Antalya - Trouble in Paradise?: October 29th - November 20th, 2023

Views of Antalya and the surrounding peaks from the top of a climb

As our plane entered the skies above Türkiye, Susan and I craned our necks to catch glimpses of the mountains that began to appear below. "Wow, look at those peaks." "Is that snow?" "I don't think so, it can't be snow, it's too warm still..." "Then what is it?" "Rock, I guess?" "Really? That can't be rock, there's so much of it." "Maybe it's a mine? I think I see a road leading up there..."

First views of Turkish mountains out the plane window

But as we took in more and more of the landscape below, it became apparent that Türkiye just has a metric buttload (technical term) of exposed limestone! The sun set as our flight to Antalya finished up, the shadowy peaks still poking up from a gray haze in the amber light and tickling our imaginations. Fun side fact, it only takes a little bit more time (and a fair bit less money) to fly from London to the Mediterranean coast of Türkiye than it does to fly from Salt Lake City to Omaha. No wonder the Europeans think international travel is no big deal.

We de-planed to an atmosphere more hot and humid than anything we'd experienced since June in Omaha. Even though the bikes were put to bed back in the UK, the only luggage we had with us was still mainly panniers, which meant we'd checked like 4 or 5 individual bags. Still carrying the apprehension we learned back in Oslo, one bag short on the far end of an international flight, we anxiously watched them roll onto the carousel - 1, 2, 3... All bags accounted for! Susan struggled to stand up straight after the plane ride but toughed it out to help me with the bags. Overencumbered, overdressed, and nervous about finding our pickup because our flight got in late, we quickly worked up a sweat scurrying through the airport.

But it didn't take long to find Aysel, the hostess and owner of Peak Guesthouses, waiting expectantly outside the airport. She easily picked us out from the crowd with the keen eye of a veteran of the tourism industry, explaining "I know what my guests look like, I can tell you're my guests". Short gray hair with flecks of white curled above her head while a couple necklaces with thick beads hung from her neck, and her tan complexion radiated the sun-soaked warmth that all landlocked middle-Americans associate with the Mediterranean. Her smile beamed through thick-rimmed glasses and you knew she must be older than the minimal wrinkles on her face otherwise indicated.

Situated about 25 kilometers west of Antalya, among the sheer, ashen, limestone faces of the Taurus mountains, lies the valley of Geyikbayırı, named for a small type of deer that calls the area home. Geyikbayırı is technically the town at the head of the valley, but also refers to climbing areas around the canyon walls more generally. This is where we would spend our next three weeks, climbing to our hearts' content in a land where there's actually such a thing as *too much* sunshine. Numerous camping and lodging sites line the single road going to and from the village; Peak Guesthouses, a short walk from some of the finest crags and a shorter walk from many others, would serve as our base.

We knew the general contours of the situation - that the climbing was far outside the city, we might need our own food for lunch (and to avoid paying a non-trivial amount for every breakfast and dinner), getting around without a car would be difficult, and that I definitely needed a new SIM card for my phone - but it was already late and we let logistical concerns about how to live in Türkiye fade into the background as Aysel swept us to her vehicle, where Ocan (the driver and do-it-all guesthouse handyman) helped load our embarrassing number of bags. We sped away from the airport and got our first taste of the fast-paced, hectic, do-whatever-works world of Turkish traffic. We also got our first taste of the national devotion to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (whose surname means "Father of the Turks") as Aysel explained that all the banners and Turkish flags hanging around the city were to celebrate Türkiye's 100th year of independence, and that the man whose stenciled profile flew proudly alongside many of them, Ataturk, was the dearest hero of the modern Turkish republic.

After an un-trackable number of turns through the city and then the village outskirts, with Susan and I trying to soak in all the lit-up signs and billboards and sights of this new and truly foreign land we could through the van windows ("Is that chicken on a stick??"), Ocan finally turned up a steep road and started climbing up what we knew must be the canyon. A final very steep dirt road that made us glad we'd ditched the bikes led to the cluster of bungalows at Peak, although we weren't yet allowing ourselves the luxury of four walls and a roof. We'd decided we could spend the first couple weeks camping in the tent and saving a fair bit of money, so we piled our things in one of the flat-ish spots on the property and set up the tent by headlamp in the dry, still air of the slightly-warm night (what a change from Northern Ireland!), admired the stars for a minute, and crawled in for bed.

The light of morning revealed more bits of paradise - heavy pomegranates splitting open with juicy seeds hanging from trees, oranges just starting to ripen, epic views of Sivri Dağ across the valley, and the very friendly guesthouse cat, Ella. The guesthouse cook, Umahan (spelling??), served up a delicious, traditional Turkish breakfast spread, hard-boiled eggs, gözleme, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, a plethora of cheeses and jams, honey, some kind of warm tomato-based casserole, plenty of bread, and COFFEE. However, we also started to realize a few things were far from perfect and racked up a list of nagging questions: Can we drink the water or do we have to buy it? (best to buy it from the guesthouse) Where's the nearest place to get groceries? (about an hour's walk away) Can we catch a bus from here? (short answer - no) How can we get lunch? (manage to flag down the cook during a magic half hour after breakfast before she starts prep for dinner) What's up with the kitchen we can pay a fee to use? (there's a single burner and a paltry selection of cookware in a space that might be someone's bedroom) Can we do laundry here? (ostensibly yes but you have to work around the loads Aysel leaves sitting in the washer for hours or days after they're completed)... and more.

Sivri Dağ looms across the valley from Peak Guesthouse

Trying to quiet our restless minds, not feeling very settled at the place that would be our home for the next three weeks, we decided we definitely needed to go do the thing we were here to do - climb! A nice German family staying there with their adult son let us borrow their guidebook (since the climbing shop just down the hill from us was closed that day), and we flipped through to find a shady crag with the easiest climbs. We threw the gear in our packs, picked a big pomegranate, and started hiking to the Sincap sector, getting sweaty in the blazing sun but taking a little joy in being so warm.

Susan grabs the biggest, ripest pomegranate she can reach

Sincap provided some good, shady climbing from 4c - 5c, and we ran into a family there also trying to hide from the sun (as usual, families and children mean we've found the right crag). Susan's back was feeling pretty stiff and painful, but she still got on the rope and insisted on carrying her own pack to and from the climbing, and even said she felt like the climbing itself made her back feel a little better (lowering down and carrying the backpack, not so much). The limestone might have been sharp but it was refreshing to climb on something with an easier grade that wasn't a slab. The pomegranate and some of our dwindling, leftover snacks provided a nice lunch and we had fun spitting the seeds into the forest (it's not litter if they grow there anyway!), laughing at our crimson-stained fingers and lips. Heading back to the guesthouse we felt a little optimistic, looking forward to more climbing, the concentrated sunshine of ripe pomegranates, and hoping some nights in the tent on the hard ground might help Susan's back. We enjoyed our first of many delicious (albeit mildly-overpriced) Turkish dinners (man they eat a lot of tomatoes!) before settling in the sleeping bags for our second night.

Susan is having fun climbing... she swears!

Our second day there we decided to take it easy, take some rest - Susan's back seemed to need it. We continued to figure out a few things, like how to manage to get a sandwich for lunch, but still came up against more small-but-frustrating difficulties - the bathrooms consistently ran out of the sawed-in-half paper-towel-roll toilet papers, the coffee supply at breakfast was tight (better be early in line!), and the wifi signal was flaky at best and totally useless when more than 5 guests made it into the common area. We did get a guidebook, though, so by the next day we were ready to head out to a new crag.

Easy climbs and shade were still the order, given the hot temperatures and our relatively weak fingers, and the Corridor sector offered both. Susan said she felt good enough to climb, and that climbing kind of made her back feel a little better, so we each shouldered a pack and started looking for the crag. Finding it took a little time and guesswork, involving a mini-via-ferrata ladder past a tree vibrating with the buzz of busy bees (who, thankfully, found enough work among the many small flowers keep them away from us), which led to a short scramble that deposited us in the aptly-named limestone hallway between the higher main cliff face on one side and a big standalone outcrop on the other, a secret garden filled with vines and lush green plants that didn't seem to know that winter was coming. Only one other party was at the quiet crag, and we got to climb the easy stuff at the far end in relative solitude. "Çok Güzel" was indeed a very nice route, and Susan found some comfy rocks to stretch out on.

The ladder leading up to Corridor sector
Susan takes a little siesta... and straightens out her back
One of the climbs in Corridor

On the way back we picked a wrong option from among the braided social trails and added some extra hiking down and back up a hill, which meant some extra sweating in the hot and dusty afternoon. By that point Susan's back was really unhappy about the backpack; she hunched pretty badly and took every step with a grimace, so not finding a quick way home became even more frustrating. But the next day we didn't plan to climb - we hoped to catch the bus at a random spot along the canyon road early in the morning, get into the city, and get some Turkish lira, a SIM card for my phone, some of our own food, a bus card, and a couple other supplies to make us relatively self-sufficient adults in this country.

Well, the TLDR on the next couple days is that Susan had so much pain she went unconscious during the bus ride into Antalya, and we ended up spending most of a day in a Turkish ER room. If you have some time to kill you can check out my overly-detailed write-up here. But suffice it to say that while spending an unexpected night in Antalya, Susan got some really good advice from her mom and we decided not to cancel the whole trip and go home early. Which meant that I had to run a bunch of errands for supplies while Susan got to hang out in a cat park all day (more or less :P ).

Susan in the hospital :(. We have an overly long and detailed post about it if you want to read the full story.

So, what then? We finally gave Susan's back some space to heal and pretty much just did a bunch of sport climbing. I wouldn't go so far as to say things at the guesthouse became frictionless, but we settled into a nice routine and figured out our way around, looking past the minor inconveniences and appreciating the wonderful ambiance between the limestone walls. I'd shoulder the heavy backpack with all of our equipment and Susan would carry her foam sleep pad so that she could lay down for breaks. In the mornings we'd try to be at the head of the line for coffee and eat a hearty breakfast to avoid drawing down our precious lunch supplies. In the evenings we'd enjoy whatever delicious dishes Umahan spent the afternoon preparing and be a little jealous of the Germans and their wine. While waiting for dinner Susan would play with the cat or I'd play with Susie, the guesthouse dog. On off days I'd stretch or do pull-ups and we'd do our best to fight the traveling fatigue and plan out future bits of our trip (Kazakhstan sure looks nice...).

Susan playing with Ella
Relaxing at Peak Guesthouse
Susie and one of the crag dogs playing... a really cute but annoying one who kept trying to sneak into our tent

Susan wasn't doing any lead climbing, and I was none-too-brave myself, demurring from trying anything too difficult or where the bolts looked far apart, but we still had a good bit of fun climbing - a testament to the sheer number of routes along the canyon walls. The limestone holds came in all types, from sharp and techy crimps to tenuous slopers to juggy huecos and pockets that linked together big dramatic throws. Grey and pocketed, tan and blocky, streaked with earthy crimson or mineral white, some of it looked suspicious but to our delight we rarely found a loose hold or wiggly block. Seussical stalactites beckoned and incut, tubular tufas provided clear lines up fiercely overhanging terrain, but for now we were too timid to throw ourselves at such imposing climbs. In a "small world" moment, one day we ran into Anju, a guide who operates out mostly operates out of Red Lodge, MT, but uses her Turkish citizenship to lead trips to Geyikbayırı as well; we enjoyed swapping Bozeman and Montana commentary with her, but not so much the conversation with her self-important (though very strong) client from Boulder.

An example of the beautiful but crazy limestone walls lining the canyon; the conspicuous shallower circle is Sarkit sector.
Watch out for the creepy crawlies!

Other guests came and went along with the days; we had a slightly sad farewell with the kind, older German couple and their son, but were happy to meet a couple women from Austria and another pair who pitched a tent, brave backpackers traveling much lighter than us on their own long trip, a man from New Zealand and a woman from Czechia. Susan kept the climbing light but said it was honestly helping her back a bit, stretching and strengthening. She certainly never got close to fainting again, and gradually straightened herself out faster after standing up, but also was still clearly operating in a disabled state. Honestly my own back was starting to hurt, and we grew suspicious of the air mattresses in our tent, trying several variations - more air (firmer), less air (softer), *no* air (ultra-firm), and even snatching cushions from the outdoor seating area at the main guesthouse lodge to see if that would help - but with no luck. We started to get to a point where *I* couldn't stand up straight after escaping the tent in the morning, so how could we expect Susan's back to get much better?

But after about 10 days we finally reached a moment we'd been looking forward to for a while - time for friendship! Our friend Maria escaped the shoulder season in Bozeman to join us for climbing on the sunny Mediterranean coast, and for the first time since early July Susan and I had a regular conversation partner besides each other. Wonderful company aside, her visit meant another awesome change - we'd split the cost of one of the bungalows and Susan and I would finally have proper beds! The promotion to four walls and a roof felt pretty sweet after two weeks of camping in the slanty guesthouse yard.

Enjoying time with friends... and Ella enjoying time with Susan

Maria's flight suffered a few delays so she didn't arrive until close to midnight, but Susan was excited enough to wake up and say hello (I hadn’t gone to bed yet of course) and we shared some warm hugs before all turning in for the night. Super stoked to climb, though, and figuring it was best to just push through the jet lag, Maria woke up with us the next morning, relished the Turkish breakfast (they really know how to do a breakfast spread), and we all set out to find some good rocks. We did a little bit of climbing, broke for an afternoon nap, and then went back out with new climbing friend Florian.

Pano of Geyikbayırı canyon - so much rock to climb!

Florian was a tall, older climber from Bavaria, lanky and strong, with long white hair pulled back in a ponytail and a hint of a white goatee that grew scruffier with each day at Peak Guesthouse. Traveling solo, he met Maria at the airport while they were both waiting for their pickup. She asked him, "But who'll be your climbing partner while you're here?", to which he quipped, "Well it looks like I already found one." He ended up being a hoot to climb with, slowly joining in with our vulgar humor and schooling us in the dishonorable ways of sport climbers who get to the top first and ask questions later. His "stiffy" - a special sport climbing tool that lets you clip a bolt a good 18" beyond your normal reach - provided the material for countless crude jokes but also got us through countless sequences of tough moves. This combined with Florian's impressive height and reach meant he could basically aid his way through any route in Geyikbayırı.

Florian working a hard climb in the canyon sector

I'd only managed to get back up to leading about 6a (my excuse being that we hadn't sport climbed since Flatanger in August), so it was pretty nice to have Maria and Florian around to put up ropes on some harder stuff and cheer me on to try a few of the tougher climbs myself. On their first day we climbed "Barbarossa", right behind the guesthouse, which went up a deep chimney to then weave through a hole and re-emerge on the reddish limestone face; it ended up being not too hard but fairly intimidating. Susan and I finally got to visit some of the more famous (i.e. more difficult) sectors like Sarkit and Trebenna; at Sarkit Maria put up the rope on "Saxophone", and we all got the chance to try to learn how to play the massive karstic stalactites in an effort to make it up an ever-steepening wall (unfortunately Susan's back didn't like that one and it set back her recovery by several days). We also had the chance to pull and pinch on some of the tufas and attempt some of the routes that tackled overhanging faces with big moves to good holds, while Florian challenged himself with climbs far more thin and technical but just as steep, and Maria got herself to the top of a 7a+ with a crux on some terrible slopers. Our only complaint was that the calm days of late October had given way to bustling groups of climbers at nearly every crag; the Corridor sector resembled a crowded weeknight gym more than the quiet garden we’d found the first time around.

Susan coming out of the hole on "Barbarossa"
Maria putting the "Saxophone" to good use
Maria leading between the wacky features in the Trebenna sector
Ben lowering down through a karstic limestone pseudo-chimney

We also took a day to visit Antalya, mostly spent laying on the beach, swimming, and eating a ridiculously good meal with some of the freshest seafood I've ever had, at the sort of restaurant where you choose the fish you want straight from the cold case. Grilled seabass, kebabs with salmon, spicy fried squid - pricier than most food in Türkiye but incredibly delicious. Armed with some first-hand experience, we'd managed to hitchhike down to the bus stop instead of walking, and then rode the bus into town, and for the whole drive I nervously watched Susan (standing this time around) for signs of pain and mentally prepared for what might happen if she passed out. Luckily she said the swimming felt wonderful for her tight muscles, and the worst situation came from her trying to sit during the meal, not during the bus ride down or the taxi ride back up. We’d traveled into Antalya, spent the morning getting coffee and the afternoon relaxing on the smooth stones of the beach, the gentle click-clacking of tumbling rocks filling in the space between the crashing waves of clear turquoise water that came and went endlessly under the watchful eyes of far off grey peaks, and Susan made it there and back still healthy; I felt a sense of relief, like maybe we'd turned a corner from the events of two weeks ago and maybe our trip could return to more-or-less of a normal state.

Our posse of climbers strolling the Antalya beachfront
Maria plays with a questionably-enthused cat over Turkish coffee

All the same, it didn't seem wise for Susan to join me for an overnight, 13 hour bus ride to Istanbul (or is it Constantinople?), so we booked her a plane ticket instead. After a week of much laughter and some raw fingers, Maria got in a last couple climbs with Florian while Susan and I constructed a tarp bundle to leave at Aysel's and stuffed a couple of panniers to send home with Scott. It was time to see even more friends for an awesome Thanksgiving holiday in Europe's largest city. We schlepped the luggage into Ocan's van, dropped off Maria and Susan (with one small backpack) at the airport, and then unloaded me and far too many bags at the Antalya bus station. A few hours later the bus host was giving me a tired look as he tagged my four bags and shoved them in the hold, I found my seat, and tried to settle into what would be my lodging for the night.

Overnight bus rides always seem a little surreal to me; as the bus trundled up and out through the mountains that surround Antalya, the music of Wednesday's album Rat Saw God fused indelibly in my head with ghostly glimpses of cliffs along mountain passes and views of valley cities' yellow lights branching out to fill otherwise black gaps in the Earth. I caught bits of sleep here and there, waking up always in a new place, never sure where except that it was in between Antalya and Istanbul, the frost and ice on the ground betraying that it must be far from the sea, up in the hills. Some stops were short, just to pick up or drop off passengers, and some long enough for everyone to get out and grab some food; I never knew for sure so always stayed nearby the bus, ready to hop back on at a minute's notice.

By the time the bus arrived in Istanbul I needed sleep and caffeine in equal measure, but still had to find a cab to where our rat collective would convene for the next 5 days. A driver quickly spotted the dazed tourist wandering out from the station, blinking confusedly in the sunlight and burdened by too many bags, and offered a fare to take me into the city; knowing he was probably ripping me off (taxis are *supposed to* run meters) but too tired to care, I took it, and much appreciated the cigarette he gave me. When he dropped me off I managed to resist his demand for even more money and started to amble around the labyrinthine neighborhood of Galata, not exactly aimless but following the guidance of a clearly struggling Google maps and an indecipherable-to-me address system. Finally I found what seemed like the right numbers and gave Scott a call; to my great relief the door opened to reveal his huge grin and he helped carry my excess baggage up to the apartment.

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