Misadventures on the Lycian Way, 2001, Day 9

              Today’s day hike will go in the other direction, back toward Kapakli. We begin by climbing the acropolis just outside Uçağiz.  We’ve become pretty jaded about acropolises, never having found more than a few foundation stones at the top of these hills.  But this area also contains an impressive jumble of old Lycian tombs, standing like big square stone treasure chests, every one broken open by tomb robbers centuries, if not millennia, ago.

Today, for the first time, we will be walking in the same direction as Kate Clow’s book.  Despite this advantage, we quickly lose the trail.  A signpost directs us into a field.  We wander there for a bit, looking for the first blaze.  As we’re doing this, an aging woman comes into the field with a rake.

“Where to Kapakli we go?” I ask. 

Usually, my Turkish is so obviously rudimentary that people simply gesture broadly in deference to my doubtful mental competence.  But this woman uncorks a stream of voluble and extraordinarily emphatic Turkish that goes on and on and on.  I think she may be giving me her considered views on the moral ambiguities of ecotourism.  I try my biggest smile and the one phrase of Turkish I’m pretty sure I know how to say properly.

“I don’t understand,” I grin.

Undeterred, she launches back into her disquisition.  We are finally rescued by an older gentleman working in the neighboring field.  He calls us over and points out the beginning of the trail.  Then he too has a lecture to deliver.  I’ve been wondering what all these people are doing in the fields.  He shows me that they are harvesting strange, twisted black pods, perhaps five inches long, an inch wide, and a quarter inch thick.  They look a bit like oversized dried-out brown peapods.  He hands me one, then bites into another.  I do the same.  It tastes good -- a bit like dry fig.

                        The man tells me the pod’s name, then puts two of them up to his head and bends over, waving his head back and forth.  I have no idea what to say or do.  It doesn’t seem to be a fit, and I can’t connect it up to ecotourism either.  Later, back at Orun Pansiyon, Jacqueline will explain that the name for this fruit translates as “goat’s horn.”   And, indeed, the twisted pods do resemble the horns of the many goats we’ve seen over the past few days.  Turks swear by these fruits as a source of vitamins and energy.

                        Trying to look as though we’ve been enlightened by the river of information that has just rolled over us, we bid the old fellow good-bye and head off down the trail, which runs along the side of a walled Moslem graveyard.  Parts of the graveyard contain the well-tended graves of recent generations.  But the wall encompasses a few acres, and much of it is entirely overrun by head-high scrub, from which a few decaying stone markers poke like stray rocks

Apart from that short climb, the trail is flat and easy.  After five or six kilometers, we leave the trail and start across country toward a Genovese fortress perched on a hill off to the south.  Our attention is focused on the tower when someone behind us shouts, “Hey!” in a tone that can only be American.  In fact, it is a solo backpacker, probably a college student, from Oregon.  He is the only American we’ve seen on the trail, indeed the only hiker of any kind we have seen in ten days.  I know he’s shared our experience, because he has the same tinge of fear in his voice when he talks about running low on water. When he looks at our water bottle, I see in his eyes what the man under the 7-Up umbrella must have seen in mine. Luckily for him, today we’ve carried an absurd quantity of water.  We share some.  He is afraid to ask for much.  We talk trails for a while, give him tips about the trail to come, and part. 

                        At the foot of the fortress, we find a cove.  It is filled with beautiful blue water, cooled in spots by a freshwater spring.  The family that owns this land has a crude hut near the spring.  They’ve turned it into a kind of restaurant for the endless succession of cruise boats that putters into the cove carrying an international clientele.  The clientele gets a quick dip and a taste of Turkish pancakes.  We’ve walked two and a half sweaty hours to get here, packing all our food and drink with us.  I suppose we’re entitled to resent the discovery that our solitary hike suddenly has a soundtrack – a pulsing cover of “Mambo No. 5.”  In fact, though, we find the blaring cruise boats more diverting than annoying.  They might as well be from Betelgeuse for all the relevance they have to the country we’ve just traversed.  We’re content to sit on the rocks and watch the tourists boogie across the decks with the same bemused air as the restaurant owners.  For two or three months a year, I imagine them putting up the restaurant sign around noon and making extra food.  Soon, “Mambo No. 5” drifts across the cove for a couple of hours, and people hand them money for a few pancakes.  Then life goes back to normal.