Part 6

Pinara, Patara, Kayakoy, Olimpos and Teremessos.

We did some laundry in Fethiye, but Eric's all-cotton undies and socks didn't dry very well. So, the rear window of the car worked well as a dryer.Pinara was one of my favorite sites in Turkey.  Unfortunately I was feeling a little under the weather with a cold, so we didn't do a lot of hiking.  It was beautiful, though.  If you click on this picture, you can see the rock tombs carved into the mountain, as well as some ruins in the foreground, and the ubiquitous olive trees.


Eric found this unusual branch, connected to the tree at both ends.  How could that have happened?A very old olive tree.


These are the ruins of the theater in Pinara.Some close-ups of the theater


The edge of the theater had some neat interlocking rocks.


From higher up in the city we had great views of the theater and surrounding mountains (the Taurus range).


Eric climbed into one of the Lycian sarcophagi that were scattered everywhere, either from earthquakes or tomb robbers.Here's one that remains relatively intact.


The construction of walls in Pinara was not what we've seen normally--all the blocks being identical.  These blocks are all individually fitted to one another.  It must take a lot longer to complete.Eric in one of the tombs carved into a cliff.


This is what the inside of one of these tombs looks like--there's shelves, usually two or three of them, for the body.There were lots of tortoises around this site.


Here you get a better idea of what the mountain behind Pinara looked like--it was riddled with tombs.  It would have been fun to spend a couple days here, and hike to a few of these old tombs.The view from the top of the middle ruined city.  The hike up was a little steep, but on the way down we found the path that we should have taken.


More tombs, these somewhat more elaborate, carved into the hillside.A Lycian sarcophagus


More tombs carved into the rocks.  The insides of them were covered in soot, and have obviously been used for shelter over the years.That night we stayed in the Otel Beyhan in Patara.  There was a great view, but mosquitos got into the room, and Eric went on a middle-of-the-night rampage to get rid of them.


The next day I was still feeling sick, so Eric went alone to the beach and the ruins of Patara.Much of the ruins are in a swampy area.  Probably that's where all the mosquitos breed...


The theater in Patara has sand encroaching on it.Later on in the day we went to the abandoned village of Kayakoy.  Apparently in 1922, there was an exchange of population between Greece and Turkey--the ethnic Turks in Greece were to go to Turkey, and the ethnic Greeks in Turkey were to go to Greece.  This village used to be a Greek village, but after the Greeks left, it was never resettled.  It's an eerie place to walk around.  The buildings have all been stripped of anything useful, and many of them look like they've been destroyed on purpose.  None of them have roofs.


One of the abandoned Greek Orthodox churches had some interesting inlaid mosaics, made of black and white pebbles.


The roads often had steps in them--I guess this would be pre-automobile.Every building had a stove like this...


...and a cistern like this, where water from the roof ran down a gutter into the holding tankI figured that these cement basins were laundry facilities.


There were many sheep wandering around the village.Eric, checking out one of the smaller churches.


This is the other main church of the village.  The floor is black and white pebble mosaics, but large portions of it have been torn up.A view from the drive between Patara and Kemer.


We parked and walked down into this gorge off the highway.  Unfortunately we couldn't go back very far.Along the way we saw some more ruins off the road, and had to stop.  This picture is very typical of the area--greenhouses (most likely growing tomatoes), beehives, which were everywhere, and the Lycian sarcophagi, also everywhere.


The inside of one of the greenhouses, with tomato plants.  It was incredibly hot in there!  Hard to believe how anyone could work inside.One of the beautiful coves along the road.


We stopped and waded into the sea at one point.  My toe is pointing to strange looking creature that looked like a sea centipede.One of our planned stops along the way to Kemer was Olimpos, a very fine and scenic set of ruins.  This is an unplanned stop--it's a treehouse hotel/hostel, catering to young travelers planning on staying there for a while.  There were some very funky buildings.


There were also sitting areas, for people to hang out, read, and chat in.


The Olimpos site. Lots of tombs, all broken into.


This one was unusual--some very nice carvings on it.Eric climbs the walls...


...and sits in a window...as does Sylvia.


A stream runs through the site to the ocean.  Very senic.


This is the remnants of a canal system for the city.  It made a great walkway.Eric examining the mosaics in one of the ruined houses.


Steps carved into a rock, leading to a platform that perhaps held a sarcophagus.  In the background is the beach, and one of the boats that carries tourists to the beach.We had a brief chat with a guy at the beach, who was a German juggler.


We spent the night in Kemer.  The next morning we stopped at a grocery store to get some lunch supplies.  I don't think this name for a sandwich spread would work in the US!This is Termessos, the last ruins we visited in Turkey.  I think this rock won't be there after the next earthquake.


Some of the city was covered in ivy.We noticed this unusual design cut into some of the rocks--don't know what it means, though.


This is part of what's left of the gymnasium.  The mountains provided a very dramatic backdrop here.Eric, making lunch.


A cupola, still partly standing, close to the gymnasium.This looks like it was an old stone bridge.


Here's the view from underneath the bridge.This is what a wall looked like in one of the ruined houses--squares carved into the rocks, presumably for wooden floor supports, and narrowed windows--for defensive purposes, perhaps?


A pile of ruins--fun to boulder-hop around.Here a panoramic shot of the theater, which had an amazingly dramatic location.


Some more theater shots.  This theater was by far my favorite among all that we've seen.


I believe this is from the Temple of Zeus.


Very solid looking walls hereWe found these releifs on a toppled column. It was unusual to find something like this--normally it would have been taken to a museum.


A great view of Antalya, a large city, towards the south.One of the most interesting parts of Termessos was the water system, including cisterns.  There were huge tanks built into the ground.  They probably could have withstood a long siege.


I was able to climb into one of the tanks and take a look around.One idea we had about these stones extending out was that they were perhaps there to get an idea, at a glance, of how much water was left.


More stone sarcopgai, laying around, either broken open by grave robbers or earthquakes.If you click on this to get the higher-resolution picture, you can see that all of the individual dots of white are sarcophagi.


This is a relief, depicting Alcetas, a successor of Alexander the Great.  Our guidebook listed it as the most famous sight at Termessos, but I was much more impressed by the theater.