Selczuk to Afrodesia and Pamukkale

Afrodesia and Pamukkale
My father and Pippa and I got on the road at 6:15 am to drive to the Izmir airport because Pippa is flying home today. We have really enjoyed having here with us this trip. She usually doesn’t come as she is uncomfortable with the motion of boats. We get back on the same toll road and our toll card seems to work again. So off we go at 120 KPH north. It takes about 30 minutes then we are off on a side road and soon we drive into a very modern airport. The police at right there so I say a quick goodbye and stay with the minibus while my father walks Pippa in. Is back very quickly because in Turkish airports security screening is right at the door. We talk the alternate route back that goes through a few small towns which are just waking up. We are arrive back in Selczuk just as our hostess is beginning to set out breakfast. I get my computer and write about Istanbul as all the accoutrements of Turkish breakfast appear. Soon everyone else appears and we dig in.

After breakfast we load up the van and bid our lovely hostess and the men from the shop and restaurant next door adieu and head down the road towards Afrodesia and Pamukkale. Soon we are zipping along through small towns and past roadside stands selling fruit, vegetables, and sometimes jars of what looks like honey. They must e selling the produce they are growing right there because the stands will all be selling tomatoes, then it will be fruit and then change again to what looks like jars of honey. We can see rain clouds ahead and off to the south in the direction of Afrodesia. Soon we see the brown tourist sign for out turn off and we are on a very narrow twisty road through rolling hills and the through some small mountains. You have to get right on to the shoulder when another vehicle comes from the other direction. It’s very exciting driving. Soon the rain starts and we drive through some very small villages and just before Afrodesia we spy a restaurant off to the left and come to a flying stop in a cloud of dust. The owner is out in the parking lot and waves us in. It has a big out door terrace and there is a group off a tourbus at the far end being serenaded by a man playing a Turkish stringed instrument. The wind is bowing a little rain around in the bright orange blooms of the pomegranate trees. It’s a very pretty spot. We order sour cherry juice, Aryan, two chopped salads, beef, meatball shish kebaps and a broiled fish. We end up with a lot of delicious food and leave fully nourished and ready to tour the ancient city of Aphrodesia and the temple of Aphrodite.

We drive into one more rain burst and we try to park right at the gate but we are waved back up the road by a Turkish soldier. We go back up to the main road and park in the lot across the street. We pay a few TL to park and are driven down in a trolley pulled by a farm tractor. Almost like Disney world! We pay our admission and wander past the Museum, café and gift shop. The rain must have scared the tour busses away so we are almost alone. We can see the remains of a two story stone structure with some lovely statues ahead. But then I see a long line of carved capitals off of the tops of columns that are carved with faces. They are stacked four high and fifteen long under an over hanging roof. All the faces are different and carved with quite fine detail. They are really cool all stacked there like that. Across the walk is a field full of odd bits and pieces of carved stone. We walk along and soon come to the theater. It is a large one and pretty well preserved. There are some men working on the stage house. I get pics of the family sitting on the seats.

We walk one into the public buildings. Unlike Ephesus here you can really get the felling of how an ancient Greek city was laid out. There are still a lot of walls and columns standing and fountains, pools and a few statues. There was another workman rebuilding a wall and he smiled and motioned me over and handed me a bunch of plums had had just picked off a nearby tree. I thanked him and motioned that I was going to wash them and he nodded and smiled and are a few plums and went back to his work.

We walked through a smaller theater, where the city councils may have met. It had a pool of water and frogs at the base of the seats. Winfree was trying to catch a frog and we watched from the seats then walked over and were in the remains of the Temple of Aphrodite ( she who wears the see thru nightie!) Most of the columns are still standing and even some of the capitals are on their tops. It’s quite a place. Then we walking into another temple that still had the façade intact and it was covered with amazing carvings. We walked out and toured the museum were they now store most of the statues and a whole room full of carved capitals from the temple. Really intricate carving, and so much of it! It’s really amazing how much carving the Greeks did.

After the museum we walked through a display of the archeologists and photos of the site over the years. There were even pictures of the Turks in the nearby town and the odd pieces of carved stones they were using to hold of columns for porches or to hold water for their animals. There were more photos of parts of the dig over the years. It was amazing to see the original site pictures. You can that amazing temple poking up out of a grove of trees. Then I hit the bathroom and used the Turkish toilet which is a ceramic hole in the floor with foot grips and water spigot. Then I washed my hands and the plums very thoroughly with lots of soap. We ate some of the plums which were a bit sour. We decided they weren’t quite ripe yet so we switched to ice cream bars.

Then we walked back to the trolley where the drivers were shaking white mulberries out of a tree and eating them. I have never had a white mulberry so I ge them a taste. Not as flavorful as the red ones but interesting. We rode the trolley back to our minibus and drove off towards Pamukkale.

We headed further down that narrow twisty road until it meet up with another main road. We turned on to the larger road and were soon headed up into the mountains. We went up and over and then wound our way down the other side and into the city of Denizili. The traffic was thick but we eventually popped out the other side and followed the brown signs to the village of Pamukkale. It’s not a very big community and it mostly caters to tourists as it is right on the edge of a huge cliff of of white travertine which has been deposited there by centuries of water flowing down the cliffs from hot mineral springs. They form pools that people love to bathe in. It is now a world heritage site and they are trying to protect the travertine. The local hotels have diverted a lot of the water into their pools and through their bars and thousands of people walk up and down the cliffs every month. It is very spectacular. We arrived in the evening anf drove to the edge of town and found a quiet hotel with a pool and settled in for a swim and a late dinner.

When we were eating our dinner we could se lots of people walking up the travertines. People are limited to just one path now and it looked like an army of ants. When darkness fell searchlights light up he sky from the top. Our hosts explained to us that a big concert was being held that night in the ancient greek theater at Heiropolis on the top past the travertines. It was being broadcast on the television. Looked like fun. My brother considered walking up there but we were all pretty tired from the days explorations. So we relaxed and then headed for bed. I shared a room with my father instead of Winfree for the first time on the trip. It was nice not having to wade through her stuff to ge to my bed for a change.