The Turkish Mole

Since our arrival in Turkey we’d had something of a purple patch in terms of our time in the country; Ephesus, the Travertines and our cruise from Fethiye to Olympos, were all memorable experiences.  As Lance Armstrong can attest however it’s naturally hard to keep a run like this going and the week following our cruise was to demonstrate this.

On reflection I think the downward slide can be attributed to a Mole in our ranks and its cunning leverage of the Turkish four day Islamic, Kurban Bayrami (the merrily named ‘Festival of Sacrifice’) holiday period. This year it also coincided with Turkish Republic Day and so represented a fair chunk of holiday time for the Turks.

Worried of Turkey

A key aspect of the Festival is the slaughtering of a halal animal (cow, goat, sheep or even a camel) by each family and the distribution of the body parts in equal portions to close family, friends and those less fortunate. From our observations the goat seemed to be the slaughteree of choice on the western Mediterranean and with approximately 77 million Turks, over 96% of who are Muslim this equates to a lot of worried goats.

Like any good shyster the Mole gained our confidence over a long period and did so again through its whisperings and pointed insights about not staying in Olympos, the default post cruise location, but rather Cirali, a mere 3km further along the beach front.

Chimera

Whereas Olympos is effectively a series of backpacker hostels coming off a dirt track, Cirali is its own town set in a forested coastal strip ringed with small rural holdings and overlooked by the surrounding mountains. With free bikes available from our hotel we spent an enjoyable afternoon pedalling around before pulling over and enjoying the local speciality of pomegranate and orange juice in one of the many vegetated grotto like eateries.

Cirali is also closer to the primary attraction in the region, the ‘chimera’, a naturally occurring phenomenon whereby volcanic gases exude from the rocks on the side of a mountain and are ignited through contact with the atmosphere.  Setting off at dusk we hiked through the town and surrounding countryside to watch the sunset as the flames flickered from the rocks all around us.

Kaleici, Antalya

Our plans from Cirali had been informed by prior research that pointed to accommodation and spots on any bus being hard to come by prior to, during and after the Bayram holiday period.  To manage this, and on advice from the Mole, we’d chosen to spend four nights in Kizkalesi on the eastern Mediterranean as we tried to wring the last vestiges of heat out of the remnants of the Turkish summer.

Our journey to Kizkalesi took us through the historic city of Antalya for an evening, which should have provided us with our first warning signs about the Mole as the directions provided were all over the place for moving in and out of the city from the bus station.  We had however no reason to question its advice and once we’d made it to Kaleici, the historic Roman centre of Antalya and despite the turning of the weather, could have easily spent more than an evening, but the scarcity of buses meant we were on the move again the next day.

It wasn’t until our bus rolled into Kizkalesi that the extent of the betrayal the Mole had wrought upon us was apparent.  For the first day or so neither of us could bring ourselves to openly discuss this betrayal as we found it hard to believe that it’s vivid description and promotion of the town as ‘wonderful’ could be so far from the truth.

The Kizkalesi the Mole, or as it is otherwise known, Lonely Planet, had described was a far cry from the mosquito infested, litter strewn concrete jungle by the sea we encountered.  With its intermittent electricity supply and roaming packs of wild dogs and mangy cats we would normally have moved onto the next location, however with accommodation and bus spots at a premium due to the Bayram holiday we were locked in for four nights.

During this time I came across an earlier description of the town stating it was in danger of losing it’s character due to the mushrooming of B and C grade concrete block hotels. Well it has lost that battle and also the one to control its approach to waste disposal. 

More broadly this appears to be a particular problem in Turkey and even on our cruise we’d be fishing out large plastic water containers as we swam around.  Within this context I couldn’t help but think on hearing the news over the past few weeks that Afghanistan has declared its first national park, with a view to attracting tourism in the future, that I hope they consider and provide the infrastructure to handle the unintended environmental impacts that rapid tourist development can bring, lest such development destroy the values that attract tourists in the first place.