Fethiye, Oct 11 - 13

Finding a bus to my next destination along the Mediterranean was a bit of a stressful experience because after Ramadan (with whose last couple of days İ had intentionally planned my trip to coincide) the Turkish celebrate three days of Bayram, a candy festival when total strangers offer you sweets (yum!) but also people travel like they do on Memorial and Labor Day in the US. Agh! Anyway, with the help of my hosts in Antalya İ was able to score a seat on a smaller bus, complete with random by-the-side-of-the-road pick-ups and drop-offs, and was on my way.

On my first afternoon İ explored the town, with its ancient Hellenistic theater surrounded by a main street on the front and houses all around. It was pretty neglected, overgrown and covered in graffiti, and kind of depressing. Turkey is a lot like Mexico this way -- there is so much history, literally thousands of ruins everywhere, that no amount of government or private funding will ever be enough to adequately reconstruct and/or preserve even a small part of it. Life just goes on... İ did see some Lycian rock tombs carved into the cliffs above the city, though, so those were pretty cool.

The next morning, I set out with some newly made friends (an American girl and a British guy) from the Pension where İ was staying to Kaya Köy, an old Greek village that was abandoned during the compulsory population exchange of the early 20th century and which now remains only as a ghost town. We ended up tooling around the quiet ruins, the old houses with their cold chimneys, the churches with their empty windows, for several hours. Next on the agenda was a longish hike/walk over the hills to Oludeniz, the impeccably blue & green bay that features on practically every Turkish travel poster... but we took a wrong turn practically from the start (why didnt my guide book tell us there were two divergent sets of red dots marking a path?!) and ended up about an hour later at a small, pristine lagoon -- which we soon found out was called Cold Water Bay -- but nowhere near our intended destinatıon! We tried to convince the two lone Turkish guys we came across to drive us to the right place on their motorboat, but they wanted a ridiculous sum of money to do it... so back we went, over the same hills, past the same old tomb at the top, down through the same ghost town, right back to the spot where wed had lunch about 5 hours earlier. Parched (none of us had brought along quite enough water), we chugged a beer, munched on some just-picked pomegranate seeds, and hopped the dolmuş (locla minibus) back to Fethiye. Fortunately İ had some very amicable, interesting and most of all patient travel companions so İ think it counted as a good, if misguided, adventure!

My departing bus the next day wasnt scheduled till late afternoon, so what did İ do? İ JUMPED OFF A MOUNTAİN!!!!!!! Seriously! Apparently Oludeniz is one of the top two places in the world to go paragliding, and, well, who was İ to argue with that? İ and about half a dozen brave (or insane) other souls piled into a safari-type truck for the long, long, bumpy, winding, WINDING, oh-my-god-i-dont-even-want-to-know-how-close-we-are-to-the-edge-of-the-road-right-now ride up past the tree line, past the clouds, UP UP UP 1700 meters to the top of the mountain. I met my "pilot," Bayram, who laughed as İ slipped, shaking (from nerves and also because it was really cold up there) into my flight suit and into the bulky harness that would also serve as my eventual seat. He strapped himself into the parachute-like contraption spread out on the rocks behind him, strapped himself to me, and then instructed me to RUN RUN RUN! Which was really more like a jog-waddle, because the harness is strapped behind your knees and so you feel like a turtle tripping over rocks and (did i mention?) RUNNİNG OFF THE SIDE OF THE MOUNTAİN! Straight into the clouds we went, over the trees, and İ have never been so terrified and exhilarated and glad to be breathing every last molecule of air in my lungs in my life. After a few minutes we finally broke free of the clouds and there it was, this impossibly blue, turquoise, pristine bay below me. He took off my helmet and let me snap a dozen pictures (with my feet in them, of course :-) ) and then asked me if İ wanted to "spin." Um, ok, sure! so we leaned right, and right, and right, and we were spinning in a big circle and if İ werent so deliriously happy İ think İ might have passed out from the lack of air in my lungs! We were flying! İt was absolutely amazing, beyond even the babble İm putting on this screen. After some time (25 minutes? İ have no idea) we finally began our descent onto the sidewalk behind the beach, and İ swear İ think it took about an hour for my heart rate to even begin to go down. İf it hadnt been for the time difference (7 hours to NYC, making it about 5am there) İ think I would have called every person in my phone book... as it was İ just savored the memory and am looking forward to these pictures most of all :-)