After our great tour to the Dilek Peninsula last week, and learning all about the entire park, we decided to visit the north side of the park, where there are trails and more wilderness than on the Doganbey side (the far west end of the park is occupied by the military and off limits to the public, btw). The park is easy to get to – just a little off the route back to Kusadasi on all good highway type roads. It’s getting to be around lunch time, but we’re not all that hungry so we decide to find a grocery store and just buy some snacks – maybe a sandwich to share and fruit.

Finding the darn Carrefour though is harder than it seems. The first one we finally find is on this awful roundabout intersection with no parking and gets us all turned around in a little town when we try to reverse course. There is a Migra store, which looks like it may be a grocery store, but we don’t want to take the chance there, so we continue to search for another Carrefour on the map, finally finding it on the road to the park – and lucking into a parking space which is even harder to find than the store!

This Carrefour isn’t a big full service one though – very limited in offerings, but we do manage to find an orange and a couple of sandwiches to much on. (The orange price converted to 10 US cents – fruit is so cheap here!). Now we’re set and off to the park to find a place on the coast to picnic. And that’s when the whole not having Lira thing bites me in the butt. The park costs 39 Lira (about $2 USD) – but they only take cash, and only Lira. No USD, no Euro, no credit cards. Damn it. Back into town we go in search of a bank, and end up finding a bunch of ATMs on a corner. What an experience!

There were actually 4 ATMs all in a row, all freestanding, with lines of people for each. Knowing how some of these ATMs are a rip off, I tried to figure out which was a good bank to use, but really, in the end? Just gave it a wild ass guess because none of them sounded familiar. A royal pain. But some guys in line were really sweet and let me use one of the ATMs they were waiting for (I think because I had been standing there forever trying to make a decision!) and with that, we finally got the money and drove back to the park with our entrance fee in hand.

It is a really beautiful environmentally protected park – coastline vistas that go on forever, mountain trails for hiking and biking. We drove along the coast, stopping here and there for photos and at a lovely gazebo to snack on our lunchtime sandwiches.

And there is literally no one here! We have the road to ourselves almost all the way through the park until it ends (well, is blocked off for the military access). Until we get to the beaches that is. Now, the beaches are packed and there are tons of people there – but we’re just driving through – we’re looking for the botanical garden trail and others that are shown on the map we got from the Bogandey visit last week.

As it ends up, we never find the blasted botanical trail! We actually think that we drove the trail that ran between 2 beach access points. It showed hiking on the map, but it was definitely a road. The only trail we could find was marked as a mountain bike trail on our map, but was definitely also a hiking trail – and one that went up into the mountains at a pretty decent slow elevation gain. It’s pretty and peaceful and a good moderate hike – and if we kept going (not! Eventually the elevation gain is HUGE) we’d end up in Doganbey 18 km away. We’re happy with our little 2 or 3 km walk up and out, thank you.

A quick and easy drive out of the park and back into Kusadasi goes without any issues. We don’t quite manage to find a parking space for the car close to the rental office, even after circling a couple of times, but we do manage to stuff it into the corner of the pedestrian walk, where there is construction. I ran in, got our nice agent guy, who congratulated us on finding a spot! Hey, whatever works and we were back on the ship in a jiffy.

Another lovely sunset over Pigeon Island…

…and we are off to dinner and then the Azamazing evening show with the Antakya choir again. We loved them last week, seeing them a second time is not a problem. Plus, oh lord, we are now “VIPs”, so we also got into the Cabaret lounge early for the senior officer meet and greet and pictures with the captain. Oh la la.  Oh, what a suite will get ya!

LOL.

After the show it was back to the balcony before retiring for the evening. Tomorrow, another ship’s tour to Delos with lunch in Ano Mero. Lovely full day.