Ölüdeniz

After another long day in the coach, we arrived at our hotel in Ölüdeniz quite late (8.30pm) where we will spend three nights exploring the area.

Next morning we drove another hour and a half to the Dalyan Delta, where you can find Lycian rock tombs as well as turtles.

There is a lot of development that has taken place along the river since I was last here, and whilst the Delta and the beach is meant to be a turtle sanctuary (loggerhead turtles, Nile turtles and terrapins), it was disappointing to see a lot of pollution in the water (mainly plastic bottles, plastic bags, balloons etc).

Also on the beach, there are signs asking people not to lie on the first few metres of sand (from the ocean) as that is where the turtles lay their eggs, not only are people ignoring this (tourists and locals alike), but there was no-one patrolling/policing it.

We were told that approx only 2 out of 80 baby turtles survive due to predators, wonder if this includes the impact of humans?

The next day we went river tubing at Saklikent gorge – water was absolutely freezing – same temp as the glacial rivers in Switzerland. Then some of the group covered themselves in mud (I declined as I remember the experience last time) and then we walked into the gorge, as far as we could get in 30 mins. Unfortunately, I managed to slip and whack my knee on a rock about 30 seconds before we turned around, so limped my way back to the bus.

After that, we had a bit of a mad dash back to the hotel for a quick lunch before heading up Babadağ mountain which has a height of almost 2,000 metres above sea level.

A 30 minute nerve-wracking ride up a narrow, winding road at high speed, delivered us to the top where we were paragliding from.

There was some low cloud, so there was a bit of a chill in the air and when we finally took off (after about a 5 min wait for a breeze), the first few minutes were a tad turbulent, with strong winds buffering us up, down and sideways.

I decided at that point, that I’d just have the sedate flight down (no acrobatic manoeuvres involving cork-screws and figures of eight, face down etc).

It was a lovely experience, I now have had a small taste of what it must be like to be a bird, it was all very peaceful and the view of Blue Lagoon and the beach from above was just spectacular!! Jarrah says her ride made her realise that she never wants to go skydiving 🙂

The hotel we stayed at in Ölüdeniz was a very large, “all-inclusive” holiday resort with unlimited alcohol, all you can eat buffet breakfast, lunch & dinner and filled with British tourists, who, to my utter horror and dismay have picked up the German habit of putting towels out on every available sun lounger around the pool at 6am to reserve a spot while they return to bed/eat breakfast.

Apparently they spend a week or two weeks, and return every year to repeat it all again – my idea of hell!! (Almost as bad as the big cruise ship holiday).

As a result, the main strip reminded me of what Benidorm was like 25yrs ago – all restaurant and shop names in English, all bars advertising English beer and football games on the big TV, English breakfasts, baked beans, etc – almost nothing Turkish to be found. There are even shops called Azda (Asda), Saintburys (Sainsburys) and Tesko (Tesco) 🙂 Very sad when a culture is practically erased like this. Suppose it is the price of “progress” 🙁