Ruins, Tombs, and Buffoons

Day 5 on the gullet – Today we saw Byzantine castles, seascapes of raw natural beauty … and droves of tourists. We rented a smaller boat for the day to take us up the Dalyan river. The river snakes through bullrush country – in places, the bullrushes are taller than our heads.

We stop first at a crabbing boat. For us tourists, they throw a crab on a string into the water and try to get the giant loggerhead turtles to surface. These sea turtles are considered to date back 95 million years. (Not these exact ones, of course!) We get our glimpse when one smallish one goes after the crab. This is their egg-laying season, so the estuary is restricted from boat traffic at night. Of course, while we are there the crabbers try to sell us some crab. These are Turkish blue crabs, and we buy 5 for our cook to make this evening. We leave the crabbers and head from seawater into the fresh water of the river.

We first stop at the ruins of Kaunos. They are currently excavating this site and estimate that they have uncovered about 20%, with more buried deeper and wider. What we see is Byzantine (eastern Orthodox Christian era). While smaller than the site at Ephesus, it covers a large expanse. This is a more beautiful setting -- set high and terraced into a hillside. There are a Byzantine church here, another ampitheater, roman bath, housing, etc. I try to imagine how the ancient people must have abandoned the site intact – and it’s more apparent here than in Ephesus why. You can see how the sea once reached this spot creating a natural harbor. As it filled with silt, the sea subsided, leaving only the estuary behind.

Further upriver, we encounter the tombs of Kaunos. These burial sites are carved into shear vertical rockface. They are tombs of Lycian kings (early Greek period). How they were carved, I have NO idea! We wonder whether slaves were used, and how many died. You cannot climb to or in the tombs, but only gaze upon them. They go six meters into the hills, and are striking. We have lunch in the town of Dalyan, in a café set along the river and directly across from the tombs. An oasis in the heat. We comment on the hundreds of the kind of boat we are using today, and try to estimate the numbers of tourists they carry. We wonder if this place was entirely different even as recent as 10 years ago.

After lunch, we saw where most of the tourists were going. Upriver is a natural mud bath and hot springs area. Of course, all of 5 of us decide to get dirty. I imagined a tranquil setting. Instead, there is almost a production line of tourists. The mud bath is a swimming pool sized rectangle of muddy water. We smear ourselves and each other with mud from the bottom. Then, we stand in the sun to “bake.” (It’s interesting to see as the mud dries, a camoflague effect is created on our faces and bodies.) You shower the mud off before going in the hot spring, but even so it looked and felt dirty. Also swimming pool size with lots of people in it, Jim remarked, “It’s like taking a weekly Saturday night bath in a family of 100, and your turn is 99th.” It wasn’t a place to laze and relax! We showered off, and set back to the boat. (In fairness, my skin did feel a lot softer.)