Before I start on Olympos, I’ve inserted a map of where we are at the bottom of this post and, if this works for you guys, I'll continue to do this. Feel free to comment and let us know (we’re really liking the comments – thanks to those of you who’ve left them and/or emailed me!).
Olympos has been all about chilling out and it has been rather indulgent but fantastic. Olympos is at the foot of a valley and about 90 mins up the coast from Antalya. Where we're staying is about 300m from the ruins of Olympos through which you have to walk to get to the beach. Many of the places to stay in the valley have tree houses as accommodation and all specialise in chilling out and socialising. We chose Saban Pensions as it was smaller than the others, less of a party atmos (we had enough of that in Beirut to last us a while!) and the food was said to be absolutely superb. They weren’t wrong. It is so good, we decided to stay two more days and it is also incredibly good value – about GBP£15 pp for accommodation, breakfast and dinner. Many who are here have returned for the 2nd or even 3rd time. Highly recommended but make sure you avoid the Tukish holidays as this place is popular.
There isn’t that much to do here apart from explore the rambling ruins of Olympos, hike up to the Chimaera, swim, laze round on the beach or in the hammocks back at Saban or play games, read books etc and that’s exactly what we’ve done during our time here. Free wireless internet has been brilliant and I’m sorry to say that I’ve really enjoyed being able to skype family, chat to/email friends. Its also enabled us to make contact with others we’ve met, see where they’re at and whether we can all hook up again somewhere else.
Met writing the blog with all the essentials to hand – beer, water and sun
This is where everyone eats, laxes out during the day or natters over beers in the evening. Its empty as its mid-afternoon and the heat has died a bit so everyone else is at the beach.
These are dotted around the perimeter of the site and you can easily laze away hours on the cushions. Very decadent and lazy.
The Chimaera are eternal flames fuelled by natural gas (largely methane) leaking up from the depths of the earth. They’re about an hour and a half walk from Olympos but worth the trek. There are fires all over the hillside and other vents where the fire had been blown out by the wind. It was quite fun setting fire to a stick then going round trying to relight the vents that had gone out. Some of them had a small build up of gas and went “phut” as the gas lit then went out again. I only tried one but it turned out to a biggie and gave me a hell of a fright as it went whooshka and blew flames at me, before all the other vents around it went phut, phut, phut and lit too so there was a whole heap of fire stretching along part of the bank. I got such a fright and leapt backwards in a hurry!! Nothing much phases Euan but I did see him get a fright last night eating dinner when an apple fell out of a tree and landed on the table next to him with a big bang.
Euan setting a stick on fire to relight some of the other vents
Vents like these are all over the hillside
You have to walk through the ruins to get to the beach so they become part of the scenery after a while but we looked through them shortly after we arrived so made sure we got whatever wow factor there was before we got too used to them
The ruins date back from 2nd century BC are mostly hidden by the trees but some are in quite good nick presumably partly due to their unexposed location. It is difficult to take pictures though as the trees throw dappled sunlight on the ruins.
The ruins run along either side of the stream
View up the valley from the acropolis (most of the ruins are hidden in the trees)
These were the only remaining mosaics and were pretty ruined. All the colour had gone and they were in pieces. An example what would have happened to the other mosaics we’d seen had they not been preserved in museums.
This is all that remains of the amphitheatre
We climbed up to the acropolis and got a great view down the beach.
The other end of Olympos beach! There are some ruins actually on the beach
Scary stuff!
One the way back down we came across a tortoise going down a very rocky path. We watched him for a bit and he kept getting stuck on these stones and had to reverse and try another way. Then he’d chose a bit that was too steep and he’d start slipping on his breast plate. He hung onto whatever he could with his hind claws, then had his wee front legs stretched way out in front of him trying to get to something solid. It didn’t look like he could look downwards so couldn’t see where he was going. He had us in stitches but we left him to it after a close inspection.
What was great about just chilling here was meeting and talking to different people. One person of note was Louis from France who was hitch hiking his way around Turkey and had a good story of how he managed to lose his Lonely Planet guide. He had hitched a ride on a big truck that had come from Turkmenistan and things were going OK until smoke started billowing into the cab. The driver didn’t speak English but motioned to Louis (who I don’t think needed much persuasion) to run. He grabbed his bag, forgetting his Lonely Planet and just ran. The truck exploded a few seconds later. Once he was far enough away, he got out his phone and took some footage of the burning wreck – with his Lonely Planet inside. The crazy thing is that this turned out to be the third day in a row that he’d had a near miss. He had been hitching on the roadside when a truck lost a load of wood and he had to scarper to avoid being squashed by something falling (I wasn’t sure if it was the logs or a power line) and then the car he was passenger in lost its steering down a mountain road. He said that after these three things he stayed in his room and didn’t go out for a day.
We also got chatting to some American girls who had recently graduated. It turned out that they were Jewish and talked to us about their “birthright passage” to Israel. Everything fell into place, all the young Americans we’d seen walking the streets in Jerusalem, in En Gedi etc. All Jewish folk from the US between the ages of 18-26 are eligible for an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel. They travel in a group and are taken on a 10 day tour of the country and at some stage during the tour, all those on their birthright trip meet up at a big event. The one this girl was at had 7,000 people attending, all on their birthright trip. We were trying to calculate the cost.
We’re off on a boat up the coast next for a few days (so more relaxing!) after this before seriously starting to make our way on up to Istanbul and then on to Madrid where Euans Mum and Sister are meeting us for a few days. You know, having these onward flights are quite useful for keeping us motivated to move onwards, otherwise I think we could easily spend an entire year in the Middle East. Not a bad thing perhaps but when there is a whole world out there to see, we need a bit of discipline and some framework to encourage us to move onwards. It is all too easy to get stuck on a beach, with cheap accommodation, food, beer and good company but I bet that there are different schools of thought on this one!
View Larger Map
Olympos has been all about chilling out and it has been rather indulgent but fantastic. Olympos is at the foot of a valley and about 90 mins up the coast from Antalya. Where we're staying is about 300m from the ruins of Olympos through which you have to walk to get to the beach. Many of the places to stay in the valley have tree houses as accommodation and all specialise in chilling out and socialising. We chose Saban Pensions as it was smaller than the others, less of a party atmos (we had enough of that in Beirut to last us a while!) and the food was said to be absolutely superb. They weren’t wrong. It is so good, we decided to stay two more days and it is also incredibly good value – about GBP£15 pp for accommodation, breakfast and dinner. Many who are here have returned for the 2nd or even 3rd time. Highly recommended but make sure you avoid the Tukish holidays as this place is popular.
There isn’t that much to do here apart from explore the rambling ruins of Olympos, hike up to the Chimaera, swim, laze round on the beach or in the hammocks back at Saban or play games, read books etc and that’s exactly what we’ve done during our time here. Free wireless internet has been brilliant and I’m sorry to say that I’ve really enjoyed being able to skype family, chat to/email friends. Its also enabled us to make contact with others we’ve met, see where they’re at and whether we can all hook up again somewhere else.
Met writing the blog with all the essentials to hand – beer, water and sun
This is where everyone eats, laxes out during the day or natters over beers in the evening. Its empty as its mid-afternoon and the heat has died a bit so everyone else is at the beach.
These are dotted around the perimeter of the site and you can easily laze away hours on the cushions. Very decadent and lazy.
The Chimaera are eternal flames fuelled by natural gas (largely methane) leaking up from the depths of the earth. They’re about an hour and a half walk from Olympos but worth the trek. There are fires all over the hillside and other vents where the fire had been blown out by the wind. It was quite fun setting fire to a stick then going round trying to relight the vents that had gone out. Some of them had a small build up of gas and went “phut” as the gas lit then went out again. I only tried one but it turned out to a biggie and gave me a hell of a fright as it went whooshka and blew flames at me, before all the other vents around it went phut, phut, phut and lit too so there was a whole heap of fire stretching along part of the bank. I got such a fright and leapt backwards in a hurry!! Nothing much phases Euan but I did see him get a fright last night eating dinner when an apple fell out of a tree and landed on the table next to him with a big bang.
Euan setting a stick on fire to relight some of the other vents
Vents like these are all over the hillside
You have to walk through the ruins to get to the beach so they become part of the scenery after a while but we looked through them shortly after we arrived so made sure we got whatever wow factor there was before we got too used to them
The ruins date back from 2nd century BC are mostly hidden by the trees but some are in quite good nick presumably partly due to their unexposed location. It is difficult to take pictures though as the trees throw dappled sunlight on the ruins.
The ruins run along either side of the stream
View up the valley from the acropolis (most of the ruins are hidden in the trees)
These were the only remaining mosaics and were pretty ruined. All the colour had gone and they were in pieces. An example what would have happened to the other mosaics we’d seen had they not been preserved in museums.
This is all that remains of the amphitheatre
We climbed up to the acropolis and got a great view down the beach.
The other end of Olympos beach! There are some ruins actually on the beach
Scary stuff!
One the way back down we came across a tortoise going down a very rocky path. We watched him for a bit and he kept getting stuck on these stones and had to reverse and try another way. Then he’d chose a bit that was too steep and he’d start slipping on his breast plate. He hung onto whatever he could with his hind claws, then had his wee front legs stretched way out in front of him trying to get to something solid. It didn’t look like he could look downwards so couldn’t see where he was going. He had us in stitches but we left him to it after a close inspection.
What was great about just chilling here was meeting and talking to different people. One person of note was Louis from France who was hitch hiking his way around Turkey and had a good story of how he managed to lose his Lonely Planet guide. He had hitched a ride on a big truck that had come from Turkmenistan and things were going OK until smoke started billowing into the cab. The driver didn’t speak English but motioned to Louis (who I don’t think needed much persuasion) to run. He grabbed his bag, forgetting his Lonely Planet and just ran. The truck exploded a few seconds later. Once he was far enough away, he got out his phone and took some footage of the burning wreck – with his Lonely Planet inside. The crazy thing is that this turned out to be the third day in a row that he’d had a near miss. He had been hitching on the roadside when a truck lost a load of wood and he had to scarper to avoid being squashed by something falling (I wasn’t sure if it was the logs or a power line) and then the car he was passenger in lost its steering down a mountain road. He said that after these three things he stayed in his room and didn’t go out for a day.
We also got chatting to some American girls who had recently graduated. It turned out that they were Jewish and talked to us about their “birthright passage” to Israel. Everything fell into place, all the young Americans we’d seen walking the streets in Jerusalem, in En Gedi etc. All Jewish folk from the US between the ages of 18-26 are eligible for an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel. They travel in a group and are taken on a 10 day tour of the country and at some stage during the tour, all those on their birthright trip meet up at a big event. The one this girl was at had 7,000 people attending, all on their birthright trip. We were trying to calculate the cost.
We’re off on a boat up the coast next for a few days (so more relaxing!) after this before seriously starting to make our way on up to Istanbul and then on to Madrid where Euans Mum and Sister are meeting us for a few days. You know, having these onward flights are quite useful for keeping us motivated to move onwards, otherwise I think we could easily spend an entire year in the Middle East. Not a bad thing perhaps but when there is a whole world out there to see, we need a bit of discipline and some framework to encourage us to move onwards. It is all too easy to get stuck on a beach, with cheap accommodation, food, beer and good company but I bet that there are different schools of thought on this one!
View Larger Map
2 comments:
Am so enjoying your blog. I read and re read it. Now that there is a map (which by the way I love)and have just spent ages looking back over the route you have been - makes me definetly want to go to the middle east during our longer trip we are planning to go on in 4 years time. There are too many points I want to comment on here so will be sending you yet another email.
Thanks for all the effort you are putting into this blog. Sue -Kate's Mum XX
WOW, that looked like some proper quality time. Nice beaches.
Loved the anecdote about Euan being unfased by a giant Gas bomb waiting to explode but getting a fright from an apple... hahahah priceless :)
if he didn't exist, we'd have to invent him !!
Looking forward to the next eposide and may I say, Thumbs up for the maps. at least now I understand where you are
take care
Ladi
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