Halfway up the ancient Mount Chimaera on Wednesday evening, I composed an imaginary letter in my head to friends working office jobs in the US. It was about ten thirty at night, so your typical junior analyst in a New York City investment bank would just now be taking his mid-afternoon coffee break, agreeing to his boss's request that he stay at least until seven, and looking longingly at a Friday that seemed ages away. "Dear so-and-so," I wrote, "hope you're enjoying the salary! Do they even let you out of the office to spend it? I just wanted to let you know that I spent today lying on the beach, playing frisbee, and exploring underwater caves. Oh, and right now I'm hiking up a mountain that's on fire. Anyway, have fun with the spreadsheets!"
I am not a cruel person, and that fact, combined with an inexplicable outbreak of good taste, prevented me from copying said letter onto postcards saying "OLYMPOS: WISH YOU WERE HERE" and sending them off to actual friends working desk jobs in New York. But the sentiment remained: I felt incredibly lucky that in early September, while others were settling into full-time jobs and graduate studies, I was lounging on the beaches of Olympos and Antalya with seven other CSIs from Bilkent. Classes start in earnest on Wednesday, and so this moment of postgraduate irresponsibility is bound to be fleeting--but it was oh-so-good while it lasted.
The end of Ramadan in Turkey brings the "Şeker Bayram," or "Sugar Festival," known as "Eid ul-Fitr" or just Eid, in many Arabic-speaking countries. This is a three-day holiday where schools and government offices close, giving Turks a chance to travel and to visit family members. The sugar referred to in the name of the holiday is ever-present: when we reached the tram in Antalya, we were told that it was free for the next three days, and then given candy. In other words, this past week was a great time to travel. Eight of us boarded a bus from Ankara to Antalya, leaving at one in the morning and arriving just before nine, full of bleary-eyed passengers. Hannah, Kevin and I then opted to immediately hop on a dolmuş (a cheap bus) to Olympos, an hour away. This was not without accident: Hannah had left her phone on the first bus, and went off to find it. Kevin had to track her down five minutes later because the bus was about to leave, and when neither of them returned, I was unable to find their bags, since they'd already been packed onto the dolmuş. I ended up riding to Olympos with both of their bags, and they followed on a second bus, bagless and phoneless (although thankfully Hannah found her phone on the way back).
Olympos has two main draws: first, its funky backpacker's "treehouses," and second, the amazing Chimera. As for the first, the "main drag" of Olympos is essentially a dirt and gravel road leading to the beach, and on all sides there are "pansiyons" (pensions), basically hostels where you can spend between $20-$80 on a bed for the night. These are pretty down-to-earth places, popular among foreigners and Turks alike; I'd guess a more-or-less even split among the visitors during our stay. Each hostel was basically an open-air campground, with a bar, a little cafe, and dozens of tables and cushions where you could lie about, eat, drink and read. Their sleeping options range from proper rooms with private bathrooms and basic amenities to "treehouses," which tend to not be in actual trees but instead are little huts on stilts. They had mattresses and sheets, though, and it was cool enough that we didn't mind the lack of A/C. Besides, we spent most of our day in Olympos on the beach. This was just a twenty-minute walk from the hostel, past a little archaelogical park with the ruins of ancient Olympos, one of the cities of ancient Lycia (though not the home of Mount Olympus, which is in Greece). The beach itself was a pretty pebbly affair, and in the heat of the day we couldn't walk on the sand, so we parked our towels in the shade by the mountains that crept right up to the shoreline. Our view was none too shabby, however:
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We spent a good five hours here, swimming in the beautiful (if rather salty) water, basking in the sun, escaping into the shade. On the right of the beach the rocks crowded into the water, and we swam over to investigate, finding a fantastic cave where the mountain's shade created cool pockets of water that would unexpectedly envelop you. Along this stretch of coastlines the rock is porous and jagged--it makes for very painful, laborious climbing if you're the type who likes to climb out of the water and jump off the rocks. But I did it anyway, and thankfully avoided any nasty cuts.
After staggering back to camp, sunburnt and exhausted, we indulged in a few rousing rounds of “spoons” with fellow Americans from Bilkent who were in Olympos for the whole trip—although technically our game was “plastic tea stirrers,” spoons being unavailable. Breakfast and dinner was included in our $20 nightly fee, and so we enjoyed a hearty Turkish buffet—fresh fish and eggplant salad being among the highlights. But the main attraction was yet to come. High on a mountain hillside above Olympos one finds the Chimera, or Yanartaş as it is called in Turkey. This phenomenon, which is thought to have inspired the mythological creature of the same name, is best seen at night, and so local entrepreneurs ran a tour every evening at nine, driving for a half hour up steep, impossibly winding roads. Twenty minutes from the trailhead, sweaty and dubious, we finally saw it: the mountain was on fire! From at least twenty different spots on the rocky mountainside, flames spurted. Some were small, resembling the output of a gas rangetop, while others look more appropriate for a full-scale barbecue. The flames came from little vents in the ground, and I found more than one vent which smelled like gas and was warm to the touch, but was not ignited. Thankfully, there were drunk Australians on hand, who used their lighters to burn these unlit vents. This is truly the eternal flame—it was noted even by the ancients, and ships used it as a landmark while sailing by this coast. While watching the flames, I asked aloud if anyone knew the geological explanation for what I was seeing. A young Turkish woman declared that she did and, suddenly assuming a serious, mystical voice, told me the story. Once upon a time, she said, there was a great fire-breathing monster who terrified the inhabitants of the Lycian coast. Their king called upon a hero, Bellerophon, to defend them from this chimera. Bellerophon mounted the flying horse, Pegasus, and from the air shot the chimera, wounding her. She was forced to retreat inside this mountain, but her anger at being defeated has not abated to this day, and the puffs of flame we see are the very evidence of her rage. Our storyteller finished this tale by telling me in a stern voice that if I went looking for a more scientific account, the chimera might be offended. I took her advice to heart.
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| From Olympos & Antalya |
The next morning we had an uneventful ride back to Antalya, where we had booked a pension for the next two nights, the same place where our CSI friends were staying. It must have been full, however, for when the front desk manager led us to our room, he walked down the street and into another hotel, where we had been transferred to! Thankfully we paid the same price, and the room was comfortable. Our first day in Antalya was relaxing—we walked around the old city, passing through Hadrian’s Gate, which was built when the Emperor Hadrian visited the city in 130 AD (this must have been part of a grand tour, since that year Hadrian got at least as far south as Jerash in modern-day Jordan). We then spent a couple of blissful hours swimming just below our hostel: there was no beach, exactly, but carpets laid out over rocks by the sea. We climbed down ladders and jumped off high rocks and thanked God we weren’t in the US since such unsupervised, unlitigated pleasure would never have passed muster in the land of the free. Later we had dinner at a lovely restaurant in the old city, where I had kavurma (stir-fried lamb and onions) and mezzes that made me reconsider my lukewarm appreciation for Turkish cuisine. It was fabulous. That evening we relaxed by the pool in the hostel we’d originally booked at, chatting and studying Turkish.
On our only full day in Antalya we went for the grand tour of Antalya-region archeology: Perge, Aspendos and Side in one day. My camera had given out the day before, so I’ll have to steal photos from others once they post them, but we saw some spectacular sights. Aspendos, for example, has perhaps the world’s best-preserved Roman theatre, an absolute marvel isolated in what is otherwise a dusty town just inland from the sea-coast. Perge was more sprawling, and while it didn’t have a singular landmark like Aspendos, we were able to spend several hours strolling along the once-colonnaded streets, seeing the ruins of the baths, checking out the Nymphaeum, and more. It was a long trip, and by the time we got to Side we were dead-tired, content to glance at the temples of Artemis and Athena that abutted the beach, and then to get dondurma (ice cream) from a street vendor.
(By the way, prospective travelers to Turkey: Buying dondurma in Turkey is liable to be more of a performance than a transaction. Especially in touristy areas, the vendors like to put on a show. “Ice cream!” they gleefully shout, scooping some of the gooey treat into a cone and then thrusting it in front of your nose with a large stick which has adhered to the ice cream. You move to grab it, but they flip it upside down, move the stick lower, and jab the ice cream, cone first, into your crotch. “Oops!” they cry. Then it’s in your face, snatched away at the last second, offered to your friend, bounced off your head, and finally given you, even though you’re not sure if you want it any more. And, as if this hasn’t lost its novelty, they’ll do it again three more times with your friends. The trick lies in the extremely sticky nature of the ice cream, which is called “maraş” and is best made in a town called “Kahraman.” You can hold the cone upside down, swing it about, without it ever dripping or dropping).
So that was Friday. The ruins were very worth it, although we had to suffer a guide who insisted on talking at us in almost incomprehensible English for ten and fifteen minutes at every turn. We couldn’t help laughing at his hair-dye job, which was just a splatter of platinum blonde in the back, combined with an unfortunate application of hair gel. On Saturday we went to yet another beach for a few hours in the morning, savoring the warm water for just a bit longer before heading back to Ankara and the real world.
Meanwhile, today is an extremely important day for Turks—for two reasons. As we speak, Turks are going to the ballot boxes to vote on a crucial referendum that, if passed, would amend the constitution in significant ways. The referendum is being pushed by the AK Parti, the conservative Islamically-oriented government that has been in power the last ten years. They’ve been leading the push to join the EU—by most accounts, having done a good job of passing reforms—and they’re selling the referendum as another step in this process. But they having troubling authoritarian tendencies, and their secular opponents are painting this referendum as a step towards dictatorship and Islamization. Signs have been around Ankara for months touting “EVET” and “HAYIR”—YES and NO, respectively. Most experts expect the referendum to pass, but barely.
The second reason why today is important is, you might think, a bit frivolous, but don’t tell that to the Turks. It’s the final of the FIBA international basketball championships, and facing off are Turkey and—you guessed it—the USA. Turks love their basketball—it’s their second-favorite sport, next to football—and the whole country has been tuning in all month to cheer on the “12 Giant Men,” as the national team is called. Hopefully, whatever the outcome of the referendum, all Turks can come together and watch their team—lose. That’s right…I’ll be in a Turkish bar, being the obnoxious American nationalist, probably being carted out on a stretcher at the end of the game. And I don’t even like basketball.
