The Mediterranean Odyssey
Or "Scuba, Sunken Cities and Scenic Sights"

DAY ONE

Departure

0400
2hrs sleep
Alarm
Snooze
Alarm
Shower

Blurry eyed blunderings
past nightclups
still pounding
onto the bus

Airport
Security
8YTL coffee
Security

Check in chaos
Turkish style
multiple queues
confused looks
just push forward

Meanwhile,
Ataturk
huge, eerie and golden
looms high on the wall
looking down on us all

Across the tarmac
and onto the plane

0900
we emerge into the heat of Antalya
onto the bus to the otogar
otogar to mini bus

Antalya

We do not stop
It looks like a nice town

Mountains on one side
Sea on the other

Rows of concrete apartment blocks
spoil the view in between

The minibus drops us at the cross roads
and we take another minibus
down the twisting valley road
into...

Olympos

The Lycians used to hang out here
Romans thought it was cool too
They took it over
Several other Empires had the same idea

About five years ago the place was full of hippies
They have been moved on
bad for business
unfortunately

Today it is colonised by tourists
Mostly middle class Turks roughing it
They find it hard to travel internationally
for some reason...

Other ethnic groups include
in order of prevalence
Australians and Kiwis
Germans in Speedos
Oversunned English

We checked into Orange Pansiyon
It was pretty good
It had air con

Setup

Olympos is in a valley
there is one road

on one side are mountains
on the other there is a river
dry this time of year
and mountains

Along the road are pansiyon
or guest houses

many of them offer tree houses
most of these qualify as they are made of trees

At the end of the road there is a man in a box
beyond that are ancient ruins
beyond theses there is the beach

You must give the man in the box
two lyria or he will not let you through

Pay to go the beach
Well, as more of what is public
is sold
this is something that we should get used to

The Beach

There is no shade
It is covered in baking tourists
who later complain about sunburn
Don't get me started

It goes for miles
with rocks

This might be alright for the English
but I am used to pristine fine white sandy beaches

On the plus side
The is ocean
as far as the eye can see

And it is wet and cool and salty and floaty
and man, do I miss the ocean
And there are lots of fish

Chimera

The Chimera was this weird fire breathing horse goat lion thing
He used to pop up whenever there was a storm coming
or anything nasty generally

Luckily
This hero dude Ellerophone,
with the help of the winged horse Pegasus
managed to slay the bugger

Where he fell
There are flames shooting out of the ground

That is what the Greeks reckoned anyway
Homer talks about it in the Illiad, I think
Sailors used to naviagte by it

Those Greek have shot through
but the flames are still shooting from the ground

We took a bus up there in the middle of the night to check it out
It is pretty trippy

Modern science type persons
think that they are methane vents
they still can't explain why you can put them out
and they will just set right back on fire

It like the weird beast idea thing myself

It is also where they got the flame for the olympic torch
and still do

Worth a look if you are in the area

When we got back after one
we slept for about twelve hours