Day-13 | We Ate Like Kings

Boğazcık to Kaleköy trailhead | 19.2km

Up early at Ali's Pansiyon due to multiple cockerels crowing, the imam next door crooning at ear shattering decibels and the friendly neighbourhood bread man beeping his horn up and down the road. Ali's pushy wife rushed us all down for breakfast and moaned at me that people were still in the shower (repeat "yes they are still in the shower" ad nauseam) and still insisted I wear the house slippers (repeat "I don't wear other people's shoes" ad nauseam). Breakfast was good; the pansiyon's only saving grace was the homemade cooking & everything else about it made me want to scream.

Happy to be out of Ali's madhouse I headed off and onto the usual rocky scree goat paths. I mistakenly walked straight past the ruins of Appalonia without even noticing they were there and headed onward to the bay of Aperlai and the Purple House pansiyon to grab a spot of lunch and have a rest.

Goatherd's well

Ancient water cistern

The Lycian Way runs directly through the main garden of the Purple House. The owner, Rıza, has lived their for ten years after inheriting it from his fisherman grandfather and decided to settle there and try to build a self sustainable eco-farm for his family. He has a couple of pansiyon rooms and there's plenty of space to camp on his land that runs all the way up to the Aperlai ruins. He was welcoming and offered us the shaded seating places he's built in his garden to rest and eat our own food. He had a collection of snorkels, masks and flippers and suggested we swim and explore the sunken city ruins. Which we did. Coffee and Cola was TL5 a can/cup, pricey but worth it for his hospitality and to support his endeavour.

Rıza has built a huge water system combining recycled water from his greenhouse, a rainwater catchment pool and piping to grab local well water to top up when required. He has plans to add windpower to his solar array and start farming some livestock to produce milk, cheese etc.. 

The swim on the sunken city was refreshing but the ruins were unexciting and there were few interesting fish to see.

The now bog standard Lycian tomb above Aperlai

Beginning of the sunken city

Purple House pansiyon

Moving on from the Purple House I picked up a trail that traced the shoreline and necessitated scrambling over rock riddled paths and sharp seashore boulders for several kilometres. The sea here was stagnant and the shoreline was decaying fly infested mud - a change from the miles of similar rock strewn landscape I'd seen so far but not particularly pleasant...

A change of scenery, but not for the better

I pressed on over the rock face, eventually reaching the tourist fishing village of Uçağız where I picked up some fish and vegetables for dinner and a big bag of Efes beer :)

And we ate like kings.

Uçağiz campsite

Breem with onion and wild sage, baked potato, baked
aubergine, fresh village bread and Efes Malt