This is the final chapter of our motorbike journey.  I have certainly learned more writing it up.  Somehow when we’re there, it’s the doing more than the knowing that seems enough.  You really have to slow things down to do both at the same time.  I’ll have to work on that.

Ru

DoraMac

ps  Just followed the Sox who made two dumb mistakes in the 12th inning and then lost the game in the 14th.  Not a good baseball day.

Our last night on the road, Ani’s Pension. Our first night had been in Ali’s Pension.

We got the last available room on the ground floor room with no view; but it was very clean, had this lovely drawing, wifi and AC.

The owner kept telling us that we had the only key to the room. It was one of those doors that you could lock from the inside and then pull shut. But if you did that with the key hanging inside there would be a problem. I heard something about a prior guest but can’t recall if the guest left with the key or left the key in the room and a window had to be broken to get the key out. I don’t know why they don’t have a second key or get one made: seems the logical thing to do.

Clean but tiny.

The shower is over the toilet so you have to move everything from the shelf behind the toilet or it would get soaked. Most of the smaller pensions have combined shower/toilet areas. The problem is that it soaks the toilet seat and the floor so everything is wet and slippery and you’re always having to dry your feet. The sink was at the very edge of the bathroom and a notch had to be cut into the door so it could pass by the sink to close.

We biked over and down from those mountains into Kas. This might be the 1650 ft mountain

nick-named Yantan Adam, “Sleeping Man.”

Kas was a pretty place.

Kas (pronounced Kahsh because the s has a little hook attached to its bottom) has a small commercial harbor and a brand new marina within walking distance from town. We’d visited the marina in June but the rate for the single month of July was 3 times more than we’re paying here at Yacht Marina so didn’t move the boat. However water and electricity are included in the berth fee and when we get our electric bill here we might be horribly surprised to find that the rates comparable.

Most of Kas seemed to be made up of small businesses to support the tourist industry and lots of places to sleep. Lonely Planet lists the population as about 6,000.

We arrived in Kas late afternoon, found a pension, and went for a walk into town. Smiley’s had cold beer, raki and wifi. You can look around the restaurant and see where everyone is from because they put your flag on your table.

We returned later for dinner. I had fish soup that was almost as good as my friend Martha’s.

After dinner we walked a bit and then headed back to our pension tired after our long day.

We left Ani’s early the next morning having breakfasted on cake and coffee in our room. We had a long day’s ride back to DoraMac and I wanted to stop in Xanthos to see the ruins. We’d bypassed Xanthos on a previous trip along the coast so I didn’t want to miss them this time. We got to Xanthos at 8:30 am and it wouldn’t officially open until 9 am. We didn’t take the time to wait to see it, so apparently missed the rock tombs and more, but we were in “get home” mode by that point. I have come to accept that if you miss something somewhere you’ll see something else somewhere else so it’s ok.

The town of Kinik and its myriad of greenhouses surround Xanthos.

Lots of World Heritage sites in Turkey.

I forgot to mention in the Dervish email that according to Lonely Planet, the Dervishes Whirling Ceremony appears on Unesco’s third Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

“Xanthos was the capital city of the Lycian Federation and its greatest city for most of Lycian history. It was made famous to the Western world in the 19th century by its British discoverer Charles Fellows. It is very old – finds date back to the 8th century BC, but it is possible that the site may have existed during the Bronze Age or during the first centuries of the Iron Age “http://www.lycianturkey.com/lycian_sites/xanthos.htm   Apparently Mr. Fellows carted off lots of the ruins to the British Museum where it remains today.  Thankfully he didn’t unearth it all so there are still some artifacts left for the Turks.

Ruins of the amphitheater and the agora.

There were more ruins just up the way, but we were facing several more hours of riding and my stomach was starting to rebel from the giant plate of salad I’d eaten the night before along with my fish soup. It actually took me about 3 days to get over that gastronomic mistake.

Rebellious stomach and all, we still needed to eat so stopped and shared a spinach cheese pancake and some Coke Light.

A few more hours and we were back on Doramac. We’d had a great trip and have officially become “biker people” as opposed to cyclists though when I see folks on bicycles I miss mine. To cover 900 miles on our bicycles would have taken over a month if we had averaged 30 miles each day and on some days over the mountains that would have been tough. Of course with the little riding we’ve done over the past years it would have taken me two months if not more.

We have just about 5 more days here in Marmaris. We have to do some provisioning, go through the check-out process and reload the motorbike onto the boat. Then we’re heading to Karpaz Gate Marina in North Cyprus, the part of Cyprus that belongs to Turkey. I’ll keep you posted.