Two Too Many Oranges, Çıralı: November 30th - December 13th, 2023
It was time for us to say goodbye to Peak GuestHouse. We ended up being there for a month! Which was maybe a little too long to stay in a guesthouse. We said goodbye to Aysel and took one last transfer with Ocan to drop off Hong-Yen at the airport. After dropping Hong-Yen off, Ocan pulls into a roundabout to leave the airport area and immediately gets hit by a motorcyclist. This occured across the street from the police station so first responders got to the man quick. The motorcyclist left in an ambulance and we were directed to the police station. Ben and I stayed out of the way while Ocan went in and out of the police station with various papers from the van. Finally, he was released and he drops us off at the bus station. Our vague feelings of unsafety while driving in Türkiye were justified.
We bought our bus tickets for Çıralı, a sea side beach town with climbing access. The bus ride was a beautiful ride down the coast. The bus dropped us off on the side of the highway and we needed to take a dolmuş the last 7km to the town. It never came...it was low season so it just wasn't running. We messaged our Airbnb host and he came and got us after dropping his kids home from school. Throughout all of that my back was MOSTLY ok, but I was greatful Ben could handle the shoving of the bags on and off the bus. Especially because now we'd traded several individual panniers for the super big winter sports bags (which would be useless for the next 3 weeks) - a way too heavy duffel and an awkward green trekking backpack. Though I was, thankfully, able to haul my fair share of bags.
Our home for the next two weeks was HUGE! We had an entire room that we didn't use. The space was the second floor above the hosts home and on the grounds there was a hotel (closed for the season) and an orchard of orange and avocado trees. Our host brought us bunches of oranges every two days! Çıralı was over run by oranges. We passed a car filled to the brim with oranges leaving barely enough room for a driver to slide in. Dumpsters overflowed with oranges and so did our bellies.
Çıralı is a cute little beach town with a beautiful pebble beach. In the summer it must be swarmed by tourist. As it was we were in one of the few places still open. Most of the lodging, shops and restaurants were shuttered, but enough was still open. The town is along a popular long distance hiking trail called the Lycian way so we saw quite a few hikers coming and going. There were still a smattering of tourists here and there and thankfully the grocery stores were all open as we were looking forward to cooking for ourselves in a nice kitchen. We spent the two weeks cooking good food (I had the best avocado I have ever had), climbing (I wasn't leading still due to my back but Ben had some good leads) and checking out some of the tourist stuff (generally finding cats to pet).
Climbing around Çıralı was very secluded compared to Geyikbayırı. We ran into maybe three other groups the entire time we were there. We spent entire days seeing no one else climbing.
We checked out three main areas for climbing. The first area, called Çıralı area, we could see from our kitchen window. To get to it, we crossed the road, hopped a fence, and crossed a river. The area had a 6c+, "Serdegine", that Ben really wanted to get clean. His first attempt he needed a lot of takes as he figured out the overhanging delicate feet moves. When we came back about a week later for the second try he ALMOST had it but a foot slipped at a crucial point. He was sad as it wasn't likely we would make it back to the area due to weather forcasts. But we got a little weather window on our last day before we left that allowed him to take one last go at it and he did it clean! No falls, no takes, his feet got sloppy at the end and I was tense and ready to catch a fall, but he got it!
The second area we checked out was called Dershane. This one we got to walk down to the beach and then through an archeaological site and then cross a river to get to the climbs. This area had a very weird highly rated easy route. It was slabby with strange bolt placements that meant in between each one you would hit a ledge if you took a fall. One of those climbs that make you question your choices in life. Ben ended the day on a super hard boulder problem style lead that was pretty neat. It was overhung so nice clean falls if needed. We had a doggo claim us as her humans for the day. She even scared off other dogs, even though we never fed her or gave her much attention. Street dogs always make me a little nervous, especially the big "sheep" dogs that are the main street dog in Türkiye as they are big, menacing looking and would definitely win if it decided to fight me.
The third area was called Cennet. To get to this area we got to walk to the beach, walk along the beach, cross the river as it met the sea and then hike through some ruins up the hill. This area had a beautiful view of the Mediterranean and some pretty hard climbs. Our first day in this area Ben put up a very fun route and then he did the harder extension of it as well. The second day Ben STRUGGLED up a neat route that was very fun on toprope but due to how the bolts were placed, was terrifying on lead. My back got kind of hurt belaying and climbing here so that was a bummer as I was close to feeling mostly recovered and then felt like I had to kind of start over. *Sigh getting old is hard.
Days we weren't climbing we got to do some cultural activities! One day we hiked to the Yanartaş (flaming rock in Turkish) also called the Chimera flames. We timed it to arrive as the sun was setting to get the full effect. The hike is super popular and is on a very nice and steep trail with signs encouraging you with how much farther you need to hike uphill. The Chimera flames are gas vents that have been burning for over two thousand years. Sailors used them as a land mark and travelers have been using them to make tea for centuries and now tourists roast marshmallows. There used to be a temple to Hephaistos, the Greek god who was also a blacksmith. Now there are ruins and lots of cats enjoying the warmth of the rocks near the vents.
On another day we checked out Olympos Beydagları National Park. Olympos was a city from 400 BC and was a major Lycean City once upon a time, but was abandoned by the 15th century. We got to scramble around in the archeaological site, see some sarcophogi, bathhouses, the theater, and some remaining mosaics. Intricately carved columns lay half buried everywhere. Portraits adorned blocks re-used to support retaining walls. Tree roots tore through walls that used to house bishops and now hold mud that the workers were hauling away in a restoration project.
When we weren't climbing or touristing we were often hiding from torrential rain in our nice place. We managed to finish watching "The Last of Us" which we had started on the plane ride from the US. We got more caught up with the blog and trip planning and we generally got to rest and I tried to heal my back.
Eventually, we had to leave our nice spacious home in Çıralı. Our host took us up the hill to where we could flag down the bus to Antalya where we were going to finally spend some time doing tourist things.
We had enough time when we arrived in Antalya to go to the Aquarium which boasts the biggest tunnel aquarium in the world. Being from Omaha, we had to check out how it stacked up against the Henry Doorly Aquarium. Since it was off season we had the place nearly to our selves. The tunnel was massive. Very cool and the people decorating the space clearly love their jobs. Though, the Henry Doorly tunnel has more variety of species (have to defend our hometown zoo). We also found it ironic that the aquarium had a display on plastic messing up the oceans and discouraged using bottled water....literally right next to a vending machine selling bottled water. One day single use plastics will go the way of leaded paint and gasoline, but it is not this day.
Our next day in Antalya we spent in their archaeology museum. It was located in an unassuming building but ended up having a huge collection and was much bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. We got to see impressive gravity defying marble statues, coins, sarcophogi, jewelry and, of corse, loads of pottery. I'm thinking a business worth no more than a million dollars is to set up a pottery studio outside of an archaeology museum and produce replicas for sale. Again, the scale of time in Türkiye is hard to wrap my head around. Also the way certain parts of history are told reveals some loooooong simmering tensions. Which again are on time scales I am not used to capturing in my head.
After the museum we wandered to the beach where we swam in the sea and read our books. As it was December not many beach goers were going in the water, but lots of people were relaxing on the beach and the water was warm enough for some people to venture in so we weren't the only ones swimming. Once we dried off, we got some food at a restaurant overlooking the beach. It was a lovely way to end this long stay in the Antalya area of Türkiye.
Beautiful mountains!! I'm so happy you found purr machines ^^
ReplyDeleteSusan has a knack for that 😸
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