Day 14 – September 14 2024 – Antalya – Kaş

Awake at 2am, voices outside the dire hotel in conversation, business-like, but it wasn’t yet morning.

Awake at 6.20am, ready to prepare to leave. An hour later we were out, onto the still stanky streets, to Clio, with fresh simmel buns, choco for J and olive for me. Which were the very tastiest ever ever.

Over the hills and far away.

Through the tunnels, a detail of the smooth-as-slate blacktop,

Again beautiful mountains … an aborted detour to a Greek location … which turned too rough to transit in a 2-wheel drive … but to redeem we picked some stones.

Goats. Black and longlegged. Stone ground plateaux among the mountains.

Turks in a turquoise Tofaş

[Tofaş, interestingly, based in Bursa, 1968 – present]

Billboard:

Club Inferno

sooner or later you will be here

Fineke charming.

Demre in a sea of plastic.

and up into the hills behind Kaş. Up and around, and down, single-lane, on the hillside, until,

Beside,

Back down to the coast for a swim,

Fighting the wind … and after this photo was snapped, a family, grandmothers, several babies in tow, arrived, with inflatable flamingo, floaties, and … at the centre of the above photo, facing directly into the wind, set up camp. Dad tried to put up a sun umbrella. Grandmothers fully veiled, who would strip down into full body swimwear, swung one of the infants in a sheet, one at either end, rocking it calm.

I chased floaties down the as-it-was beach when the wind caught them. Others chased inflatables down the as-it-was beach when the wind caught them. Dad took a break from putting up sun umbrella, a cigarette, bir sigara içti. And we hugged the wall, waiting for the inevitable disaster when a gust picked up the umbrella and it came stabbing at us.

After the smoko, Dad had help; all the nearby males banded together gathering rocks to jam around the base of the sun umbrella. A wave caught a swimmer, near dashed the brains out on the rocks. Lady from our stay assisted with info.

Up on the top where we’d parked the car, a caravan was parked up in the wind. Between cars, the couple it belonged to had set up a table and chairs for a picnic, also fighting the wind, and had brought from the caravan, probably so it didn’t cook inside, a yellow bird in a cage.

I noticed the next day that they were still there, parked on the main road, enjoying their seaside holiday.

Thence, to Antiphellos (the Greek for Kaş, phellos meaning stony place) amphitheatre: the last theatre, in Içnik seated 10,000; this one, 4,000,

[odd, the way that guy turns around]

J about to take off,

Ship against the wind and swell,

We drove down into Kaş, to the marina, a mistake. Narrow and cars bumper to bumper, both on the road and parked alongside it. I’d read a blog written by a fan of the place. He’d started coming before the tourists discovered it. Flew in to Dalaman, by car to Kaş, year on year. It had kept, he said, its charm; even the man who sold almonds on ice was still there.

He was. Almonds on ice, at the marina, but no parks … so back home, stopping for şarap and bira at the local store, the place filled with spirits, wine and the fridges of beer, served by an able 14 year-old assisted by his younger brother.

The roofline to extreme left in the snap below belongs to the house pictured above. The snap below taken from the terrace onto which our room opened,

where, also,

Bottles of St. John’s Wort oil on the shelf, for sale. For use in cooking, it probably accounted for the chilled out atmosphere of this beautiful and tidy operation,

See the name of the place on the label, 3 Oda–3 room which is maybe what it started out being but as evening came and guests gathered at long tables for dinner it was clear there were more than 3.

Erinçe befriended us, a ‘marketing artist,’ working at the business of the family-and-friends until he went to his new job in İzmir, taking his mother with him … We spent some time trying to work out how everybody was related, after the guests had eaten the extended ‘family’ took over the eating area outside talking about business and deals deep into the night.

Erinçe explained the menu to us and this is what we got,

mantı, mini meatballs in dough & yoghurt sauce, semizotu, perslane, and

Sea Bream, fresh. We shared and … it was more than enough.

And the power went out. Erinçe lit us a candle and relit it, then went for reinforcements, returning with tea candles, but in the end gave up … earlier in the dusk, our companion,

After dinner we went up to the terras and got chatting with our neighbours, two Maltese.

Either they were good friends or we’d struck the only gay friendly accommodation in town, the couple we’d had to wait for to leave so that we could get into our room, clearly a couple. The hosts insisted on photographs with them before they left; the hostess insisting the men also embrace her and not just each other. Leaving, they said, Thanks for everything! As if there had been an ‘everything.’ They squeezed into the two-seater van, one in the back, and Erinçe drove them to the bus station, the gar, a huge place we passed on the way down to Kaş.