Lycian Way and the blister brigade

Tearing ourselves away from Oasis, assembling a collection of "camping gear", choosing a route and surviving the hike, whew, what a full week.

At 6:00pm on Thursday October 11th we tossed Oasis' lines to Catharine and Garnet. Cliff waved from the pilot house and Marina popped her head over the rail of the boat for one last golden retreiver goodbye and then poof Oasis and the gang were gone. All of the certainty of the last weeks, all of the comforts, all of the routines were backing out and heading to Israel. . . without us!

We looked at the bags at our feet, all the heavier for the motley camping gear we pulled together in Finike: a thick blanket, 1 meter each of foam bath mat for ground pads, a thin aluminum pot to cook in, a thermos for tea, a metal mug for coffee, two tiny spoons, a spool of rough twine rope and a thread of hope and a predilection for adventure.

We hefted our bags and walked out of the marina with a mixture of trepidation and anticipation. Thanks to the kindness of the Turkish people, we found the Dolmuş (small bus) to Çiralı a little beach town an hour northeast of Finike. We used the cell phone that Sara and Niklas gave us with its new Turkish SIM card and called ahead to a pension in Çiralı to see if they could fetch us from the highway. Thank goodness for modern technology. By 7:30 we were sitting on the dark highway side hoping that the kindness of the Turks would not fail us. Thankfully it didn't. Within 20 minutes a car pulled up and took us 7 km down the road and deposited in the welcoming arms of Aynur Kurt, the proprietress of Sima Peace. From the moment we stepped out of the car, Aynur had us in her hands. She hugged us like old family and pulled us into her courtyard. Within moments we were seated at the long table with a steaming plates of food, Efes beers in hand and trepidation caste aside. It may not be Oasis, but it'll do.

It turned out that we were 2 of 3 non-Turks at the Pension. It was the first night of Bayram, the holiday to end Ramadan, and Aynur's whole family was visiting the pension. By the time dinner was over our proprietress and her family were three sheets to the wind and the women were singing beautiful Turkish songs and everyone was clapping and laughing... could it really be just hours from our dejection on the dock?

The next day, October 12th, we selected our route on the Lycian Way. We chose a long loop, approximately 90 kilometers. The plans took us from Çiralı up and down headlands along the coast for 7 hours to the package tour mecca of Tekirova, turned inland and climbed the flank of Mount Olympos through the Kemer Canyon, to the town of Ovacik and then through high-mountain-goat-grazing-villages to the pass over Mount Olympos and finally down to Çiralı once again. We spent the day provisioning ourselves with food and enjoying the delicacies on offer in Çiralı, namely their fruit juice. We ordered huge mugs of everything juice. It was a luscious blend of melon, plums, oranges, pomegranate juice and who knows what else. We sat in the shade of a tree chatting with new German friends and relishing the bounty of Turkey.

By 3:00 we shouldered our packs and headed for the trail. What an astoundingly beautiful trek, we can't recommend it highly enough. We hiked right on the edge of the sea, climbing over headlands, skirting along rocky inlets and hiking over beaches. The route from sea level to alpine wound casually through ruins of Greek, Lycian, Roman and Ottoman eras. We wandered into towns most days where we could re-provision or be served a hot lunch in a restaurant. The combination of wilderness, history, culture, and physical challenge was spectacular.

Our camping set up left a couple things to be desired, namely comfort and warmth. But we loved cooking over campfires with our little pot and waking up to beautiful sunrises and gorgeous vistas. The lack luster sleeping arrangement made it quite easy for both of us to get up and get moving. We tried to ease ourselves into the trek by hiking three hours on the 12th and 4 hours on the 13th. Oh I forgot to mention our fabulous footwear. I made the dumb, dumb, dumb choice to leave my favorite Chacos at home and bring just my running shoes and some Chaco slides. So my only trekking shoe option were my running shoes. Canuche fared better in his fabulous Chacos (which I lusted after every day of the trek). By the 3rd day, October 14, we put in a longer 8.5 hour day complete with two hours spent cowering under a tree as the sky erupted around us in lighting followed less than two seconds later by thunder and torrential rain. Oh how we longed for pack covers or ponchos or a tent. Instead we tied our rain coats around our packs to protect them and wrapped our bath mat ground pads around our shoulders to stay warm. When the lightning passed and our shivering grew intolerable, we launched into the rain and continued our hike. The afternoon dried up and the trail deposited us in a pomegranate and orange orchard where we munched on split pomegranates while we urged our aching bodies along. Our campsite the third night was in a glorious deep canyon near a spring dripping down the rock wall and pooling in the otherwise dry creek bed. It afforded us cold water for soaking our feet and a seemingly soft sand patch for pitching our...bath mats.
By the fourth day my body was in full revolt. My feet could barely deal with the rough stony path and the landslides that kept us scrambling over boulders and scree for the first hours of the day. Once I remembered my advil bottle, and started the Ibu drip, everything got better fast. We climbed out of the canyon and over a ridge into a high mountain valley that tumbled steeply to the sea miles below. The end of our route was a high mountain village at the end of the road before the pass. The temperature was dropping the higher we climbed and fretted over our meager camping set up.
We decided that we should sleep inside if opportunity knocked. With darkness encroaching we limped into the 12 buliding town where a nice villager with a few words of English told us that there was a pension up the road, hallelujah! After some wandering we found the pension, but alas the one room was taken by a Dutch couple hiking the trail! Dammit! We hadn't seen another hiker in four days but the one time there was a warm bed at stake the Dutch swoop in and take it! Rollo, we hold you personally responsible for the presence of your people in that pension!

Crestfallen we made our way further up the mountain trail looking for a sound place to make camp as the day turned to dusk and the wind began to blow. We found a good spot under a bunch of pine trees and gathered enough pine needles to make a 6 inch thick bed. We got a big campfire blazing and practically sat on top of it to get warm. We went to bed wearing all of our clothes and managed to stay warm under a starry sky worthy of an Oscar.

The next day October 16, our 5th day of hiking, we climbed to the pass amid glorious views and much appreciated shade of Mt. Olympos. Afternoon, we descended the other side with breathtaking views out to the Mediterranean. With dwindling food supplies in our packs we kept hiking on in search of a town for resupply. After 10 hours of hiking we came to what should have been the town of Ulupinar, but was just a number of restaurants clustered around a creek bed. It was 5:30 and although we were hungry we needed to find a store and hike on to a place where we could collect the pine needles needed to make our bathmats into beds. One of the guys at the last trout restaurant took pity on us and invited us to sleep on the deck of their store room and eat dinner in the restaurant. Without a moment of hesitation we threw down our backpacks and shook on the deal. We barely had time to take off our shoes and change into warm dry clothes before a feast was set before us.

We spent the next hour marveling at the turn of our fate, from the two worst case scenarios of A: pressing past the trout restaurants to a campsite and eating peanuts for dinner or B: hiking down the highway in search of town and a grocery store and then retracing our steps back up the mountain with headlamps before finding our campsite to this unimaginable options C: drinking beer by a blazing fire and eating lovely grilled trout served to us by a whole cadre of attentive servers. How on earth did we score this? Despite the cool weather and the hard deck we slept happily and deeply, snuggled in with the restaurant's little white kitten.

The 6th and final day of our hike, we woke early eager to get off the deck and start moving and without coffee or tea began our last segment down to Çiralı. Just before Canuche went into a full caffeine withdrawal, we came upon the flames of Chimaera; natural gas flares rising continuously out of the earth in small flaming geysers. We pulled out our pot and used the last of the tea from Oasis to make a steaming pot of goodness to curb the headache (would you believe that Canuche ran out of coffee on the last day of the trip, horror of horrors). We continued our hike back into Çiralı and found Aynur at Sima Peace eager to take us in with open arms.

Today October 19th my feet are just beginning to heal and the blisters on my toes are no longer making me walk like an invalid. I am sorry to say that my relationship with my running shoes may have been the major casualty of the hike, I can't bear to look at them, much less put them on. Canuche and I are in Antalya now, the biggest city in this region of Mediterranean coast. We will board a night bus headed for Cappadocia at 9:00 tonight and plan to spend the next 5 days exploring the fairy chimneys and rock cities of the interior. I have bought new trail running shoes so that my feet can face the prospect of many more days of hiking. We will hopefully sleep in hostels every night and enjoy thick mattresses and ample coziness. But Canuche is not quite ready to give up on the bath mats yet...

We send our love to all of you and wish for you thick mattresses and ample coziness as well. For all our pics click on this link