Days 9 & 10: To the Yayla!
On day 9, we left Kalkan at 6am, with some trepidation about the initial hike out of the town with 750 meters of elevation gain. The terrain makes all the difference though. The trail was wide and even, the incline was a slow steady grade, and the hike up turned out to be a steady but satisfying effort. And, as expected, with beautiful views of Kalkan and the Mediterranean from higher and higher and higher.
This brought us to the Yayla village of Bezirgan, sitting behind the mountains in the middle of a valley, full of old stone houses, fig trees, apple trees, pear trees and quince trees.
As told by our host later that evening, Tim (see more below), the depression where Bezirgan currently is used to be a lake. The Romans, perennially trying new infrastructure projects for fresh water it seems, constructed a large tunnel of piping at the low end of the valley, emptying out the entire lake onto their aquifers. The tunnel is man sized and walkable apparently. But of course, nature can seldom be tamed to human will so easily and when it rains heavily in the winter now, the valley still floods with water from surrounding hills. This is why the village is strictly clustered in the middle of the valley, on top of a small mound with some elevation and can be found an island surrounded by a mote of water in the winter. Crazy humans!
After Bezirgan, another hike up with 250 meters of elevation gain and then the same elevation loss in descent brought us to Sarıbelen village near noon.
We stayed at Moonstone House, owned by Tim and Judith, a British couple who moved here about 8 years ago. They have a beautiful, light-filled custom built house, with a swimming pool overlooking the mountains. They also have 12 dogs and 28 cats! Some their own and some they foster for adoption abroad. We ended our day lounging by their pool, petting their many four legged friends demanding attention, and eating Tim’s tasty food. (I really needed that big bowl of salad after a continuing roll of köfte and gözleme.)
The next day, after consuming some of Tim’s homemade sourdough rolls for breakfast, we hiked from Sarıbelen to Gökçeören. This was a relatively straightforward and easy hike thorough highland meadow, with shepherds goading their goats. It was a mystery to all of us why the Lycian Way book described this hike as “bleak.”
In Gökçeören, we hung out at Hüseyin’s place, next to the mosque (such an easy address to find), napped and read and lunched. With the elevation gained and an overcast day, the weather was chilly enough for us to put on long sleeves. Gasp! A thing of dreams.
In the late afternoon, having packed the enormous amounts of food given to us by Hüseyin and his wife, we walked past Gökçeören for about two hours through pine forest - a very pleasant walk through a different landscape after many days hiking through the lower elevation thorny bush (the flora called ‘maki’ in Turkish, as known to all Turks by elementary school geography class).
We set up camp after 8 kilometers of walking, in an opening, surrounded by hills of pine on all sides. We were very pleased with ourselves for the scenic location until a swarm of bees arrived soon after and stayed with us till sundown. And when I say a swarm, I really mean a a cartoon-inspired swarm around each one of us, the tent, the bags, anything that may have moisture/water for the bees. Erin and I coped by slowly walking in circles for about an hour, somewhat lessening the likelihood of bees landing on your eyeballs, probably adding another few kilometers to our daily tally. The sunset however was gorgeous and worth the memory.
Day 9
Distance covered: 16.03km
Elevation gained: 1016 meters
Time travelled: 5 hours 50 minutes
Day 10
Distance covered: 19.37km
Elevation gained: 320m
Elevation lost: 586m
Time travelled: 4 hours 41 minutes
