After a day of touring Ephesus, we hopped a 5 hour bus to Fethiye, which is on the Mediterranean coast, a cute marina town and began our week of beach life. Before we left for our trip we hadn't found any places to stay that struck our fancy so we arrived in town with no particular plans. Some girls at our pension in Ephesus had overheard us talking and suggested a place called George House, about 45 minutes outside of Fethiye. Ashley & Steven have a waterproof camera, which is what we ended up using most of the time at the beach so my pictures of this part of the trip are pretty thin. When I get ahold of their pictures I'll post more.
We spent one night in Fethiye, hiked up the hill for a view, wandered the marina, stocked up on some groceries, and decided we had seen enough for the moment.
We hopped a dolmuş, which is a public scheduled mini-bus service. They were great, because they went pretty much everywhere you were going, were super reasonable, and didn't necessitate tours or renting a car (we did that in Cappadocia, gas was $15/gallon). George House is at the top of Butterfly Valley, and rather in the middle of nowhere. The valley is a popular stop for some of the tour boats to stop at and has a gorgeous beach. From our place there was a rather perilous 30 minute trail down to the beach. The tour boats all come at one time of the day and stay for an hour, so the valley was ours for the rest of the day. George house included breakfast & dinner and the food was all grown in their gardens, bread baked in their oven, and honey from their bees.
Butterfly Valley
Bees makin' honey
"What time is dinner served?" "After sunset"
George House is also right along the Lycian Way, a 500km long hiking trail dating back to ancient times and we spent time doing day hikes on parts of it. One day we went to Kabak, which was a 7km fairly steep hike and then lounged on the beach for the whole afternoon. We meant to take the bus back but accidentally used up all our money (lol) and ended up walking the Coastal Trail (another 9km) back and almost missing dinner. Both walks were beautiful, as was the beach at Kabak (another steep walking trail down to the beach, so no one around to bother us). It didn't get dark until about 9:30 in the evenings so we had long days to bask in the sun and pack in lots of activity.
Kabak beach
Olive Garden. Good hummus.
Dave the Dog, our faithful friend
I took all these as we were walking back on the Coastal Trail and didn't really stop to aim or adjust my settings so they're all kind of blown out but for some reason I really like the way they turned out anyway...
Another day we hopped over to Ölüdeniz, which is a major tourist hotspot. The beach is beautiful and rather iconic, but there were also too many people there for it to be one of my favorite places. A great place to spend a long afternoon.
I didn't take this one. But that's what it looks like from above. And when no one is around.
Yet another day, we hopped a dolmuş to Patara beach. Do you see a theme here? We all like beaches but are not good at just lounging in one place. It was great that most of the places we went you had to hike down to because you got your activity in too. Patara had some cool ruins and the nicest sand of the week.
