I hear the motor being started, it is 6.30 a.m. Our captain must have decided to leave early for a safe crossing to Kalkan. It feels cozy to stay in bed but the door of my cabinet is slamming back and forth, so I have to get up after all. The only way to wash up and to get dressed is by sitting down for the boat jumps around like a kitten. It’s fun for a change and I manage. I sit down at the table in the galley with a few other early birds. The sky is clear and the dark blue sea very choppy as the waves splash against the portholes and we soon come within sight of Kalkan harbor.
The entrance is very narrow and a bit tricky if you ask me, but as I said before, we have full confidence in our captain. It turns out to be quite an affair to moor our boat backward in the crowded and odd shaped harbor and somehow the anchor chain gets entangled with that of another gulet opposite ours. We have to move forward and backward a few times to untwine our anchor chain. Easier said than done. All the vessels around us come alive and watch closely, the occupants shout and gesticulate, all are afraid to be rammed. All hands on deck! Everybody is in a high state of alert. Some official from Kalkan harbor rattles his directions and comments in rolling Turkish. Our crew and even Peter run back and forth, pushing and pulling the other boats to avoid collision. It is the event of the day, all harbor activity is put on hold for a while. Our Mehmet is very tense; the crew utterly silent acting immediately on the captain’s slightest command. We, the guests, try to stay out of the way and look on in respectful silence. Finally, our gulet is properly anchored at the jetty and order is restored. Our friendly captain is most upset and angry with himself: in his entire career this has never happened! He disappears to his quarters below, his pride is hurt - understandably. As a result of this eventful morning, our breakfast is served much later than usual.
The weather forecast for today is ideal, dry and windy, so the plan is to move our entire program one day forward. Today we will be walking along the Patara aqueduct (that should take about 3 hours) with afterward a stop at the antique site of Patara for a global visit. To fit all this in a practical time frame, we will start right after an early lunch.
Till then we are free to stretch our legs in Kalkan and I take a closer look at the beautiful houses in Ottoman style with wooden balconies and upper floors among the purple and white bougainvillea. They make beautiful pictures in the narrow steep streets and against the blue sky! I stop for my Turkish coffee at one of the waterfront places and then return to the gulet to prepare for my walk. I’m curious how my foot will do today!
Patara, the capital of Lycia, lies in the very heart of the Xanthos Valley close to the sea. In antiquity, Patara was a prosperous harbor town, silting up slowly till it died some time between 500 and 1000 AD. Today’s swampy estuary is enhanced with beautiful sand dunes near the seashore. It is here that one can see the famous milestone listing the distances to all the cities in Lycia that probably stood in the very center of Patara.
Click on the Label Lycian Coast to read the full story
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