The next day, being our last in Fethiye, we wanted to make worth our while. O, it was. We started by taking a dolmuş (after breakfast, of course) to Kayaköy (lit. ‘rock village’) which Ryan had wanted to see since we first arrived. The town’s history dates to three-thousand BCE (I think that I might start using the founding of Rome as the date by which all are calculated once again), most of the buildings were constructed in the late eighteen-hundreds and early nineteen-hundreds. In the exchange of populations, though, the town was abandoned and remained so, with few inhabitants still remaining, until it was realised that there was potential to capitalise on tourism.
I HATE HATE HATE BOTTLED WATER.
Even though the dolmuş that we took seemed to run every ten minutes, we had to wait an hour for the bust after we were done walking. Luckily for us, the mayor’s house, the largest in the village, had been converted into a wonderfully beautiful restaurant, and we were able to have a personal wine tasting in the four-hundred-year-old wine cellar. Ryan had a glass of old sirah and I had a glass of something light that was strawberry-cherry flavoured, as it was a hot day, and I never get light drinks. It was still a red, though--don’t worry, Mommy. We ended up talking with some Brits on holiday who loved the place, and the woman and I ranted about how horrible Turkey would be if it changed from anything but what it is (read: either fell to the fundamentalists as it narrowly escaped by only one vote about a month ago or was forced to modernise and become even more western with things like health codes and liquor licenses and the like) and lost all of its charm and traditional rhythm. After paying and talking some more, we sprinted down the stairs and out of the restaurant to catch the dolmuş to Ölüdeniz.
The next few minutes of our journey were characterised by swindling Turks trying to make a few lira by telling us the wrong dolmuş, but then still charging us, chasing us down not once but twice on the beach after we didn’t pay, and stupid profiteers charging us to sit on the lounge chairs and use an umbrella on the beach, both of which were already there, and yelling at us and telling us that we couldn’t just sit on our own towels on the sand, which wasn’t sand, but smooth rocks.
We’re over that, though. Except for the comment that I understand, Turks, because you have centuries of mercantilism in your genealogy, and I would totally get hung up about some lira if I did, too. Luckily for you, I just have a flash temper in mine heritage, but some lira definitely isn’t enough to bring it out, so you can have it, and your profiteering, too. Harumph.
After nervously swimming in the beach with our few lira in our pocket because we didn’t trust anyone—wait.
This water, people, was amazing, really. It was crystal blue-turquoise, like looking into an aquamarine jewell (etymology, much?), and was fantastic in which to swim. O, my. We were continually in awe as we looked down and around. Huge mountains rose up out of the shoreline, and I think that this was the first soil that I’ve seen that’s rockier than that in New England. It is as if the sea vomited huge mounts of rock one day in a fit of disgust, and out of this rock barren coniferous trees grew with tall grasses in between them, begging for forest fires when combined with either careless nicotine addicts or Nature’s electricity.
The water was beautiful, and the sand was amusing because it was, as mentioned, ‘very small rocks,’ which wiped right off your feet and didn’t stick all over everything like the sand at home, or even the sand at Karadeniz.
We had dondurma--real dondurma, the gummy kind--and headed for the dolmuş back to Fethiye. On the dolmuş, we saw another one of those ubiquitous (even on sale at the bazaars, I swear) insignias of the empire of evil. If you can’t tell in the picture, then it’s because that horrid omen is obscured by the dolmuş pole, but it is, indeed, that accurséd overlying ‘N’ and ‘Y.’ Why this is everywhere, I’ll never know, but I kept being afraid that it would get me into some trouble, because, after being born and bred in Red Sox Nation, my first reaction upon catching sight of one of these symbols is to glower at the sign, and this may be misinterpreted as a glower at the wearer or seller, and I haven’t the language skills to explain how stupid it is to wear a symbol of that status when one doesn’t fully understand its implications.
After dinner at the same harbour local dive at which we had eaten second breakfast, we had a nice, relaxing evening full of me desperately trying to keep Ryan from procrastinating packing (I was all set already) and realising that our flight from Dalaman was two hours later than we thought--yay! When the time came, we walked down the hill to the hamam, where I was part of Ryan’s induction into that wonderful aspect of Turkish culture.
Squeaky clean and with glisteningly exfoliated skin, we walked back up the hill in the dark and reflected upon how wonderful our hostel and its owners are.
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