Stone by stone

April 26, 2014

Enroute to Fethiye next morning we called into Göcek for coffee and found a millionaire’s yachting paradise. The older, more traditional Göcek village, is a few kilometres back up in the hills. Nothing much was happening there, and the villagers needed employment. Big business and government moved in attempting to encourage tourists to come to the area back in the 1960s and 70s. They built lower Göcek. Which is a purpose-built town in a stunning location surrounded by the turquoise islands, waters and the many inlets of the Turkish Riviera.

But, again, it is more English than Turkish. There are no little back streets where old men player dice and cards, numbers and backgammon. It is all terribly glitzy and yacht-oriented. Marine and chandlery shops abound, as do luxury boutiques, modern apartments and loggia-type restaurants: we even saw one that had pool tables, in shade, by the sea. A boating heaven for a boater holiday in all likelihood.

On we drove to Fethiye, one of the largest towns on this southern Mediterranean coast, past scruffier little inland villagers that line the route and continue much as they always have, without the benefit of a piece of water frontage below them. Fethiye was once called Telmessos, and like Göcek, tho’ back in the mists of time, the heart of the old town was high on the hill. We drove up the rickety and winding road to see what was left of the earlier town; just old stones and remnants of walls to walk amongst. This likely won’t happen to Göcek as already its older village is being dotted with newly built apartments and houses for the international boating fraternity. Eventually, the old town of Göcek will be rubble beneath the new stuff.

Today, all the activity of Fetihye is down the hill, particularly along the waterfront. Here we found a seafood market and decided on a fish lunch. No ekmek balik today, though. Instead, we selected from one of the fish vendors, a clutch of prawns, several whole calamari, and a huge shiny black rock sea bass thinking we might have a seafood platter. He gestured to us that the restaurants around the market would cook this for us for a small fee. So, we chose one with a view of the market action and the vendor then brought over our fish in a plastic bag for their chef to cook up. And what a feast.

We were served a huge bowl of lettuce and pickled red cabbage salad and a homely basket of bread first up. Then out came our first entree: prawns in oil and garlic, the sauce of which we mopped up with the bread, later on; all as fresh as we have ever tasted. Salt and pepper calamari followed: our second entree. Also delicious. Then came the fish. Split in two, topped with lemon wedges, and grilled to golden perfection. Such a beautiful meal is to be had in fish markets all over the world. It is disappointing that we don’t have more functioning like this at home. It is such a treat.

After lunch we hunted down a gullet building works: to see how these boats are made along this coast. They are used, summer long, carrying tourists around these turquoise waters for days and sometimes weeks on end. We didn’t find the one we were looking for, but, instead, found a massive complex of boat building and repairs further around the waterfront. Here, we saw different boats in various stages of repair: some with wood rot through to the hull, being completely stripped and replaced; others being newly built. An immense one, with lots of men working on it, was being built for owners who had an interest in Thomas Cook, we were told. Once finished, it will occupy a big section of the Mediterranean as a berth: it is almost obscenely huge.

Our next planned stop was Kayakoy. This village we reached over a terribly narrow road, vertiginously high, and crumbling to bits around its switchbacks, up in the mountains behind Fethiye. We have seen quite a few villages enroute where the Christian Greeks were removed from their homes after the first world war population swap pact, and shipped across to Greece. In exchange Muslim Turks from Greece were moved to Turkey. When this happened at Kayakoy, the Muslim Turks refused to stay. The ground was too hard, too rocky, too barren. They were used to fertile productive plains back in Greece. So, they all moved on. Today, Kayakoy is a ghost village of bare walled homes beginning to crumble, and a couple of pillaged churches: grey and windowless and spooky. It is now something of a museum, and people like us do come, as that frightening little road was reasonably busy.

This was our third settlement on a hill today. But, this one virtually completely dead. Although a few hopeful entrepreneurs have set up food and market stalls selling relics from the village along the tiny and remote village track, attempting to take advantage of any passing traffic. Which is astonishing to us, as much of the day there would be little or nothing to do to occupy their time, as hardly anyone can call, for, like us, they can barely find a place to drive, let alone pull over and park. Another village on a hill in the slow but inevitable process of turning itself into rock and rubble, and eventually to dust.

oooOOOooo