Friday, October 14, 2011

As we prepared to leave Kas this morning, Deniz, our guardian angel there, announced that he’d checked out our tires and that everything looked ready to go!  He said that his father had been a taxi driver and that the first thing he’d taught him when he was learning to drive was to check inspect everything before setting off.  We were thankful for Dad’s advice!

Today’s destination was Pamukkale, so we soon turned off the gorgeous coastal road and headed inland, passing through small villages and rural countryside.  At one point, road construction necessitated a poorly defined detour and we found ourselves lost, but hardly friendless.  When we asked a(nother) gentleman for directions, he said, “Follow me!”and hopped into his car to lead us on our way.  Unfortunately, he didn’t know about the road construction project, so we had to double back.  As we drove back he called a teacher who knew the area and spoke English very well. As we drove up to the school, she came out with her class to greet us and tell us how to get back to the correct road. 

 

The beautiful young teacher’s middle-school students were an excited and smiling group, eager to greet us in English and giggle at our fractured Turkish.  What a delightful interlude!

At Pamukkale, after fending off guidebook salesmen on motor scooters, we went to the Greek-Roman-Byzantine city of Hierapolis, on a plateau above the town.  

 The ruins are extensive and cover a wide area and, after finally making sense of the poor-excuse-for-a-sitemap, we found much to explore.  It was a very warm afternoon and there were visitors who were wearing bathing suits before or after enjoying the pool, which featured sunken pillars and building stones.  

 

The ruins of ancient cities may be a dime a dozen in this part of the world, but Pamukkale’s other big draw is certainly not.  The travertine pools that cover the hillside between Hierapolis and the town are a sight to see, to wade in, or to immerse tired bodies in.  Warm water flows down terraces, forming nature’s own turquoise-colored negative edge pools and leaving the hillside looking like a snow field.  We enjoyed wading in the bathtub-warm water and, equally, the human spectacle all around us.  There were Japanese, who didn’t think the shoes-off rule applied to them, and an enormous range of bather-to-bathing apparel ratio on view.   

 

At one end of the spectrum was the woman in Turkish peasant dress (head scarf, long-sleeved blouse, vest and baggy ankle-length skirt) completely immersed in a pool and, at the other, way too-much-Frenchman sporting way-too-little Speedo!  Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed our wade, with pants’ legs rolled up.

We were hot, tired and ready for a cold brew on our balcony by afternoon’s end.  Tonight, we had dinner at a low table seated on a divan that ran around the perimeter of the dining room of our hotel.  Great food, great atmosphere!