Last week Christine and I took advantage of our fabulous location here in Antalya Turkey to take a break from building our eXtreme eXpedition Passage Maker boat Möbius and go on some land based eXpeditions.

After a 5 minute drive from our home and Naval Yachts, we met Dincer and Baris, our two awemazing builder brothers, at the base of our local mountain and took the gondola ride up to the top.

Christine isn’t the biggest fan of heights but everyone else was all smiles.  Dincer on the left and Baris on the right.

About half way up here and you can see the whole Antalya Free Zone to the left of the cable right in the middle here.  Directly to the right on the other side of the cable is the breakwater and then the cable cuts through the Free Zone harbour.

We are on the far Western end of the city of Antalya so you can see the rest of this large city stretching out as far as you can see towards the top of the photo.

Off to the West on the other side is beautiful forested coastline on the D400 coastal highway that winds all the way from here to Istanbul if you kept going.  The marina you see here is very new and mostly for the local commercial fisherman and local boat owners.

Turning to look North you are treated with views like this of the mountains which surround us.

We enjoyed a leisurely lunch with Dincer and Baris at a little Gözleme making restaurant

All this about 5 minutes drive from our apartment and from the Naval yard so you can see more reasons why we made this choice to locate here and build Möbius with Naval Yachts and Dincer and Baris.  After this lovely luncheon outing it was back down the gondola and back to work for all of us!

The summer weather has been beautiful and quite hot with more and more humidity creeping in this month, so Christine had cold mountain streams calling her name and on Saturday morning we drove about 60 km east and bit north to Köprülü Kanyon. 

The roads were great and we were there in about 90 minutes after leaving the apartment.

The air temp was a bit cooler as we wound our way along the riverside and soon found what Christine was longing for, cool mountain streams.

This canyon is the most popular for river rafting so we knew were were getting closer when we started seeing more and more of this.

If you click to enlarge this shot and look a bit more closely you will see all the rafts full of people about to head down the river.

Soon after we came to this very skinny old bridge and knew we were getting close.  It was definately a one car only width but has been there for centuries by the looks of it and we had no problems getting across.

Hard to tell from this distance but the river current is very fast so it takes on this slightly muddy green colour in the main parts with all the sediment it is carrying down from its mountain origins.

Once across the bridge and down the road on the other side of the river, we knew we had arrived when we came to this beautiful swimming hole.

We hadn’t reserved a place to stay yet so we kept driving down the road following the river as Christine’s research said that there were supposed to be several places with little cabins to rent that were also offering full “pension” or meal services.

Sure enough we found this little spot and they had a room for us so this was home for the night.

Don’t think we can get too much more on the river than this do you?

This is where we had our dinner that night and breakfast the next morning. 

Total bill for room, dinner and breakfast?  300TLY or about US$50  This is actually relatively high but given the area and that it is high season now, it was a bargain and we were delighted with our stay.

Our room had a lovely little balcony overlooking the river that was just what the doctor ordered after the warm drive up.

But pretty soon that swimming hole was calling our names so we changed into our swimsuits, left Ruby and Barney on the balcony with their food and water and we walked to the swimming hole which was about a kilometer or so back up the river.

Turning 90 degrees to the right looking across the river you can see how narrow the river is here as you are looking at the road on the other side just behind that picnic shed.

As we walked along the river to get here there were families all along the banks and at several camping spots along the way.  Lots of BBQ’s grilling up some tasty smelling meats and lots of laughter.

So when we got to our swimming hole we found more of the same with lots of people of all ages and origins enjoying this idyllic pool of mountain fresh water.  Best we could tell some of the people were from Antalya and up here like us to cool off and enjoy this very different mountain river environment, others, mostly from Russia and former Soviet block countries, had come in on tour busses for the weekend of river rafting and swimming,

This was yet another example for us of why we so enjoy living in Turkey.  As we relaxed and took it all in there was everything from wee babies to people even older than us and every age in between and most seemed to be groups of families and friends.  There were about as many men as women and you could see every sort of bathing attire possible from the skimpiest of string bikinis to other ladies fully covered in bright beautiful and colourful outfits.  Everyone was laughing and playing together wonderfully oblivious to any such differences.  We were all there to enjoy this beautiful setting and cool off in this pristine water.

Christine was a bit hesitant but we soon both dove right into one of the deeper spots, about 1.5m/4 feet deep and BOY was it ever refreshing!  Or as Christine would have worded it; VERY VERY cccccccccccccold! 

The water It was literally numbingly cold and that soon helped to make it quite wonderfully refreshing and invigorating.

It didn’t take long to warm up again though once we were out of the water so we jumped back in several times over the few hours we were there enjoying this newest bit of Turkish delight we had found.

We strolled back to our cabin to rescue the poor little abandoned puppies, enjoyed some reading time out on the balcony and then headed back to the river side for dinner.

The evening air was delightfully cool with the river babbling in the background so we had a very restful sleep followed by a delicious breakfast here on the river again and then enjoyed the drive back down this side of the river and back to our apartment in Antalya.  Gold star goes to my Beautiful Bride for finding this new bit of paradise for us to enjoy.

Not a bad few days, up the gondola for lunch one day and then up this river the next.  More examples of why we are so delighted to be here and enjoying this whole experience so thoroughly.