way back in the 4th century.

At Myra the thing to see is the Lycian house tombs, many

carved into the cliffs

Also the theatrical stuff

To wit...

But mostly the tombs

The St. Nicholas, patron saint of fishermen,
children, bakers, butchers, candle-stick makers,
et al.

Despite the fact there are no Greeks nor

Christians around (it's a long, unpleasant

story), Demre nonetheless has a

flourishing St. Nick trade--half a dozen

stores like this

Interior of St. Nick store; looks pretty Christmassy, right?

Trouble is, all they sell are these icon things...

which hardly make good tree ornaments;

nary a "ho, ho, ho!" in these precincts, nor

Rudolph, nor elves; so what you have here,
in my interpretation, is a Muslim take on a
Greek Orthodox saint, whose bones were
stolen from Myra by Roman Christians and
taken to Bari, Italy....and the rest is history...
well, actually, little of it is history, except the
theft part, but it's one of Christianity's most
beloved stories, except the theft part, and
we mustn't be too fussy about things like 
history, reality, etc.

Demre, plastic-wrapped city