We got up late and had a leisurely breakfast on the lawn of the hotel, under a fig tree, with a view of the Mediterranean *an angel sings*.
We have been procrastinating our plan for the next few weeks, so after evaluating many options we decided to go from Turkey to Croatia in August! We haven’t planned the detailed itinerary yet, but committed to the one-way tickets to start. We also booked our next few nights in Turkey and roughly planned where we plan to stop for the remaining week and a half.
By now it was after 2:00p so we walked out for a coffee and quick lunch snack. We found a great coffee place near the hotel (Linckia Roastery Coffee), but when the owner ran our credit card he just used the last charge amount (was more than we spent). We spent the next 15 minutes watching him try to reverse the change (but charged us again), until he finally was so flustered and embarrassed that he just went to the register and gave us all the over charged amount in cash, apologizing deeply. In truth, we may not have even noticed the extra amount charged, but it was a good representation out of honest we’ve found the Turkish to be.
We kept lunch quick and cheap which turned out to be a delicious chicken soup and stewed chicken/vegetable dish that totaled $5. Over lunch we looked at a couple brochures that we’d picked up for activities in the area, and a kayaking trip caught our eye so we decided to drive to a nearby small village to look into kayak rental. The road was windy and narrow, not too scary but kept Don on his toes (or brakes 😉 ).
Once we got into town the road narrowed even further into a single lane. A guy stopped us and was vigorously talking to us, all in Turkish so we had no idea what he was saying. Our guess was he was trying to sell us parking or a boat tour or maybe we weren’t suppose to go down the road anymore?!? We kept driving ahead hoping we were doing the right thing.
Once we parked we walked out to the boat pier at least to see the scenery. A man casually started talking to Don about the kayaks being by tour only and out of just the town we’d come from. Then he offered a boat tour for the next day that would allow us to see all that we’d see on the kayaks. We’d normally walk away from this but he seemed really nice and then offered to take us right then if we wanted. He offered it to be 2 hrs long and cost 200TL each ($58 total for both of us) - private for just the two of us. It was a beautiful night and we had no plans - we looked at each other and decided “why not?”. We chose to take a chance on this completely unplanned, spontaneous boat trip *yikes*.
It was absolutely amazing! The guy (Mehmet - put biz card at end of post) was so friendly and spoke enough English for us to understand him. We saw Lycian tombs and a castle, a Loggerhead turtle, old Roman ruins - all in the Kekova area that sank nearly 2,000 years ago following an earthquake.
Remains of homes in the middle of the bay.
The square box on the left is a tomb that used to be well above sea level.
Ancient Lycian castle from Byzantine era.
Ruins of shops that now extend below sea level.
Underwater ruins including structures and pottery visible thru the glass bottom of his boat.
He then asked if we wanted to swim (of course we did!) so he navigated us into a small bay with hardly anyone else around and got to swim and snorkel (masks only) to see many under water ruins,
when we got out of the water we were served tea, cookies and fresh cut fruit just in time to watch the sunset.
The best part it was just Don and I! 🥰
We drove back to Kaş simply awestruck by how our spontaneous evening had turned out, and how many choices led to that circumstance. Our takeaway was that some of our richest memories have come from spur-of-the-moment choices like this one - a reminder to our future selves.
As we came back into the city, the last light over the water was the icing on the cake - we stopped for a few minutes to enjoy it...
Would recommend Mehmet’s boat to anyone visiting Kekova!
Mahmet owns and operates this boat himself, living in the nearby village of Simena to take care of his ailing parents - a sweet and caring person that showed in how he runs his business too!
Comments