After spending a night in one of Antalya's super cheap "roachy" hostels, where the receptionist kind of tried to make move on Judit while we were buying water, Amanda's plane was about to arrive. We weren't too familiar with the layout of the airport, or the number of terminals, so even though we had been able to make it, we wasted our time hitch-hiking between terminals and eventually turned up 20 minutes late. After a bit of smiley happy, we set out for Fethiye. Hitching a ride isn't easy with three people, so Judit took the bus. We got lucky and managed to get there before she did. :)
In Fethiye, we hopped in a minivan together, and continued on to Ölüdeniz (gorgeous, but very popular place, full of people), then Kayaköy (small village with only a handful of houses), and finally Kabak (not even on the map, even some Fethiye residents are unaware of its existence). And that's where we stopped. Kabak, well... We really want to thank Zoli for recommending this place to us. Kabak is one of the most wonderful places in the world:
Nobody really lives in Kabak. Thirteen years ago this was untoched, pristine land. Since then, around 15 campsites have been built, with the little houses, parcels for tents and the like, but people still only come here to get baked chill out and do yoga. Kabak is unknown to the masses.
First night we teamed up with a couple of Turkish guys, who also came with backpacks into Kabak, and because they said it was forbidden to camp on the beach, we climbed up the hills and found a suitable spot there for their 4-5 tents and our two. They weren't the best spots, they were sloped, stony and thorny, but we managed. :)
We awoke to the game warden telling us to piss off. By the time we got up, the guys were already getting their stuff packed. Later, in the afternoon, we saw that he even put a "NO CAMPING" sign on one of the trees.
So, with nothing else to do, the girls went down to the beach to bask in the sun, and I set out to go through all the campsites and haggle. The first place was quite fancy (stretched surface pools and all) and just as pricey, but next to it, I found the Shanti Garden Camping, where I managed to become fast friends with a really cool bartender guy, who vouched for us with the boss, so they let us put up our tents. They even offered us free breakfast and dinner if we did the dishes. So we did the dishes:
Judit even helped the chef lady with the cooking, so she can learn about vegetarian cuisine:
With Judit cooking, Amanda and I went to see the biggest attraction of the neighbourhood, a big waterfall. There are two paths leading up to it: an easy one and a "trekking" one. We decided to try our chances with the latter going up, and return on the longer, easier road. We ended up taking the tougher road both ways, but we didn't even find it at first. In fact, we started off exactly in the opposite direction. Luckily a huge Turkish guy found us, who was heading that way, so we figured we'd just follow him.
The guy was incredibly nice. Not only did he always wait for us, he even gave us almonds and hazelnuts, helped carry the bags through the tougher parts (the path was down the length of a canyon where we waded through water up to our chests sometimes) and he instantly brought a wet kerchief for Amanda when she hit her head quite badly on a protruding branch. And of course he took lots of pictures of us in the water:
In the end, we had to say goodbye to Kabak, because Amanda's flight was leaving from Antalya. This is actually lucky because we got so friendly with everybody and had such a good time that maybe if we didn't leave then, we'd still be there. :)
It was a tough ~45 minute ascent to the hills, in 40 degrees, with 30 kilos of stuff, which was quite stressful for all of us. But we were SUPER badass:
We weren't so lucky with hitchhiking this time, so we all took the bus, and said goodbye to Amanda in the morning, who flew home to find a job in the Land of Opportunities. I'll probably don't get to see her until November, in Thailand. :'-(
And finally, a tractor, from us, to you. CAUTION, NO FRAME!!
(translated by edward of himmel)
