Lycian Way Day 2: Near Kirme to Near Alinca

Near Kirme to Near Alinca

Starting km: 9

Finishing km: 29

Distance walked: 20km

So as we were settling down to sleep in our tent on night one I wondered where our power bank might be.  In the dry bag! Where might that be? Hmmm… I'm not so sure, but probably on the floor of the bus we took from Antalya to Fethiye.  A phone call to the bus company didn't turn it up, but yeah, that's where it had to have been. It was only blind luck that meant our passports weren't in there as well.  But as it stood, all we had lost was the (old, no longer entirely waterproof) dry bag, a phone charger and a NZD32 power bank. So we got off lucky I think.

The walk meanwhile, was wonderful.  We followed road down to the town of Faralya, sitting at the top of the Butterfly valley, a box canyon with super steep bare rock walls, a bottom over 200m below the town and a beach at the mouth.  We saw a few people climbing up or down, but most commonly visitors boat in and stay at the beach camps. We didn't go down but had breakfast on the rim.

From there we shortcut a whole heap of winding road by taking a trail over the hill to the town of Kabak, last stop on the Dolmus (mini-bus) line from Fethiye.  From here the trail splits, either going down to the beach then right up the centre of a deeeeeep valley, or skirting round the edge of the valley and eventually meeting the beach trail as the valley floor rises up to join it.  We sat and drank a coffee and charged my phone (it's our primary navigation as well as writing and entertainment tool!) and decided to take the high road.

It started with a stiff climb, but it was soooo worth it.  As I said to Sarah, the valley reminded me of a ⅓ or 40% scale Tiger Leaping Gorge.  Except the river at the bottom wasn't the Yangtze. It was, in fact, completely dry. We walked through lovely cool pine forest on the far side, climbing about 600m and stopping near the top for the saltiest, sourest, creamiest (i.e. best) ayran I've ever had.  It was homemade from goat's milk by a shepherd named Ramazan and his wife who had a food and drink stall near their rough and ready home.

The last bit of climb took us up and over to Alinca (the "c" is pronounced as a hard "j" in Turkish), a little village with magnificent views out over the Mediterranean, but no access to the sea whatever.  It's hard to imagine living in such a place where the water is so present, but completely separated by 400m cliffs (or at least a day's walk).

We followed the road out of town and set up camp just down the trail from a row of beehives and just a stone's throw from an amazing view back towards Alinca (and down, down, down into the canyon between us and it).