Cakil Beach to a km north of Beloren
Starting km: 222
Finishing km: 245
Distance walked: 23km
We were up super early today, first ones out of the campsite at around 06:30. It was a pleasant walk down the coast to Cayagzi Beach. Accompanying us was a cute small to medium sized dog that had come in with a small group right before sunset the previous day. I'd originally thought he was their dog, but it quickly became apparent that, although wearing a collar (but not a tag) he didn't belong to anyone at the camp.
At the beach we took a bit of a detour off the official route. First to walk across the nice sandy beach, then to visit Adrianke, the port that served the Lycian/Roman city of Myra to the north. We wandered in amongst the ruins, which got steadily more impressive until we arrived at the heavily (over) restored granary which had been turned into a museum. We walked out the front gate (dog in tow, after having used Sarah's walking stick to scare off a couple of other dogs that had attacked it) just as some of the site staff were collecting eggs from the resident hens and others were having their morning team meeting.
The final, and primary reason we'd taken a detour was so that we could walk through the city of Demre to do a food resupply before heading up into the mountains for a few days. We had a bit of a scare when we passed the city's big Republic Day celebrations outside town. We stopped for the playing of last post and the national anthem (as, apparently, everyone in the country does). But despite the holiday, most shops were open, and we left town to the north fully restocked. With, of course, dog in tow.
We finally left him behind when we visited the archaeological site of Myra. We didn't even go into the grounds, which consist primarily of a large number of tombs spectacularly carved into cliffsdes (which you couldn't get very close to inside the site) and a theatre (which we've seen so many of recently that it didn't feel like we were really missing out on). Anyhow, I think our dog was getting tired, hot, hungry and thirsty. And having realized we weren't going to feed him, decided to stick where there was water, shade, lots of people and at least one other friendly dog. I'm happy we parted ways before we headed up into the mountains, or we would have felt compelled to look after it. It was clearly a people-dog, sitting nicely and actually seeming to listen to commands to not bother us (or our food) while we ate breakfast. I doubt it'll find its original family, but I do hope it finds a nice new one.
As for us and the mountains, after a rough start to the climb behind some greenhouses and over a narrow, barely identifiable trail covered in dead leaves and branches, we found ourselves on a very nice, relatively gentle trail up a valley.
Three hours or so (including lunch break) brought us to the village of Beloren with its sheep welcoming committee (complete with honourary goat) and very loud chicken noises.
A further forty minutes brought us to our small campsite. At 950m, it was a world away from our morning by the sea, and from where we could just hear, but couldn't see, life in the town down below.
Other quick concluding notes: We saw several camels today, both show camels in town, and a couple others in little barns on the route. Also, we're back in pomegranate country. We picked three from wild (or at least feral) trees along the roadside. Demre is the birthplace of St. Nicholas, so has a lot of eastern European tourists and Santa Claus on the logo of the city council.
No comments:
Post a Comment