Ghost towns and falling skies

We left Pamukkale yesterday on an early bus.  Luckily we were first on as we all got seats on this public bus that took 5 hours.  An older woman got on later and decided that she wanted my seat so she sat on me and poked her stick into me.  I was about to slightly ungraciously offer her my seat but the tour guide offered her his.  It wasn't the most pleasant bus journey I've ever taken but it was bearable - especially as I had my trusty tablet and watched a movie after whiling away an hour or so playing cards with Mary.

We are staying in Kayakoy and we could have grabbed a taxi to the beach, but decided to chill out a bit at the hotel and then spend an hour floating in a nearby pool instead.  Dinner was a whole sea bass (or sea bream, I'm not quite sure) grilled on the barbeque followed by baklava and ice-cream.

This morning we set out at 8am to walk 6km of the 500km Lycian Way.  The first part of the walk was through a ghost town.  After the war of independence in 1922, there was a population exchange where Greek Muslims moved to Turkey and Christian Greeks living in Turkey moved back to Greece.  Many had lived here for generations and didn't really speak the same language as mainland Greeks so it all sounds a bit horrible.  The town of Kayakoy used to be a Greek village and when the Greek muslims came here they didn't like it and so built their houses on the below.  The village has been left to slowly decay.  The village was located on a hillside and not one house obscured the view of the other.  We then had a nice walk through pine forest and ended at the blue lagoon and at small village that is kind of part of Oludeniz where we spent the rest of the day.

The beach is one of those ones where you pay for a lounge chair and an umbrella, so we sat on the beach for our first swim.  The water was lovely but the stoney beach was a bit sore on the feet - especially as it was also hot.  After a walk through the town we decided to check out the blue lagoon.  It cost to get in but I really wanted to go for a swim there.  Sadly, when we got there, it looked awful.  Very crowded, full of and a bit dirty.  We swam on the ocean side instead and that was great.  I swam out to a small island and sat on the rocks for a bit looking at the yachts moored on the other side.  Then it was a beer on the beach as we watched the paragliders falling one after the other - the sky is full of them and they land right in the town so you have to keep your eye out when you're walking along the boulevard.  If we'd had longer, I would have been tempted to give the paraglider a go.  Ellie has just told me it's the second best place in the world to go paragliding after Rio.

On our way back to our hotel, we came across a small procession with a little boy all dressed up in white finery and riding a horse.  Boys in these outfits are quite common - they are on their way to get circumcised so their fathers look happy and proud and the poor kids look terrified.