Caves & Gorges
Kalkan day 8

After a lie, in due to not getting to bed after 03:00 due to the England quarter-final in the world cup, we went for a walk down to the Harbour for brunch.

DoyDoy restaurant

Susan and I met our friend at the top of the old town and ambled through the shaded streets until we got to the Harbour. The restaurant that we found was called DoyDoy Restaurant, they had a sister restaurant DoyDoy Kebab House next to our hotel, it was a family run place and they had a Palestine flag hanging out of their window. We sat on the terrace overlooking the Harbour.

When the menu arrived I noticed that they had Affogato so immediately ordered it and so did my friend (who had never heard of it) and a frozen blackberry mocktail. When they came to take the food order my friend and I ordered meat pide (Turkish pizza) and Susan had English Breakfast.

At the end of the meal they came and gave us some Turkish bracelets.

Famous lemonade man

The other day when we came Korsan Meze for brunch, when we left there was a man who introduced himself to us as The famous Lemonade Man. When we walked passed him again he said: "I'm famous". I told him I remember, you are The famous Lemonade Man.

We decided to buy 3 takeaway glasses of lemonade. The explained that he grew his own lemons, huge lemons, and mint in his garden. He makes lemon squash which he then freezes to make slush which he then uses to make the lemonade with mint. It was so refreshing and delicious. I would highly recommend if you come across The famous Lemonade Man.

Pre-historic caves

When we got back to the hotel Susan changed and got her swimming stuff. I drove her up to the villa so she could swim and hang out with the others. My friend and I then went out for a drive to explore the local area.

Firstly went drove up the hill out of the town to see the pre-historic caves called Mağara Evler. It was further than I remember and again we kept climbing and climbing.

When we arrived I parked the car on the side of the road on a hair pin, there was plenty of room. There were about 20 square rooms caved into the cliff side, about 10 metres above the road, some of them were linked together.

There was another site marked on Google maps called pre-historic cave city it was only 5 minutes around the corner so this was our next stop. These ones were much higher up the cliff face but not quite as many.

Islamlar

On the way up to the caves we drove through a village and spotted a waterfall, so we went back there to have a look around. We parked the car outside a supermarket and it was definitely the right time for an emergency ice cream, this time I had a Pistachio Cornetto, It was amazing, one of the best ice creams I've had and definitely the best Cornetto.

In the middle of the village there was a platform covered by vines, with tables of men playing rummikub, next to a waterfall. We walked up round the corner to see what else was there. There was a track off to the left where there was another waterfall. This time it was from a broken aqueduct. It had obviously been broken for a long time and used to feed into a metal chute for some reason.

Heading further up the track there was more pipes and parts of water management structures.

Saklikent National Park

Our final destination for the day was Saklikent National Park, to get there we had to drive down out of the hills and across a plain. The plain was full of poly-tunnels and when I say full I mean over 100,000 poly-tunnels, Google maps satellite view shows the density of poly-tunnels.

As we got closer to the National Park the road really started to deteriorate, only half of it have a decent amount of tarmac and cars were driving on the wrong side of the road until another car was driving towards them and then they would move over the gravel section of the road. As we got even closer to the Saklikent Gorge the road started to follow the Dargaz Stream, which also forms the border between the Muğla and Antalya Provinces of Türkiye.

The Saklikent Gorge is one of the largest in Europe at 18 km long and over 300 metres deep. We got to near the start of the gorge and found a free car park. Parking the car we were approached by the owner of a cafe to say "you can park here for free, the entrance is 200 metres, come for a drink or food on your way back".

We walked along the road towards the gorge entrance, the road was lined with tourist shops. The road was full of Tourist Jeeps. The queues for the gorge were huge and the suspended walkway above the river was full of tourists, wearing yellow safety helmet (compulsory due to falling rocks).

We did not go into the gorge, as we needed to get back to Kalkan to go out for dinner. We headed back to the car park and cafe, via a bridge across the Dargaz Stream. We passed queues for the gorge and queues to ride huge tyres down the river. We came across a huge dog.

Back at the cafe we sat in the seats that were suspended above water which meant it was cool and welcome. There was a flock of geese swimming in the water.

I ordered a fresh pomegranate juice and my friend ordered Şalgam (fermented turnip juice), a recipe review for Şalgam read:

Well this is an excellent recipe for those who actually enjoy explosive, osmotic diarrhea . This ungodly mixture tastes like turpentine and loosened my bowels completely. I had to wear an adult diaper to work. My loosened stool had a peculiar stench... like dry cleaning fluid. Sooo disgusting.

Coriander Restaurant

In the evening we all went to Coriander Restaurant, also the restaurant recommended by the Young man I helped getting cash, we sat on two huge tables on a roof top terrace. I had Mutancana Chicken meat, onion, almonds, dried apricots, raisins, dried figs, walnuts, sumac, garlic. Served on the sizzling iron plate. It was fabulous, and a great last night together.