Days 15 & 16: Discretion is the Better Part of Valor

Day 15 began with a pre-dawn walk out of Kaş, our legs refreshed and friend Jordan in the mix. The day began pleasantly enough, with a fun scramble across the rocky edge between the sea and the cliffs above.

The sensation of scrambling glee was shortly overtaken by the strong sensation we were being microwaved. As the sun rose, with no trees to shield us, we all flagged and needed to rest where our path finally met the sea.

A quick aside: we are generally used to hiking in sub-par weather. Among the three of us we have hiked all over the world, including the barren expanse of Western Australia, the jungles of Borneo, the soup of Myanmar, and of course the last two weeks on the Lycian Way. When I say this was take-your-breath-away hot, I mean it literally.

After a long and exposed to the midday sun hike uphill, with increasingly frequent stops in what little shade we could find needed to keep internal organs from combusting, and with water supplies dwindling fast, we eventually stumbled into a campground in Boğazcık.

Here our very rough morning gave way to a pleasant afternoon and evening of relaxation and unintentionally humourous conversation with a 65 year old Frenchman who is walking from Lyon to Jerusalem. It was easy enough to forget the morning's struggle.

Alarms go off at 5a this morning, as part of our plan to avoid yesterday's midday heat as much as possible. Zeynep led the way at good speed, all of us enjoying a nice hike for the first few hours.

Then about 9a the sun started peeking over the nearby hill, and the reality that the microwave was warming back up begins to settle on all of us. Despite our very speedy progress, we found ourselves slogging the last hour and a half through the same heat, the same minimal shade, the same insufficient water. As we dragged our sopping-wet selves into Üçağız we began to wonder if continuing was such a good - or even safe - idea.

Which brings us to now, where I write this from a taxi back to Kaş. As my father once told me, there are no points for suffering, so we are putting on hold completion of the Lycian Way until a later date, when completing a section isn't a date with heat stroke.

But we do all love hiking and have enjoyed getting to explore Turkey, so… off to Kaçkar National Park! Over the next couple of days we'll make our way from the Southwest coast to the Northeast hills, where there is high quality hiking and temperatures that require long sleeves. We can only fathom! 🥶😊

Day 15: Kaş to Boğazcık