An Anatolian Adventure - Episode 3

Before setting off on the final part of our journey and as we took early morning tea on our balcony overlooking Goreme the sight of hot air balloons drifting this way and that amongst the fairy chimneys and high in the sky was wonderful conclusion to our time in this fairy tale world.

From Cappadocia we headed south on the road to Tarsus. That sounds biblical and it may be so as Tarsus was St Paul's birthplace. Not that it has anything to do with the bible but Tarsus was also where Anthony and Cleopatra first met.

At the southern extremity of the Cappadocia region lays Mustafapasa, the former Greek village of Sinasos. Unlike other ruined Greek villages we have visited, such as Kayakoy near Fethiye, that were the subject of the Population Exchange in the early twenties, the place is remarkably well preserved and the houses have a wealth of carved stonework, fine balconies, wall paintings and reminders of the former inhabitant's lives.

Our final glimpse of fairy chimneys, rock churches and pigeon coops cut into the rock face; the guano is and has been used as fertilizer for centuries; was in the quiet and undisturbed Soganli valley, two beautiful deep gorges running at right angles to one another.
From the Anatolian Steppe to the Taurus Mountains the rich soil in fecund valleys amongst rolling hills supports a vast array of produce including potatoes, giant cabbage, plums and apples. The Anatolian region must be one of Turkey's agricultural powerhouses such is the extent and variety of vegetables, grain, sugar beet and fruit grown.

The Taurus Mountain range has been our backdrop whilst sailing east from the Bodrum area and in fact dominates the entire Mediterranean coast to Turkey's border with Syria. Once again we find ourselves transiting its pine slopes, rocky summits and deep gorges this time retracing the route of Alexander the Great through the Cicilian Gates, a narrow pass in a seemingly bottomless gorge carved out by the River Tarsus. Eagles sore overhead and partridges scurry through the undergrowth.

As we descend to the Cukurova coastal plain the temperature rises 10°C and we start to see olive groves again and, surprisingly, cotton fields. The industrial city of Mersin has little to offer neither does Tarsus albeit that a covered well named after St Paul remains a place of pilgrimage. We did have a superb lunch at a Lokanta attached to a petrol filling station in odd surroundings crammed between the main road and the railway track and shunting yard.

The apartment blocks of the Mersin conurbation give way to holiday resorts with golden sand beaches and a multitude of hotels. At Kizkalesi we stayed in a suite overlooking the sea at the fine Kilikya Hotel on the beach at the princely sum of £50 for dinner, room and breakfast. Miggy swam in the sea and dinner and breakfast were served on the swimming pool terrace. Apart from its fine beaches and seafood restaurants, Kizkalesi's main landmarks are two 12^th century castles, one of which is on an island just offshore. Legend has it that an Armenian King banished his daughter into the island castle to protect her from a prophesied lethal snakebite. The snake turned up anyway hidden in a basket of fruit sent by a well meaning servant and did as predicted.
North of Silifke, another coastal town through which St Paul passed, at Uzuncaburc deep within the foothills of the Taurus Mountains lie the remains of the Roman city of Diocaesarea, or Olba as it was known to the Greeks, the centrepieces of which are the Roman temple of Zeus with its thirty massive standing Corinthian columns and the 23 metre high 3^rd century BC Hellenistic 'High Tower'. One of the joys of visiting ancient sites in Turkey is the lack of fencing and the freedom to walk on the ruins albeit that, in the long term, this may prejudice their preservation. In this place the present day villagers live within the site and have ancient ruins in their gardens. An old lady sold us a Roman gold coin and ring for about £2! We can't get the authenticity of these objects verified as we would probably be locked up for desecrating the site.
From Silifke to Gazipasa cliffs fall steeply to the sea and the road is tortuous and, in places, quite hair raising with a sheer drop of a hundred metres into the torrid waters below. Bananas grow in the few valleys that intersperse the cliffs as they do in great quantity in the environs of city Alanya, a vast holiday resort and its associated tat where we stayed the night in a hotel (£30 for dinner, room and breakfast) on Cleopatra's beach overlooking the impressive castle and citadel on the promontory called the 'beautiful mountain' that was the entire medieval and Ottoman town.

The ruins of ancient cities abound on this Mediterranean coast as they do throughout Turkey and so we had to be discerning about which to visit in the limited time available before our return to Finike.
The remains of the harbour moles built in antiquity at Side, meaning pomegranate, are still visible and the harbour is still in use today, not by the pirates who profited from slave trading here in the 2^nd century BC but by gulets, tripper boats and yachts. The town was sacked by the Arabs in the 7^th century AD but settled by Turks from Crete during the Population Exchange Programme in the early twenties. The modern resort town encompasses the port and its buildings have been erected along streets previously used by the early Greek, Roman and Byzantine inhabitants and in between the ruins of the ancient, mostly Roman, monuments of which the theatre, the main city gates and nymphaeum, the Agora, the Vespasian Monument with its exquisitely carved pediment and the temple of Apollo are the most notable. To see these 2500 year old monuments intermingled amongst the relatively modern souvenir shops, restaurants and hotels is an anomaly.
Built in the 1^st century AD the 15,000 seat Roman theatre at Aspendos is the best preserved in Turkey and, perhaps, throughout the Roman Empire. Its present good state of repair and completeness is due to its use by the Seljuk Turks as a medieval caravanserai, or lodging place for merchants on their travels, and place of entertainment. Ataturk decreed in 1930 that the theatre be restored and used again and so it is to the present day.A settlement from the time of the Bronze Age, Perge flourished during the Hellenistic period in the 3^rd to 2^nd centuries BC, the Roman period in the 2^nd to 3^rd centuries AD and the Christian period in the 5^th to 6^th centuries AD when many churches were built. Somewhat earlier than this it is known that St Paul; yes him again; sailed from Paphos on Cyprus to Perge during his first missionary journey. The ruins include the Hellenistic entrance with its massive towers, the main Roman marble street complete with cart tracks built as a dual carriageway with a wide rainwater gully as the central reservation for coolness, the Agora, a large theatre and a well preserved 12,000 seat stadium, the largest in Asia Minor. Between the arches of this stadium the ancients built shops and taverns although every third arch was kept as an entrance to the arena.

Three natural harbours around a long pine tree shaded promontory make the Lycian then Greek and later Roman city of Phaselis a most attractive ancient site. Today's visitors can take a swim or anchor their yacht where Greek and Roman ships loaded construction timber and farm produce for Alexandria over 2000 years ago. Olive trees and shrubs have overgrown the quays and jetties and the marble streets but the ruins of some monuments survive including a massive Roman aqueduct and three Agoras and a small Greek theatre.

Turkey, lying between Europe, Asia and the Middle East, is a vast country of some 815,000 sq km with a population of over 70 million. Bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Aegean to the west and the Mediterranean to the south its coastline runs to 8330 km. Who is aware for instance that 5,200m Mount Ararat, said to be the resting place of Noah's Ark, is on Turkish soil? It is although this is disputed by Armenia, Turkey's nearby neighbour. During our seven day trip covering just 2,300 km we have seen a miniscule part of this diverse and beautiful land. We have trodden in the footsteps of the ancients, travelled along the routes of the latter-day kings, saints, conquerors and merchants through the high fertile valleys, the bleak Anatolian Steppe and the Taurus Mountains. We have looked down on the placid waters of the Lake District and explored and ballooned over unique and fairy tale natural landscapes. We have experienced the underground refuges and churches of those oppressed from around 3000BC until the period of the early Christians and we have had a taste of the life and customs of the Turkish people in the countryside far from the tourist havens along the coast. This has been a remarkable and fascinating trip and one that we have enjoyed immensely and will remember forever.