Love on The Lycian Way

Arriving into Dalaman Airport in the middle of the night, our taxi ride into the coastal tourist town of Fethiye was an adventurous one, winding around towering mountains, and wondering what our next month in Turkey would bring us. Similar to Colombia, when we had told family & friends we were heading to this unique country where the East meets West, we were met with polarising reactions - either extremely supportive and excited, or the other extreme of a little bit of fear of the unknown, owing a lot to the country’s geographic location. One of our favourite parts of travelling remains taking a deep dive into new cultures outside of our comfort zones, challenging perceptions, getting to know the locals and learning the history firsthand through exploration. We had tried to do a bit of Duolingo to learn pieces of the Turkish language before leaving, but it proved impossible and took a solid week to master a simple ‘thank you’ (Teşekkür Ederim or “T-shirt-curry-denim”). Turkey met all of our travel goals, and we were blown away by our time here!

Fethiye was colder than expected - it was very much still Spring at the start of April, and the surrounding mountains had a fresh dusting of snow on the caps. This touristic town was our introduction to Turkey and base before our great friends Vic & Andrew joined us from London to spend the Easter hiking part of the Lycian Way together.

While it was much easier to find an ‘all day English breakfast’ than any genuine Turkish food in Fethiye, lined with resorts and waterparks, it has a nice, chilled vibe off-season, and we enjoyed warming up our legs along the lovely waterfront promenade, past the surprisingly modern playground and outdoor gym. We were lucky to have gorgeous, crisp Spring weather here, but it wasn’t quite warm enough to lounge in the pool all day!

Making the most of the Easter break, Vic had done an amazing job planning a trip for the 4 of us to hike a portion of the 540km long Lycian Way, a network of connected trails along the Mediterranean Coast. Our accommodation, bag transfers and trail notes were all pre-arranged, and all we had to do was show up, put our legs to use, and enjoy the hike over the next incredible week.

Our first stop out of Fethiye was over a hill to stay near Kayakoy. Kayakoy is an abandoned ‘ghost village’ which was abandoned following the first world war shortly after the formation of Turkey, when the Turkish and Greek governments ‘exchanged’ citizens. There were more Greeks going to Turkey than Turks to Greece, and towns such as Kayakoy ended up abandoned through the process. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, it was a unique experience exploring the ruins on the hillside overlooking the fertile orchard lands below.

We ventured further from the ghost village down to Coldwater Bay to make the most of the stunning weather and our time before the ‘real’ hike began. While we had a few navigation issues and a couple of tumbles, it was well worth it as we had our first refreshing dip in the Mediterranean, and enjoyed the serenity in between day trippers arriving on obnoxiously large party boats (which reminded us of our experience in Mexico!!).

Inflation in Turkey is obvious, with prices on menus tripling from the previous year’s season, and it was also very clear locals were desperate for the tourist dollar after the devastating consequences of the pandemic on a region heavily reliant on foreign visitors. The towns we visited over this week were just starting to open before their first summer season in 2 years where they have hope of recovery. Speaking with 2 of the younger staff at our accommodation in Kayakoy, they shared how at 16, they had recently left high school to work at this hotel, 10 hours from their hometowns in the countryside, to earn money due to their families needing support due to the weakness of the Turkish Lira. Their impressive English was learned from watching Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones, and they worked long hours (6am-10pm) 7 days a week with the goal of saving money to be able to attend university in the future.

After 5 days of blue skies, our first day of our Lycian Way journey was an overcast, cloudy one over the hill from Kayakoy, along the coast and through red pines, before descending down to Oludeniz. Well known for its Blue Lagoon, and being a paraglider’s paradise, we were greeted with neither of these sites amongst the clouds, and the town felt like another ghost village, with many resorts not yet open. Swimming pools empty, construction underway and minimal shops and restaurants open, the town was in full preparation mode for the summer season ahead, and we were perhaps the only tourists around, before the swarms would start to arrive from late May.

It was Easter Sunday, although there was no evidence of this other than the mini easter eggs we brought with us from London. With only 0.2% of citizens identifying as Christian, Turkey is very much an Islamic country (although with a secular government), and it was much more obvious we were visiting in the middle of Ramadan rather than Easter. The call to prayer greeted us multiple times a day, every day of our trip until our last day in Istanbul nearly one month later. Fortunately, we did not encounter issues finding food and water during the daylight hours, whilst the locals fasted they were still more than happy to prepare and sell us food along the way.

Day 2 of the hike was described on our trip notes as presenting ‘unrivalled coastal views’. Unfortunately, we experienced none of this as we would better describe it as a climb through the ‘forbidden forest’, trying to avoid rogue cows and goats, and locals looking like the grim reaper emerging from the heavy, thick fog that shrouded our 5 hour walk.

We were spending the evening in the small town of Faralya, located next to the famous Butterfly Valley. The sun finally broke through the clouds as we arrived at our cute huts which were our home for the night. Our first reliable hot showers in a week, it was a relief to make it there and we celebrated with a lemonade and our first ‘grassy pancake’, a spinach gozleme. The positioning of the village in the cliffs defied gravity - although nature often catches up, with huge landslides scarring the landscape and collapsing retaining walls, and the enormous rocks which fell from the cliffs in the large earthquake of 1957 still stuck where they landed. The sunset over the lush green valley below was a stunning sight, before we returned home for an exceptional home cooked meal to nourish us for another big day ahead.

It poured with rain overnight, and we were pleased our hut didn’t slide off the hillside. Although forecast for rain all day, the ominous clouds remained over the mountains and did not make it to our coastal path as we set out past Butterfly Valley towards the town of Kabak, a stunning 10km away. We were happy to see the endemic tiger butterfly while winding around the cliffs of Butterfly Valley and enjoying the scenic views of the bright blue water below.

We had made a new friend who joined us along the trail, Nerum, a Turkish gentleman who has lived in Austria for the past 30 years and wanted to explore his birth country by foot. Between the 5 of us, we had a lot of laughs and only went off-track a couple of times. The trees and spring flowers were glistening from the overnight downpour, and we felt extremely lucky for the full day of sunshine after the day in the fog. This section gave us Abel Tasman vibes, with pine forest hugging the precarious coastline and sapphire waters stretching in the distance.

Our lunch stop was typical of the Mediterranean coast, as we dipped down through what looked like a whole new village being built to the turquoise waters, bright white rocks and sun still shining at Atkas Beach. The day ended with one final steep climb to Shiva Camp, our home for the night in Kabak, where we jumped in the ice cold pool to cool off. This super chill accommodation had incredible views across the top, and was the perfect place to end an amazing day of hiking together. The home cooked meals kept getting better, and we shared the night with a range of hikers and travellers. One especially interesting character was a British hiker who was nearing the end of hiking the Lycian Way in its entirety in just 2 weeks! An ultra-light packer with just a 5.7kg base weight (excluding food, but including a tent!!) he was hardcore, having generally camped and cold-soaked his food for the duration of the hike. He also swore by a spoonful of olive oil a day for maximum energy input. We felt decidedly less hardcore after meeting him, but loved sharing travel stories with him and the others around the table. We thought that surely this day would be the highlight of the trail, but the next day proved us wrong!

We were setting out for our longest day of the week, 8 hours across a ‘seemingly impassable valley’ and through to the extremely small village of Gey. Strava was unable to track us as we navigated the sides of the stunning valley and climbed so high we could barely see Shiva Camp below. While it was a well-formed trail, it was not without its challenges and significant elevation change throughout the day. There were a couple of random drink spots in the wilderness, where locals seem to hike out and store soft drinks, beer and snacks in shady spots with an honesty box for hungry and thirsty hikers.

The changing landscapes of this day were incredible, from the huge valley, to ridgelines, forests and eventually back to the coastline. We had an uninterrupted view across to the island of Rhodes, and could almost see past the ranges to our starting point near Fethiye. After an adventurous walk to our stunning lunch spot on the cliffside, we decided to take the alternative route to finish the walk for the day. Our Austrian/Turkish mate Nerum decided to attempt the official trail, but deemed it far too dangerous and followed us on the safer track near the main road. Mountain goats provided some entertainment as they climbed up the steep mountainside, strongly encouraged by a very local lady throwing rocks and shouting at them. After a few extra kms as we took a wrong turn through terraced farmside, we entered the super local town of Gey to our farmstay guesthouse. We nearly had an early night with our sore legs, but couldn’t turn down the tempting outdoor fireplace and stayed up to reflect on the journey so far with Vic & Andrew, grateful to be sharing this experience together and creating memories to last a lifetime.

The call to prayer for Ramadan in Gey was particularly rousing, over a very crackly sound-system blasting right into our rooms shortly before 5am, to be followed by dogs barking, roosters crowing and cows mooing. Our day began climbing about the interesting terraced olive groves above the village, we farewelled the panoramic coastal views for the day as the route took us inland to scenes of snowy mountains in the distance, and a very different rocky terrain underfoot. It was a bad day to wear shorts for ¾ of us, as the trail involved a lot of scrambling over rocks surrounded by scratchy plants, and conscious navigation was again required to make sure we didn’t venture too far off course. Unlike New Zealand’s well positioned bright orange triangle markers, we were looking for intermittent red, yellow & white paint splashes on rocks, along with following paper notes, and as a last resort referring to our offline gps file on our phones. A grass clearing made for the perfect picnic lunch stop before the never-ending descent through a dried riverbed to the ancient ruins of Sidyma.

We were grateful to be met at the entrance to Sidyma by a local lady offering tea and coffee after we explored the remains of this ancient city. An extensive site of ruins from the Lycian period, it is yet to be taken over by UNESCO governorship, and the local family who own the fertile farmland allow visitors to explore at their own pace and maintain the area to the best of their family’s ability. With a permit pending to host visitors at their heritage farmhouse, and increased interest from archaeologists, the family believe the area will change significantly in the coming years.

We were collected by Mustafa, the Turkish driver who had been dutifully transferring our larger packs between accommodations during our trek (which was quite literally a huge weight off our shoulders), and he was driving us 45 minutes to the Patara area, where we would be based for the final leg of our Lycian Way adventure together. Jelley was doing a bit of anxious clock-watching to ensure we were on schedule, as she had a 2nd job interview to attend virtually that evening and wanted to arrive and check out the wifi situation.

Jelley’s distraction of the interview was the perfect opportunity for Luke, Andrew & Victoria to continue their super-secret scheming that had been ongoing throughout the whole trip. Jelley got her alone time for the interview (which went very well!), and wasn’t too suspicious afterwards when Vic had a celebratory post-interview drink by the pool. Blissfully unaware of what was about to unfold, Vic gave Jelley a handwritten note from Luke which instructed her to follow a list of clues to meet him somewhere.

Ever the romantic, it wasn’t entirely out of character for Luke to arrange a surprise dinner, so Jelley followed the clues to what became a meandering scavenger hunt through the town of Patara. Jelley managed to work her way through the first set of clues, but got stuck at one particular clue which was nowhere to be 'easily' found. Conscious that sunset was quickly approaching, Jelley took a couple of educated guesses along the way and started running along the scavenger hunt, suspecting that it concluded with a nice sunset picnic on the beach (thank goodness she did!). Approaching the iconic sand dunes on Patara beach, Jelley was welcomed by Andrew with a laptop...which was not the surprise picnic (or company) Jelley was expecting.

It turned that out hiking the Lycian Way had been a higher stakes adventure for all but naive Jelley, as Luke (with the help of Vic & Andrew and even our Turkish companion Nerum!), had been taking surprise photos behind Jelley’s back with handwritten notes, which were then put together into a video loaded on the laptop ending with an instruction for Jelley to look behind her. The sun was beginning to set, and Jelley turned around to the final note delivered by Luke, which wrote ‘Will You Marry Me?’. In complete shock, it was all a bit of an out-of-body experience but the answer from Jelley wasn’t yes…it was ‘of course’! It was the perfect location for the biggest surprise, and a night we will remember forever.

Vic & Andrew took some super special photos and were in on the surprise all along and have been a big part of our relationship since we first met and all lived together back in 2016 in Christchurch. It was amazing to share this moment with them both, although Andrew has lost any chance of being a ringbearer on the big day. Luke had been secretly shopping with the help of Vic in London and selected an appropriate placeholder ring for the proposal (with the intention of choosing the special ring together). As Jelley is so involved with travel planning to the extent of packing Luke’s bags at times, he entrusted Andrew with the ring to bring over from London so as to avoid any suspicion. On day 2 of the trail, he was in a panic as he had ‘left his passport in the previous town’, and returned to locate it. It was later revealed that it wasn’t his passport, but the ring which was left behind and lost forever, and a quick trip to a Turkish jeweller with the language barrier resulted in 3 options of replacement rings which Luke had to choose from. We were very thankful it wasn’t the ‘forever ring’ which went missing, but in the end, the lost ring story made the epic proposal that much more memorable!

After the excitement of the night before, we had one final day hiking on the Lycian Way together, taking us above the endless greenhouses of Patara valley, along a historic aqueduct, to the ancient ruins of Xanthos before arriving down on Patara beach, the longest in Turkey. The pressure was finally off Luke, who had been keeping the secret so long from Jelley and no longer had to take sneaky photos along the way.

The majority of our journey we had the entire trail to ourselves (and Nerum who we hiked with most days), but today we found ourselves with an interesting older American couple (who had been volunteers at Doctors without Borders in Syria), and a couple of other European guided groups. The company made the walking go by quickly, as we marvelled at the engineering behind the huge aqueduct we were following, and the impressive restored site of Xanthos by the sea.

Patara, Turkey’s longest beach (and the site of last night’s proposal), was the perfect place to end our hiking together. The beachside bar served some decent nugs and beer, and was a great place to chill together before bidding farewell as our journeys took us in different directions in Turkey. We are so grateful to have been able to share this time with Vic & Andrew, and travelling by foot together was such a fun way to explore this very new country for us all. We learnt a lot on the Lycian Way about the chequered history of the area and various invasions, if you’re interested to learn more, maybe check out this link https://www.lycianturkey.com/lycian_history.htm . As with most of Turkey’s vast and deep history, it was a lot to wrap our heads around!

Jelley & Luke had a couple more days on the coast of Turkey before heading inland to Cappadocia, and decided to take a gamble with taking local buses to get around. What Google maps suggested was a 40 minute journey up to Kas took around 4 hours between waiting for different buses and winding around traffic, but was worth the journey when we arrived. Perhaps as we were edging closer to summer, the temperatures were rising, but we felt it to be a lot warmer here than our time further West on the coast. It was nice to have time to stay in 1 place for a couple of nights and chill, along with trying to reach family & friends around the world in different timezones to share our exciting news! It also took Jelley around 3 days to actually process that the proposal had happened, and it all finally sunk in while in Kas.

We often use the term ‘active relaxers’, as after 7 days of hiking we decided to relax by going kayaking to the nearby sunken city of Kekova instead of staying still. We were at the booking office and grabbing dinner when a familiar couple walked past. We had stayed together at Shiva Camp earlier in the week, and we convinced Anna & Jon to book the same kayak trip in the morning together.

It was super fun getting out on the crystal clear water on kayaks, at times a deep sapphire and other times a shallower aquamarine, as we left the mainland across to Kekova. Although the ruins are limited here, it was neat to have a tour guide to learn more about the history of the area, and to get to know our fellow kayakers in the group. Perhaps most interesting were the couple who live in Northern Iraq (the ‘safe’ part), and were from Russia and Kazakhstan respectfully, and hoped to immigrate to Turkey together. It was a stark reminder that people are people, no matter which country (and political system) fate has them born into.

Our final stop on the coast was the town of Olympos, again somewhere we thought would be much closer and easier to get to with public transport than it really was. Jelley was especially looking forward to seeing the natural Chimaera flames by night, where the original Olympic flame was thought to have originated from. Unfortunately, the timing just didn’t quite work out with our location in the valley and limited transport options being in between tourism seasons, and we had to cut our losses and keep that on the bucket list of places to potentially visit in the future. The UNESCO site of Olympos, a strategic city sandwiched between mountains and sea, was amazing to explore, and we enjoyed our final sunset on the coast before our 4am airport transfer to head to a completely new part of the country to continue our adventure in Cappadocia.

Apologies for the lengthy gap in posting - we’ve had a huge change of pace recently, with that successful interview in Patara resulting in a pause in our travels and a relocation to Birmingham (UK, not Alabama) for a great work opportunity and a place to call home for 3 months. It’s been a big adjustment for us both, and while we’re getting caught up on our epic Turkish travels, we’re also starting to plan for the next stage of our journey together from August. We have another 2 weeks of Turkey to share, before a bit of a pause until the adventures begin again in a couple of months.

Until then,

- A Kiwi and A Cali