After the pleasant but chilly plateau of Cappadocia, we were all very excited to finally make our way down to the Mediterranean Coast. Cutting back across the country to the south-west, we arrived in Antalya. Türkiye’s 5th largest and fastest growing city. Sidenote, but the bus ride was stunning. Huge mountain passes, beautiful farmland, all leading to the rocky coast, we were kinda glad our first bus got stitched up so we had a chance to see it in the day. Anyway, Antalya.
After checking into our lovely, and very reasonably priced AirBnB, we set out for dinner after our long bus ride. After dodging a few classic heckles from restaurants trying to lure us in, we stumbled into a gem of the city – Tokko Food Box. It looks unassuming from the outside, but promisingly busy. After being seated and handed our menus, our faces lit up as we collectively took in the prices on the paper in front us. 80 lira for a fried chicken sandwich? 100 lira for a burger? 50 for pizza? After dealing with tourist prices in Göreme this was a huuuuge breath of fresh air. And the food was fantastic too! Simple but tasty, fresh and filling. Just the ticket for backpacking. Honestly, Tokko Food Box was one of our Antalya highlights, can highly recommend (we went several times…).
As for what we did in Antalya, it wasn’t extreme to be honest, we only really had about 36 hours as a whole in the city. Sam was expecting an important call for most of our one free day, so we just merrily strolled the streets, enjoying the t-shirts and sandals weather. There’s definitely a cool youthful vibe about the place, we saw lots of hip cafes and gorgeous garden bars with wait stuff zooming around on roller blades. The old town is small but tidy, and it leads down to the quaintest little city marina ever. Locals were pulling fish in on lines baited with bread in between all of the tourist boats going in and out. It’s all incredibly picturesque.
Amongst the fishy business, during a somewhat deep and existensial chat triggered by the glow of the late afternoon sun, a piercing scouse accent cut through the conversation. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but it was a very brazen and un-conscious addition to a group of strangers chatting about life’s greatest goals (the comment was lubricated with a healthy dose of lager). Anyway, this is how we met Steph, AKA Healthy Scouser, from Liverpool. Wearing hair curlers and an outfit right out of a Bali street market, she spun us an incredible yarn of how she was recently marooned in Thailand, having run out of money, until a German bloke had taken pity on her and flown her to Türkiye, and now here she was. She was a chef by trade, but apparently did more cheerleading than cooking. Though we didn’t hang out for too long, we continue to follow the exploits of Healthy Scouser, and she will live on in our heads forever I think.
On the way out of Antalya we stopped at the Ancient City of Perge. By far the largest ancient ruins we had seen up till this point, they were well worth the 13 Euro entry fee. Though the large ampitheatre was closed off, there was still an enormous hippodrome and well preserved city to explore. The bath houses were impressive, with the different rooms for different bath temperatures still standing, including the underground tunnels for the fires to heat the water. Plenty of pillars of course, plus mosaics, statues and inscriptions. Awesome stuff that we just don’t get in NZ. One of the most interesting aspects is that the city is still under excavation. There’s a bunch of dudes hanging out on tractors and conveyor belts, shifting tons of earth to expose the ancient bricks. It really feels like you’re there as they’re discovering something huge. Also, to everyone’s delight (especially Milly’s), the place is full of cute friendly cats and dogs (some with tiny puppies!).
Since our AirBnB booking was only for two nights, we moved on relatively quickly to a small town about 2 hours along the coast called Adrasan. We had come for one main reason, a suspiciously cheap boat tour to a small island called Suluada, hailed as the ‘Turkish Maldives’. For 23 NZD each, we had booked spots on an 8 hour cruise to some stunning beaches, including lunch on the boat! What we ended up getting was even more bizarre than any of us had expected. For starters, 80% of the other passengers were Russian, to the point where the safety briefing and tour information was given in Turkish and Russian only. The first beach we stopped at was tiny, maybe 50 metres wide, with rocky cliffs at either side. Yet 4 or 5 boats all pulled in and unloaded their load of tourists, and it only got stranger from there. Immediately after disembarking, we saw a huge number of young kids pointing phones at what we assumed were their parents, who were prancing and posing and splashing in their bikinis. Many of these parents were so cosmetically ‘enhanced’ and pumped full of fillers it felt like a circus. It went on for uncomfortably long, before the children were allowed to relinquish the phone and go play and swim. It was at this point we wondered what we’d gotten ourselves into. Luckily, the day got much better as the sun appeared, we pulled into nicer beaches and they opened up the front of the boat to jump from. From this point it was non-stop snorkeling and jumping from the boat railing, we managed to share a bit of kiwi love with the other tourists in the form of a nice splash from a hearty bomb. Even the provided lunch was decent. Overall, we had a great time, but couldn’t help but feel it would have been significantly less bearable if we had payed up to 80 NZD like some other operators were offering, or if we had taken the tour based from Antalya, which added both cost and a 2 hour bus to and from the dock.
Adrasan complete, our next stop was Kaş. More of a town than a city, Kaş is draped quite dramatically over a steep hill leading from the sea. Most of the interesting touristy stuff and was down the bottom of town, close to the water, and naturally we had booked accomodation right up the top. It’s no miniscule hill either, we had to climb 200 vertical metres to get back to our accom. Definitely consider this if you visit, it’s so steep that even going down was uncomfortable. All our sweaty climbs did reward us with some gorgeous views though, so it all worked out in the end.
Kaş was my personal favourite spot in Türkiye. Though it doesn’t quite have the hustle and bustle of other places, or the same historical prestige, I found it a much more relaxing spot to visit. Maybe it was a factor of our timing, as I can imagine it gets really busy in peak season, but the town was very quiet and peaceful. The beaches in and around the town are awesome. They all have fantastic snorkelling, and due to the rocky coastal geology, there are plenty of spots that make perfect diving (and manu!) platforms. We were going for swims at least once a day, making the most of our cheap Decathlon snorkels, and perfecting our bomb techniques.
Another highlight was doing a stretch of the Lycian Way walk. The whole route is about 35 days long from Antalya all the way to Fethiye, which we obviously didn’t have time for, but we did manage to get out on the trail for a day. As far as multi day tramps go, it must be pretty full on, because there were many spots where we collectively went ‘holy moly, imagine doing this with a pack on!’. Not only did the trail send you up the gnarly local hills, it made you shimmy along narrow paths above drop offs using a rope, or clamber up very technical steep sections. One section felt more like rock hopping along a New Zealand beach, except the rocks were all eroded and sharp. The pictures will do it more justice. The upshot of this is that the scenery is stunning. I feel like a bit of a broken record on this blog with synonyms for ‘beautiful’, but that’s just what Türkiye is. The backdrop of mountains in one directions, and an island-studded sea in the other. Rocks carved into wonderful shapes over the millenia, jumbled in piles among foreign and beautiful flora, all leading down to beaches with sparkling blue water. It really is stunning. I’ve definitely added the trail as a whole to the bucket list. Along the section that we completed, we also stumbled onto our favourite diving spot, which really put a refreshing swim cherry on top of the stunning, sweaty day.
Looking back now, feels like we didn’t do too much else significant in Kaş apart from the walk, so I’ll just rattle off some minor points. Acquired some souvenirs in the old town, explored an ancient theatre on the small peninsula, ate some incredible food, had nice chats with all our Mums on Mothers’ Day, us lads all got some of the best haircuts of our life for real cheap, and just enjoyed the warm mediterranean coast for a few days. In the end, what more could you really ask for on holiday?
Stay posted for the details of our next leg, which takes us on several ferries (including one international one!) to an island in the Aegean Archipelego of Greece!