The hills give way to the flat plain of the River Esen with its six mile long sandy beach with extensive dunes, the Taurus Mountains still towering in the distance to provide an outstanding backdrop. The colour of the water changed from its normal deep azure to glorious turquoise in a defined line where the flow from the river carries sand in suspension; a phenomenon that we have never encountered before.
At the eastern end of the beach lies the Lycian city of Patara which is known to have been in existence from the fifth century BC. Greek mythology has it that Apollo was born here as was Bishop Nicholas, famed for his unfailing generosity and the original Santa Claus, in actuality in the fourth century AD. Beatified as St Nicholas of Myra he became the patron saint of Seafarers, Brewers, Brides and Bakers. Now we understand the reason for the Sailor’s affinity with beer!
The predominantly Greek village of Kalkan was, as many others, devastated by the Turkish Greek Population Exchange in 1923. Since then the village has been permanently inhabited only since the eradication of malaria bearing mosquitoes in the 1950’s, the villagers preferring to shun the ruined houses and live in the fertile plain high above. The old ruined hillside village above the small harbour has been restored and is truly charming with its whitewashed stone houses with their shuttered windows and wooden balconies with brilliant bougainvillea cascading down to stone paved streets and alleyways below. One has to forgive the tourist nature of the place with its numerous restaurants and souvenir shops and one’s eyes should not stray to the hillsides above and surrounding the old village that are covered with hotels, holiday complexes and villas.
Further east Kas, once the ancient 7th century BC Lycian town of Antiphellos, is now a boisterous resort. The old quarter with its attractive balconied Greek houses (it was the Greek town of Andifli until the population exchange in 1923) which line the narrow stone streets and Lycian sarcophagi are dotted around. At the top of the street called the ‘long bazaar’ stands the double chambered ‘Lion Tomb’, a monumental stone sarcophagus adorned with exquisitely carved lion’s heads on its vaulted roof.
The small but extremely popular harbours of Kalkan and Kas boast shower, toilet and laundry facilities cost £16 per night inclusive of electricity and water. Kas probably has the most friendly and helpful harbour crew that we have encountered on our travels; Ismail or Smiley, the restaurateur, who delivers bread to the boat daily with no request for payment and the harbour master who is courteous and extremely considerate.
With a change of courtesy flag we are back in Europe in the Greek outpost of Megisti or, more popularly, Kastellorizon, a small island just a mile and a half from the Turkish coast. On entering the sheltered bay the panorama of the village set below the barren rocky hills is the most enchanting we have seen during our travels. Gracious neoclassical buildings painted white with contrasting pastel shades, brightly painted doors and wooden balconies amongst colourful bougainvillea and hibiscus line the waterfront. To cap it all we were not asked to pay for berthing on the quay although we gather that whether one pays or not is a hit or miss affair!
The magnificence of this place is even more remarkable than meets the eye considering that the village or town of 20,000 people, as it was then, was bombed to near destruction by the Nazis. In the nineteenth century the island was a flourishing trading post but this period of prosperity came to a close with the Turco-Italian war in the early nineteen twenties. Many of the inhabitants did not survive the harsh rule of the Italians or the Second World War blitz and about 80% of the survivors immigrated to Australia. The two hundred or so indigenous people that remain on the island together with Aussie relatives seeking their roots are rebuilding apace and the Island’s fortunes are looking up with the nascence of tourism.
In the cool of the early morning we climbed the steep path up the mountain behind the harbour to an elevation of about 300 metres. The view from the top over the harbour with the Turkish mountains as a backdrop was magical. Thyme, sage and oregano grew wild, the first of the autumn crocuses were blooming and a goat stood on a crag above us no doubt marvelling, as were we, at the view! A French lady we met at the top described it as mystical probably because of the priest chanting in the church far below.
The trip to Kekova Roads of about fourteen miles involved a pleasant sail to windward maintaining just under three knots boat speed in five knots of breeze and a flat sea. Kekova, ‘home of the sun’, is an ensemble of picturesque, olive and maquis covered rocky islands that protect a virtually landlocked sea with a myriad of perfectly sheltered beautiful bays and natural harbours, unspoiled landscapes and the ruins of ancient Lycian cities, some underwater now consumed by the turmoil of earthquake. This place has the blue skies and orange sunsets of a Van Gogh painting along with brilliant starry nights, peace and tranquillity, mythological mystery and the sparkling sea. It is a place to anchor, relax and reflect.
Nothing can, of course, be perfect. In these anchorages we are bedevilled daily by a mini plague of flies some of which nip us brutally. This amongst other things has driven us towards showing the first or perhaps the final signs of madness; we are talking to the creatures; ‘Don’t come near me I don’t like you’ – ‘you have two choices either you leave the boat or you’ll die’, etc. They don’t seem to listen or perhaps they fail to understand but it is of no consequence ultimately as they fall under the grim shadow of the ‘SWAT’!
Miggy and I had visited Ucagis separately some 25 years ago. The three or four restaurants on the waterfront are little changed and that which Miggy frequented all those years ago ‘Hassan’ still has the same chef and waitress! The village has grown with more villas and holiday accommodation but maintains its rustic nature. The really significant growth is in the tripper boats that take visitors to see the ruins of Lycian Apollonia along the northern shore of Kekova Island to see the sunken city under the clear water. From the castle high on the rocks above Kalekoy, formerly ancient Simena, we have a bird’s eye view of the bays, inlets and islands of this enchanting area.
One wonders how the Lycians who made their homes here over 2500 years ago would feel if they were to return to see their houses and the sarcophagi of their departed relatives partly engulfed by the sea and their harbours full of strange looking craft that are entirely useless for carrying amphora of olive oil and other goods for trade with the rest of the then known world; but perhaps we should instead wonder at the luck we have to be able to witness all this and everything else about our amazing adventure.
Forty miles or so from Marmaris we entered the Fethiye Korfezi or Gulf with the chic yachting centre of Goçek, a small hamlet when we both sailed here twenty years ago, at its head and the working town of Fethiye on its eastern shore.
We anchored in Kucuk Kuyruk in superbly beautiful surroundings and about a boat length from the steep to rock shoreline. The water is deep until very close to the shore and so a substantial amount of anchor chain has to be let out and the anchor made to bight before rowing or swimming a long line to the shore to tie to a tree or a rock. This can be quite entertaining in a crosswind as the boat gets further from the shore and more line has to be bent on to allow the swimmer or rower to even make dry land! We were one of just two yachts in this secluded cove and we felt a sense of ownership as well as sheer pleasure.
We are visited by a Kingfisher and we hear frogs first thing in the morning which inspired me to write an excuse for poetry:
The delightful anchorages in Skopea Limani are too numerous to describe in totality but a few are of particular note such as Tasyaka Koyu or Tomb Bay with its Lycian and Pigeonhole rock tombs, colourful oleanders and the rock painting of a fish by the famous 1970’s painter Bedri Rahmi Eyyupoglu and the fjord like Boynuz Buku Koyu or Spring Bay with its Gunluk trees and teeming wildlife, the exquisite but crowded Yassica Adlari anchorages, Hammam Koyu or Ruin Bay with its partially underwater Byzantine ruins and Kapi Koyu or Wall Bay, the large wall on the shore covered in Graffiti where I made an absolute mess of trying to moor stern to in a light cross wind. I was embarrassed and cross to say the least!
It was forecast to blow for a few days so we felt it prudent to seek the shelter of Fethiye and its modern well appointed marina with helpful staff all at just £23 per night. Miggy took the opportunity to take our dhobi to the laundry and we had a dirty carburettor in our outboard motor repaired.
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire and in his drive to establish a Turkish state in 1923 Ataturk introduced a ‘population exchange’ programme with Greece whereby Turkish Christians were exiled from Turkey and sent to Greece and Greek Muslims similarly were exiled to Turkey, a sort of non violent ethnic cleansing! Those who returned to Kayakoy preferred to live in the valley rather than on the hill and so this ghost town was created. It is haunting to wander the streets and through the houses of this once thriving community of 25,000 people who lived, learned, worked and played together; Christian, Muslim and Jew alike, and to think of their sorrow at leaving their homes and friends and all this within living memory. How can the human race be so intolerant and callous? A classic book ‘Birds without Wings’ by Louis de Bernieres, which we have read, makes it all the more poignant and brings to life the history of this region and its turmoil.
It was in Pothia harbour, Kalymnos, that we had our first experience of ‘crossed anchors’ where someone lays their anchor and chain over yours when they berth stern or bows to the dock. Three charter yachts managed to lay their chains over ours and when they came to leave in the early morning we had to instruct each of them how to untangle the anchors and chains as they had no clue whatsoever.
Kos Marina, the model Greek marina, has excellent facilities including personal shower rooms at 20€ per night all inclusive. The magnificent 14th to 16th century castle of the Knights of St John dominates Kos town but perhaps the town’s most notable claim to fame is that it was the 460BC birthplace of Hippocrates, the ‘father of modern medicine’. He originated the Hippocratic Oath ‘to cure rather than harm’ still sworn by medical practitioners today and is said to have written it under a plane tree, a descendant of which grows in the spot today.
Turgutreis Marina is large and has superb facilities that even extend to a leisure club with a swimming pool and tennis courts but one pays for it at the extortionate rate of 42€ a night plus electricity and water at about 3€ each per day. If this were not enough to pay we had to fork out 15€ each for customs and immigration (this has to be paid in currency other than Turkish Lira) and 45€ for our Transit Log. Finally to make us feel absolutely fleeced we had to pay an Agent 75€ for doing the entry formalities for us, the Government having decreed such just two weeks before! So we paid a total of 150€ to enter Turkey, the most we have paid in any Mediterranean country.
English Harbour in Dergimen Buku, from where the SBS operated during World War II, is one such delightful landlocked creek surrounded by a forest of pine interspersed with deciduous trees which are in the main Fragrant Amber. We anchored and took a long line ashore, only the third time we have performed this manoeuvre which involves dropping and setting the anchor with sufficient scope and Miggy rowing a long line to the shore which she ties to a chain she clips around a tree, rock or bollard. We will have to do it frequently in the future as most of the Turkish coast is steep to and swinging to anchor in such deep water just isn’t feasible.
Miggy caught a Dorade (Dolphin Fish) about half a metre long but it got away just as we were landing it onto the bathing platform having tipped a little Gin into its gullet to kill it. The spring clip holding to lure onto the line came unclipped. It was a beautifully rainbow coloured fish that would have made extremely good eating but it was not to be!
Kormen is a strange harbour that hosts the ferry terminal from Datcha to Bodrum. It is out on a limb but has a restaurant at the seaward end of the quay. The harbourmaster was very welcoming and charged us 10TL for a night inclusive of water and electricity.
We had an excellent ‘Doner’ lunch, the lamb Doner roll having been made by the German restaurateur and marinated overnight in oil and spices. During the afternoon we spent an hour sweating and relaxing in the Hammam. After donning the ‘pestamel’, a colourful checked cloth wrapped around the waist, and laying for twenty minutes or so on the heated marble slab one is rubbed down with a course hand pad. It is incredible to see how much dead skin and dirt roll off the body. A shower is followed by a massage in soapsuds and another shower. Then one can relax on the slab for as long as one wishes before taking a final shower and drying off.
We anchored in the landlocked Panormitis bay surrounded by barren rocky hills studded with maquis and the occasional pine tree and olive grove. It is strange that anyone settled on Simi as it has no source of fresh water. This is the home of the Moni Taxiarchi Michail Panormiti, a monastery famous for its icon of Archangel Michael, the island’s patron saint and the guardian of seafarers and a place of pilgrimage for Greek sailors from worldwide. Like most icons with alleged miraculous powers it attracts enormous wealth in the form of gifts from those wishing favours or protection. Good business if you can get it! It is good to know however that some of this wealth is used to help poor families by way of financial support and work as well as providing scholarships to poorer students.
The monastery buildings are plain but classical 18th to 20th century. The central cloister has a choklakia courtyard of zigzag pebble mosaics and an arcaded balcony off which are the monk’s cells. It seems doubtful that many monks s reside here now; we have certainly seen none around. It may be that they live in more modest surroundings further up the hill. In the main now the cells accommodate a home for the elderly that offers shelter for those in need and holiday rooms. The monastery is dominated by an elaborate bell tower built in 1905 as a copy of the famous Agia Foteini in Izmir. From afar it appears to be a beautiful stone structure with contrasting brick arches and infill panels. In fact, close up, it is a rendered structure painted somewhat gaudily and imperfectly in blue and ochre.
We relaxed at anchor for a few days and at times were entertained by the anchoring antics of new arrivals particularly a Frenchman who dragged every time he laid the anchor. We had 45 knot squalls one evening and this Frenchman’s yacht dragged its anchor to fall down on us astride our chain and against our bow. He had no idea what to do to get out of the situation and we managed to hold his boat off Bella and tell him to raise his anchor and not motor. Needless to say he did both and was lucky not to lose his prop on our chain. Surprisingly we did not drag after this episode thanks to our Delta anchor. This idiot then came back for more but with the combination of our 5 million candlepower searchlight and vocal discouragement from all boats in the vicinity he finally went away to play somewhere else. We got to bed at about midnight like most others in the anchorage and soon after the wind eased.
Berthed in Gialos at a fee of 5€ for an indefinite stay the picture postcard Venetian village of Chorio rises in a steep amphitheatre above the harbour. The two and three storey brightly painted mansions, once the homes of merchants and captains reflect Symi’s prosperity under the rule of the Knights of St John in the 14th century when shipping and commerce, sponge fishing, boat building and other crafts flourished. The islands population grew to 30,000 only to be reduced to 3,000 by mass emigration during the harsh Italian occupation in the early 20th century. The island now thrives again on the back of tourism. In the cool of the morning we walked up the five hundred steps of the Kali Strata lined with the former mansions of the merchants and captains to the village of Chorio. The village has an identity entirely separate from the Gialos harbour settlement with its own community, shops, Tavernas and church. From Chorio we had magnificent views over the harbour and over Pedhi Bay on the southern side of the headland on which there are twelve somewhat dilapidated windmills. One has a new life as a restaurant however and no doubt others will be restored for similar uses as time goes on.
Another courtesy flag change and we were back in Turkey and had a very pleasant downwind sail, yes we sailed all the way, to Semiliye in the Hisaronu Korfezi. We sailed through the narrow passages between the mainland and the off lying islands from Dirsek northward which made for some spectacular scenery, the mainland being mountainous and the islands 100 to 200m high. There is an appreciable amount more vegetation on the hillsides than there is in Symi.
We berthed stern to with a laid line to the town pontoon where we were met by the mooring man, Roguish Osman, ‘008 the man with the golden teeth’ who has a permanent broad smile to show off his fine mouthful.
To Miggy’s delight the weekly open air clothes, household goods and fruit and vegetable market was open. We bought some peppers, nuts of various types and a thin, cool cotton long dress which looks really good on her.
It is however a little more commercialised than Selimiye mainly because of a ‘sand’ spit that extends 300 metres or so from the beach that is only calf deep. It appears as if people standing on the spit are walking on water. The spit is formed by residue from the river that enters the bay here so they say. Miggy doesn’t agree and thinks it is the remains of an ancient sea wall protecting a large harbour. Her premise is that the spit is in the wrong place relative to the river mouth , the ‘sand’ is not sand at all but broken red rock the likes of which is not evident at all in the river valley and the sides of the spit are steep to. The third and more romantic explanation is the best however and that is that the spit was formed by a girl carrying sand in the hem of her skirt to lay a pathway in the water to her lover who was at sea. She kept walking as the sand ran out and so drowned. Miggy swam out to and walked along the spit. She didn’t run out of sand thank goodness!
We left Ohaniye early to avoid headwinds in the Hisaronu Korfezi and so we did arriving through the shallow Kizil passage, which was not as fearful as the Pilot Book makes out, to anchor between Kizil Adasi and Kiseli Adasi. Whilst it is a delightful anchorage it is not one of clear water over a sandy bottom as stated in the Pilot. In fact the water is quite murky and the bottom is weed and rock with sandy patches. We were surrounded by the ruins of buildings, probably of the Byzantine era, and were fascinated by a pair of eagles nesting on Kiseli Adasi one of which was hovering in thermals above the island looking for prey.
The ‘Meltemi’ is a summer wind that can blow up to gale force for days on end in these parts. Such a wind is forecast so we decided to shelter in Bozburun harbour until the strong winds abated.
That evening a 40 metre gullet (traditional wooden Turkish sailing boat many of which ply these waters with up to a dozen passengers) , the captain of which was neither seamanlike nor professional and would be hard put to obtain a licence to drive a rowing boat in Northern Europe, forced himself into an impossible berth next to us. To add insult to injury the passengers insisted on talking loudly on deck directly adjacent to our sleeping quarters until 0200 despite my having politely asked them to be quiet at 0000. They then summoned the police after Neal had made bitter complaint to them which, after intense provocation, included questioning the legitimacy of their birth. Neal thought he should have been the one to call the police but he guesses inconsideration is not an offence; neither is probing their parentage we believe. It transpired that this was a group of doctors one of whom told me he was drunk; we were under the impression that taking alcohol was an Islamic sin! If this is the inconsiderate and deceitful manner in which the professional class of Turkey behave then God help the remainder of Turkish society. To be fair however every other Turkish person we have met has been warm, friendly and charitable and so we surmise that the doctors were suffering from holidayitis and alcohol.
We are back amongst large yachts having felt that Bella was holding her own against the smaller yachts encountered in the Cyclades islands. It seems that it is the charter yachts and those owned by foreign nationals keeping them in marinas close to airports that are the large ones. Although there are of course exceptions it seems to be the cruising folk like us that tend to go for the smaller models.
