Hi all,
Well from Malayta to Silifke, a rather interesting few days. Malayta was a nice city to see however it really was a typical city and you couldn’t do much in the time we had there except check out the local markets. You metal section, fruit section, meat, cloths…standard really for any markets…well except the metal section where you had esentially blacksmiths with foundries in the market place belting out pots.
So from Malayta after a morning checking out the market place we hopped a bus to take us to Nemrut Dagi. For those of you that aren’t familiar with this place, a photo of a stone head from Nemrut is on the front cover of the Lonely Planet book on Turkey comes. The bus ride was a grueling 8 hours of very slow bus travel up a winding mountain tracks which was made soooo much better by the fantastic views.
Mt Nemrut sits at a cosy 2300 meters so it was a nice temp when we arrived which soon turned to cold the following morning…more on that later. The night we arrived we celebrated a member of the groups birthday (61st) with a brilliant dinner, cake, raki and white wine. The unfortunate thing about this is that we had to get up at 3:45am the following morning to watch the sun rise on top of the mountain. One by one people went to bed which eventually left Leigh, Rebecca, Paul and myself to finish off the Raki and white wine. Crashed at around 2ish… we all wern’t sure when we went to bed and all that I know I was still drunk when I woke up and walked to the top of Nemrut Dagi… I am pretty sure the other 3 were too. Drunk or not Nemrut is beautiful, this meglomaniac king built statues of the greek gods and of himself on top of this mountain then when he died he was buried under a 100 meter high man made pile of rocks. Some brilliant photos were taken of all the scenery however in the trend that I have started and am still continuing, I again left my camera cable in my other bag so no photos for you!
One thing I can say about only having 1.5 hours sleep is when you have a long bus ride (12 hours) you tend to sleep most of it. Not much I can remember about that bus ride apart from waking up a few times and each time seeing different people sitting next to me. Thankfully members of the group were very understanding and kept an eye out for my belongings while I was in the land of z.
That brings me and you to Silifke. Arrived last nightish all that I did was have some dinner and beers then crash. After some much needed z’ds we have come to today was brilliant!! Hired a bunch of paddle boats and “rode” out to Maidens Castle which was, as the story goes, built by a father for his daughter after he was told by a soothsayer that she would die after being bitten by a snake. Unfortunately as fate would have it she was still bitten by a snake and died. Thanks for the castle though mate :-). After we peddled back the group leader realised he left his shoes back on the island, so he and I rode our boats back to get his shoes. Thankfully when we got there he noticed my shoes were right next to his… now that is some Karma, I didn’t even realise they were missing :-)!!! After our successful treasure hunt a few of us walked up the beach and checked out another castle.
For lunch I had an amazing plate of Calamari with salads and bread galore at resturaunt within eyesight of the castle, after seafood and a few beers 4 of us jumped off the resturaunt deck and swam in the Med to ease the stomache cramps of eating and drinking too much. You really can’t complain too much about that I don’t think.
This was then followed by some punishment where we went and visited some caves. One called the Asthma cave, and two others called Heaven and Hell. The Asthma cave is said to cure, you guessed it, Asthma so we all hiked down there to perform a healing ceremony (new age chanting from the massage therapist of the group and some eveangelical faith healing by me) on Laura as she had been suffering badly from her Asthma the past few days. So far we think a miracle has been performed as she has been fine since!!! No I have not turned all religious on you and I wouldn’t blame you if you thought so. I have been visiting a number of churches recently, it just seems like the thing to do in Europe, Churches and Castles.
After this cave we then went to two other caves called Heaven and Hell. One cave is where the greek God Zeus was held captive by some fire breathing giant, the other cave is where Zeus kept him captive after escaping. The giant stayed there until Zeus decided what to do with him, he was eventually placed underneath Mt Etna. Checked out another Castle over looking Silifke too….suffering Castle overload today!!!
Ended the night with a nice little picnic involving only a few of us down by the Goksu river. Turkish bread, some other local bread, spicy tomato paste, olives and cheese…oh and efes beer. Bloody marvelous!!!!