Autumn pleasures

No need to kick - so much salt in the water

We're floating indolently towards the finish line, an unexpected run of impossibly beautiful autumn weather keeping us tethered to a mooring buoy in Fathom Cove, at the southern end of Gocek bay.

We had considered leaving for Marmaris today, tugged back to town and marina by the need to apply for permanent residency before our tourist visas expire. But as the day revealed its loveliness, we hesitated. Tomorrow, we said. We'll leave early, hope for a bit more wind than is forecast (from the southwest please), and deal with the visa first thing on Wednesday.

So today we stayed still, listening to the hollow knocking of goat bells, the lapping of water against my kayak trailing from Enki's stern, the sweet chatter of birds in the pines and olive trees which coat the steep hills. In the cracks of the rocks, there are autumn crocuses. Irresistible. Standing on top of the high cliff behind our anchorage, we picked out the distinctive shape of a Lycian sarcophugus amongst what at first glance was just rubble. An unmarked tomb. These things don't happen to you  in marinas.

For the past few evenings, a couple of fishermen have set their nets un-nervingly close to Fathom Cove's deep water moorings under the cliffs, perhaps reclaiming their traditional grounds, willing we stragglers to move on. Who knows.

But we'll all be gone soon. There are some last-minute charterers but fewer and fewer. Today the bay seemed to empty out. By the second half of October many longer-term American and European cruisers are calling it quits and going back to their other lives - or at least to solid ground - for the cold months. Our Nordhaven friends, Suzanne and Brian, hauled out in Gocek last week and headed for an apartment in Nice (they had dinner aboard Enki but wouldn't you know it, we all forgot about the backgammon board). Also in Gocek we finally caught up with Sea Cloud, another HR48 owned by a couple of affable Aussies who we've been in email contact with since last year.  Ian Cook is a medical specialist back home in Sydney, and his wife Cathy manages his practice. We gather they're pruning the practice back to give them more time to cruise, but last week they put Sea Cloud up on the hard until next spring. In many ways I envy them going home (I don't need to say how much we miss our kids - or do I?), but perhaps the reverse is true too. With luck we'll see more of the Cooks and Sea Cloud on the water in 2013. I hope so. 

First light in Fathom Cove

"Serious" cruising yachts (i.e. the ones with structures supporting wind generators and solar panels) have been all but invisible over summer, obscured by the armadas of gulets and charter fleets, but now they're more conspicuous. Like us they're sucking back on the last of the season. Will we meet some of these people in port over the winter? I'm curious to know other people who live aboard their boats. But we have wondered if perhaps there are fewer of us around...

Enki likes her space

People say it's been a quieter year in Turkey. Has the effective closure of the Red Sea route (because of Somalian piracy) combined with the aftershocks of the GFC and the chronic sickness of the eurozone taken the shine off the Mediterranean cruising dream? Then there's the unknown of Syria...What triggers a regional war is always more obvious after the event, but it's difficult to see what Turkey stands to gain from getting embroiled in Syria's civil war. But as you can tell, we're not exactly in the middle of things - thankfully (the Syrian border is about 600 km from here).

In these last sweet days, we have been walking a bit (we overtook the tortoise on the way down the hill from the tomb), admiring the olive crop, watching the sky, loving the gentleness of the temperature and committing to memory the colour and silkiness of the water.

Baths at Ruin Bay - Cleopatra's, they say

Looking north over Gocek bay (Skopea Limani)

The nightly thunderstorms which made us so twitchy all last week seem to have drawn back into the interior. The relief. It seems hardly believable that a month ago we were enthusing about "our first clouds". There are clouds in the sky every day now, and we're back in familiar territory, trying to read their intentions.

Forever Kekova

On of the best parts of meeting a Mediterranean country at its coastline (once you've filtered out the ugly clutter of mass tourism) is how satisfyingly parts of its scattered history begin to fall into place. For example, the placement of ancient ruins which, if you're being guided by the Lonely Planet are described as tricky to reach by road or public transport, becomes perfectly obvious when you're on a sailboat.

Kekova, where we've been idling away the past week, is a case in point. It's on a coast renowned for the severity of its mountains and for land-based travellers, it's remote.  Tourists who want to see this "watery paradise" (and we were surprised at how many do) have to organise themselves to get to the town still known as Demre (its Greek name) which is far from both Marmaris and Antalya. But if you're travelling by boat around the southwest of Turkey as people have done for many many centuries before ours, the accessibility of this beautiful stretch of sheltered water behind the four-mile long Kekova island looks altogether different, and it makes perfect sense to find it rich in ruins including a stunning Crusader castle built over the top of an ancient Lycian stronghold above Kale Koy.

The Lycians, in case you are as dim about ancient history as I have been until very recently, were first mentioned by Homer in The Illiad, but if you like your reading a little more contemporary you can glean a bit about them in Louis de Bernieres novel Birds without Wings. They're mostly remembered for their tombs which are mesmerising - I don't think you can take too many photos of Lycian tombs.

A few weeks ago we clambered over what's left of Xanthos which was one of the big six Lycian cities - there was an organised league of them, about 13 in all. Simena, which is the name of the sunken city that tourists peer at through glass-bottomed boats at Kekova, was one of the smaller ones. An earthquake toppled it into the sea in the 2nd century AD apparently.

When we arrived into Kekova, we saw only the water and the rocks. Rocks to be dodged primarily. But then, as our eyes acclimatised, it became like looking for Wally and we saw them - lintels, steps leading into the water, roof shapes, interior walls.  People lived all around the water, just as we do in Sydney. Louisa Rd, I muttered to Alex. Will people be squinting at the sketchy outlines of sunken Birchgrove mansions and infinity pools in the future, after the rising tide has covered Sydney's waterfront properties?

There are two small settlements around Kekova (which is the name for the body of water between the island of that name and the mainland). Both have been inhabited since 400 BC, or thereabouts. Ucagiz, a grubby little place which takes the brunt of the tourist trade and is accessible by road, has the accoutrements of modernity - carpet shops, tourist operators, public toilets - and Lycian tombs. We went in to drop off our rubbish, sat down in the shade for an orange juice (drawn to a corner cafe by the sound of jazz) and mutely communicated with a very old lady who sat beside us to catch her breath. She had such beautiful hands, hands to be proud of. As the vege man had produce to boast about.

 The other settlement, Kale Koy, is a pretty little hamlet where development, we learned, has been more or less  frozen by Turkey's richest family, which owns a luxurious house, with helipad, sitting pretty under the castle - we figured this house in the picture below, built over a Lycian rock tomb, must be it).

It's from the castle above Kalekoy that you get the best sense of the importance of Kekova. He who owned that view owned the waterway (the gecko thinks it's his now).

 The man who takes the 8 TL for your entry ticket, and importantly buzzes you through the electronic gates, is the same man who pants up the long stairway to the top of the castle carrying a bundled up Turkish flag bigger than a bedspread which he hoists just in case anyone is in doubt as to who owns this trophy ruin now (and it's a fair guess that it wasn't the Turks a century ago).

The jewel inside the Crusade fortress is this tiny amphitheatre below, unmistakably Lycian, and there are also Roman-style baths. Such a muddle.

I got myself into a bit of muddle over a fringed scarf. Wherever there is a ruin, there are people making money out of it. Fair enough. I just don't know how to say no. Alex stands back, amused, as I allow emotion to  interfere with the deal - but I couldn't disappoint her, could I?  She'd spent the winter embroidering the borders, she said (why do I doubt? too much exposure to cheap Chinese haberdashery?). Oh well, I may yet wear a Turkish headscarf to cover my head against the wind, already much cooler than it was two weeks ago.