Follies, new studs, thousands of bananas and old stones

Antalya is very much focused on tourism. That feels like a cold shower, especially when you've just arrived from the quiet and authentic interior, where we often were the first non-Turkish persons people ever met. Therefore we do not like to go to the town, but prefer to stay at or around Captain Ali Baba's silly campsite. When the moment has come that we have to have Peter's bicycle welded, there's no other choice then to go into Antalya.
Just like Istanbul all the streets and quarters are divided by product. All companies in the same line of business are situated in the same quarter: metal-industry, aluminium, car repairs, bicycles, welders. This makes life quite easy for us. With help of our Turkish dictionary Peter learned two sentences by heart, with which he can clarify the problem and the solution. Passers-by actually do understand him and point us to Seckim Kaynak, where Mister Ata is lord and master.
Seckim Kaynak turns out to be a shabby, small and dirty workshop. Desperately Peter looks inside and estimates the amount of rubbish at about four tons. A real folly. In the Netherlands he wouldn't enter a shop like this with his bicycle, but here he has no choice. He explains the problem to Mister Ata - whose hands, face, clothes and of course his hair are black - as good as he can. The studs that are needed to attach the rear luggage-carrier to the bicycle have broken off the frame; they need to be bigger and above all sturdier. Mister Ata understands the problem immediately (Peter thinks) and they both start working. Peter removes the luggage-carrier, the rear-wheel and the derailleur. The welder proves to be a real professional: very secure he cuts two new studs, welds them perfectly on the right spot, finishes the weld beautifully and even sprays a new layer of lacquer on it. For the total amount of 6 euro Peter is a greatly relieved and happy man.

Our second assignment is getting extra metal cases to slip over the broken tentpoles; the two cases provided with the tent are already in use. In a street filled with shops that sell metal pipes we ask a man for a pipe of the right size, like the example we brought along. The mechanic asks us to sit down, have a cup of tea and wait a minute. He doesn't have the right size in his shop, but he's going to ask around. Ten minutes later he returns with an iron pipe of the right diameter. He cuts four little cases of it, files the burrs of them and hands them over. For free. It's unbelievable, we press him but he absolutely refuses to accept money for his work. This kind of service can't be found in Europe anymore, unfortunately.

Captain Ali Baba's campsite is a real folly. Things are lying around everywhere; it's untidy and there are all kinds of buildings and shacks and trumpery. In the trees are tree-huts with bedroom and bathroom, you can even rent them. One of them is called the bridalsuite. Alongside and over the river there are a whole lot of terraces and gardenhouses, all of them crooked and cosy. Next to our tent is a kind of open house with a lot of lounge-chairs, the house looks just like a flee-market. Chicken, geese and turkeys are walking all over the terrain.

It would be perfect to be here, if they wouldn't play those Turkish tearjerkers every evening until half past one.
A lot of the staff is from Kurdistan. We talk a lot with some of them. Bulent Taskin is from Adiyaman, he tells us about the poverty and huge unemployment in the eastern part of Turkey. The Kurds are being treated like second class citizens. No work means no money, which means no future, no marriage and no children. At our departure we hand him an envelope with a postcard and some money, a small start for a better life for him and his fiancée.

The southern coast of Turkey varies from beautiful to boring: beautiful for the great vistas and banana-plantations, boring for the endless stretches of straight road with strong headwinds.

The waterfalls of Manavgat are beautiful in their own right, but look ugly now for the troops of tourists that litter the place. Alanya, where we arrive the next day, is also completely taken over by tourists. This doesn't help to create a nice atmosphere or an affordable price-level, all the prices are at least twice we paid in the interior of the country. We don't want to sleep in a hotel and the only official campsite is 20 kilometres down the road, so we ask the owner of a beachstand whether we can put our tent on his lawn. He agrees and even offers us a drink. At night, when business is over, he calls a guard who gets the order not only to guard the beachstand, but us as well. He tells us to put our bicycles in the toiletbuilding and gives us the key. Camping out in the wild is not always rough.

The more we cycle eastwards from Alanya, the less tourists we see and the more Turkish the country gets again. This is what we came for, if we wanted to see Europeans all the time, we might as well have stayed in the Netherlands. The first 60 kilometres alongside the sea are level and there's not a lot of wind. We pass hundreds of banana-plantations with thousands of bananas and greenhouses filled with tomatoes and paprika's. Then we leave the coastal road and are being led into the mountainous interior. The kilometres we climb are long and hot, but incredibly beautiful. The villages we pass don't contain any tourists; as a consequence there are no campsites either, so we camp in the garden of a small restaurant.
When we reach the sea again we dive into it as quickly as we can, to cool down our overheated bodies. It's October, other travellers tell us that it's already raining and snowing in the mountains around Cappadocia. Winter's approaching fast. We have to make a change of plan, too avoid getting stuck in picturesque winterscenes. Therefore we remain on the coastal road, instead of heading towards Cappadocia like our initial plan was. Cappadocia is on top of our list when we return to Turkey, one day.

For the first time in our lives we taste fresh peanuts, just harvested, the plant is still on them. They're unroasted; we don't really like them this way. I think they taste like raw peas (pea-nuts), Peter tastes raw earth (in Dutch they're called earthnuts).
We're nearing Mersin and more and more we're cycling in between remains of old Roman towns and temples. All place-name-signs have another sign with the old Roman names as well.

At 395 AD the Roman Empire was substituted by the Byzantium Empire that would remain on these coasts until 1.453 AD. The greed for conquering of the Romans as well as the Byzantines reflects itself in the ruins that still can be seen all along the southern coast. The Turks don't seem to take a lot of notice of the ruins, except for when tourists are interested and willing to pay money to see them.
In Kizkalesi, next to an old Roman fortress, a worker of the local museum approaches us and directs us to an amazing campsite. This pleasant and very simple campsite is situated in the midst of beautiful ruins: old walls, a hamam (bathhouse), tombs and a cistern (waterwell).

From here to Mersin it's one big open-air museum. On our way to the town we take a small side road that leads to Kanlidivane, one of the historical sites of the Roman Empire. There are historical buildings every where, amongst which are houses, temples, basilica and city-walls. Most impressive is the lionpit: a round hole of about 50-metre diameter, where nasty and unobeying people were thrown at the lions in the old days. Via a small path we walk down to the bottom of the pit. We are relieved to see that it's just goats that occupy the pits nowadays, looking for something edible. That can't be us, we're too skinny now.