Well here we are in Feb 2011 getting ready for setting off sailing again after having spent a lovely few months in Alanya Yacht Marina in the South of Turkey. Alanya is the furthest east 'developed' marina in Turkey and it is a little out of the way and so therefore reasonably priced, especially if you take out year long contracts like many of the people here have done. Alanya is an old walled city on a rocky outcrop surrounded by a large urban sprawl and two very long beaches. It is said that Cleopatra loved walking in the fine sands and bathing in the clear blue waters here so much that Anthony presented her with the region, just about good enough for us then ;-) There are quite a lot of hotels and apartments etc but it is also a 'real' town with an industrial area and non touristy areas if you just step back from the main street. We really like it here and would love to have more time to stay another winter out here too but time is pressing on and we have to head west soon!
We arrived in Alanya after a few days of slightly illegal Turkish cruising, we had thought we could sign in in Bozyasi but we couldn't. This is what greeted us at the harbour entrance big turkish flags draped from all the buildings and funny yellow buoys in the harbour entrance, we thought they were some new kind of navigation warnings but it turned out there was a triathlon on and the competitors had to swim out here. Luckily we didn't mow any of them down....
We were delighted with Alanya main town harbour and tried to sign in there with a view to staying a few days but the police directed us to the marina and we were told to get straight there to ensure our safety from prosecution but we asked if we could go for lunch first and they said yeah OK!
Islay Mist anchored in Alanya town harbour
The sail around from Alanya town harbour to the marina is very impressive, you can sail very close in to the old town and cliffs with the citadel on the top. Below is the naval dockyard built in the 13th century the only surviving example of its type.
The naval dockyard with a day tripper gulet anchored in the foreground
Now some pics of the citadel...
It is pretty cool looking up at the fortress from below there is a look out post along here from where they used to drop convicted criminals to their deaths, nice.
| An old ruin of a mosque on the promontory, can't think why it has gone to ruin but maybe because of the perilous trek to prayer from either the sea or the fortress.... |
Our first view of our winter home for 2010/2011 - Alanya Yat Limani. More to come on the marina in another post.
We have had a very good winter really, we quickly found the Turkish people to be very friendly indeed, if we thought the Spaniards and the Italians loved little blond girls the Turks just adore them. Everyone calls Kaylee princess and so many people are trying to touch her hair on the bus etc that she has requested to dye it black! The Marina lies 4km outside the centre of the town but only a short bike ride of 1 km takes us to the nearest supermarket along the beachfront. We try to do the cycle ride at least twice a week as it is good exercise for the girls (and us.) If it is raining which believe me it has done a fair bit we can get the bus for 1.25 Turkish Lira which works out at about 70 cents or pence. We use Lira as it is much more economical than using euros which they do accept nearly everywhere too.
Halfway along the bike path there is a free fitness centre on the edge of the cliffs which we always stop at for half an hour ......
We met the self named 'Camel Man' one day, a very nice friendly person who offered Ali to buy me for
this camel and 'a very nice donkey.' He insisted Ali would be getting a bargain because I am older than the camel! Although it was a hard decision Ali didn't make the sale in the end as he didn't think the camel would be very good at navigation......
The Banana Plantation
The marina backs onto lush green hills full of fruit plantations (well you have to skip over the dual carriage way but still quite close.) We sometimes go for a walk up around a circuit through the hills and it is lovely.
On our first walk up in November, it was still fairly hot so the girls needed an ice cream for energy.
Banana trees. Most of the hill is planted with either bananas or oranges lemons etc. Alanya is a very important banana growing region and exports most of the bananas grown.
The bananas are grown in bags whether it is to keep pests off or for insulation I am not sure.
Here is a digger working away making new terraces, a little bonus for Alistair on his walk!
Here is a truck loading up bananas for sale. These will definitely be exported, you can see how green they are, and if they were for local consumption they would be ripe.
A fair proportion of the bananas are grown inside green houses too.
There are lots of tangerine and orange trees as well as the odd lemon tree here and there, some of the people in the marina don't buy oranges they just pick them up here (when no one is looking or ones that have fallen onto the road.)
There are also lots of different wild fruits etc.
Blackcurrants.
Raspberries.
And this big cactus, Ali tried to break into one of these and eat it as the girls assured him it was a prickly pear and Baloo the bear eats them in the 'Jungle Book.' Poor Ali didn't really get any fruit but he did get a 'raw paw!' (Only funny if you know the song 'The Bear Neccessities' from the Jungle book....)
There are lots of animals and things to look out for too, lots of lizards which usually don't sit still long enough for you to get the camera switched on but this big guy did!
Most surprising though was this little fella we found in the road side ditch. He is a fresh water crab and we found him almost at the top of the hill in the ditch. We also found some porcupine quills on one trip too and were amazed as we didn't know they lived around here.
Guard donkey, who needs one of those ferocious dogs when you have this very loud donkey. All was quiet until we stopped to look at him and he made it very clear that he wanted us to go away!
At the top of the hill there is a public water tap where all the surrounding houses get their water, well the poorer ones anyway, but the water is so nice from here that some of the marina residents go up with big bottles to use for their drinking water. It certainly tastes as good as Shetland water whereas the stuff that comes through the system is not so good.
The turning point at the top of the hill is this little mosque, the only one we can hear from the marina and it's not very loud at all so we aren't woken up at six am every morning. It is funny how when we first got to Turkey we always noticed the prayer calls but now unless we are right next to a mosque we don't notice them at all. I quite like them it makes you feel like you are somewhere exotic. Although Islam is the main religion in Turkey it is quite secular. Not so many of the younger girls are dressed in head scarves and we have only seen one person in a full burka and one person take out his prayer mat in the middle of the street upon the call sounding. I think the main draw back to being a female Muslim is not the scarf it is the riding of motorbikes side saddle, it just doesn't look safe at all!
If we go up on a Sunday we always meet some of the local kids who are very friendly. They cycle around us trying to get the girls to talk to them and shout 'Hello how are you, where do you come from' like a mantra. They are the happiest little bunch of kids we have met yet and we sometimes take sweets back up the hill for them. Most of the people who live up the hill are quite poor and live in the bottom of unfinished houses like these below. Sometimes the old ladies are out washing the clothes in the ditch and that is a very humbling sight and one to remember when you are grumbling about there not being any hot water in the showers.
Which as always is a total contrast with these......
Big holiday homes all locked up for the winter mostly with very loud guard dogs outside.
But who are we to speak when we live in the view I am looking at in this picture.
Here Alanya Yat Limani.
Alanya Castle
On with the tour of Alanya! When Jayne was out visiting over Christmas we decided to go for a look up inside the castle fortress that we sailed under on our way to the marina.
Walking up through the older part of town is a lot more picturesque than the urban sprawl which surrounds it. Ali of course is always busy snapping away at what he calls fixer uppers and i am surprised he hasn't done his usual enquiring about the prices for some of the many half finished or ruined houses here.
A prime example....
A lot of the newer houses have just incorporated themselves into the forts walls the whole way down the hill. There is a section which you can see from the sea but we haven't figured out how to get to which has some of the bigger houses so obviously if you have the money you can actually build your house inside an ancient walled town in Turkey.
Funnily enough getting to the castle at the top is actually a big anti climax especially as it cost 10 lira each to get in, it is quite small and fairly run down the walk up and down was actually better.
Some views, from/ in the castle.
Walls along the cliffs.
A ruin of the old castle mosque.
Me Alisha Kaylee and Jayne in the castle when she was out for her holidays over Christmas.
The view from one of the outcrops, maybe this was actually where they threw the baddies from? It looks out on to the headland with the ruins of the other mosque as pictured above. there are lots of caves around the bottom of the cliffs and countless Gulets and small tripper boats go out every day during the 'season.'
A view looking South over Alanya town from Castle, you can see the Kizil Kule or 'Red Tower' in the foreground which is another place we visited.
Kizil Kule
The red tower is an octagonal red tower (funnily enough) 35 metres high that looks over the main town harbour and is a five storey fortress. It was also built in the 13th century under Selcuk rule which may mean more to you than it does to me. What we do know is that the Selcuk Sultan who first 'took' Alanya in 1221 was called Aladdin ( or Aleddin or Alceddin there are many spellings) and there is a statue of him in the middle of our cycle route into town as his name is where 'Alanya' is derived from. Anyway our two girls said "You know what, that is definitely not Aladdin he looks nothing like he does in the Disney movie - who ever made that statue is a really bad artist!"
Looking up at the Red Tower
The top of the tower inside. The bottom two floors are used as a museum and gallery. Even better nearby there is a Red Tower Restaurant and micro brewery which does the only draught beer around which is very tasty and reasonably priced for Turkey and even better still, the guy who owns it is a part owner of the marina so marina users get a 20% discount when they go there for food or drink! The Turkish government wont give them a licence to sell their beer anywhere else but on the premises which is a real shame as we would all love the marina pub to have it instead of the main Turkish brand of Efes which is fairly tasteless and pricey.
A view of the ancient dockyard from the top of the Red tower, we wanted to go there too but it the paths to it are being refurbished over the 'off season' so hopefully it will be open again soon.
The walls connecting the red tower to the castle.
The Dalmatas Caves
They are rather small compared to the only other caves we have been in in Gibraltar but still very cool the girls love all the stalactites and stalagmites. There are much bigger caves a few miles South of Alanya which we will go to before we leave here when we hire a car for a few days in march when Martin comes out to visit us. But these caves are a bargain at 4 Lira per adult The ones in Gib are at least ten Euros per adult! and kids didn't get in free either!
Eid-ul-Adha, Kurban Bayrami
A couple of weeks after we got here we started noticing a lot of animals were being put into makeshift pens in a field along the road into town on our cycle route. You couldn't help but notice it the smell got stronger as the days went on and when we were on the bus it wasn't pleasant if it had to stop at the traffic lights down wind! Then cars and vans started pulling up and people would get a sheep, goat or a cow and drive away with it. We did see one goat bleating out of the back seat of a car! We thought it was just the local time of year for live stock sales and this was true up to a point but it is all to do with the Islamic religious festival of Eid-ul-Adha, Kurban Bayrami or ' Feast of the Sacrifice.' You can see where this is going can't you?!
Instead of me interpreting it wrongly here is the official definition from the http://www.allaboutturkey.com website....
The festival is intended to be a festive and joyous occasion. Special foods and delicacies are prepared for the day and are distributed to neighbors and friends. Despite its importance it is considered inferior to the Eid-ul-Adha (Kurban Bayrami) and is known as the "little feast".
Eid-ul-Adha, Kurban Bayrami in Turkish (the "Feast of Sacrifice") is the great festival of Islam. It is also known as Baqri-Eid (the "Cow Festival") because its most important feature is the sacrifice of an animal (cow, goat, sheep, or other appropriate beast) in commemoration of the ram sacrificed by Abraham in place of his son. In Muhammad's time a camel was usually the animal sacrificed. The command to perform sacrifices is given in Surah 22.36 and although no specific day is fixed in the Qur'an the sacrificing of animals was already practiced on the last day of the pilgrimage by the pre-Islamic Arabs and the institution was duly retained. A special prayer, similar to the Eid-ul-Fitr prayer, is also offered on this day before the animals are sacrificed.
Narrated Al-Bara: I heard the Prophet delivering a Khutba (hutbe) saying, "The first thing to be done on this day (the first day of 'Id-ul-Adha) is to pray; and after returning from the prayer we slaughter our sacrifices (in the name of Allah), and whoever does so, he acted according to our Sunna (traditions) " (Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 2, p. 37).
Every Muslim home is obliged to offer a sacrifice on this day. The meat may be eaten by the family but a distribution of a generous share to the poor should also be made. As the two Eids (bayrams) are festive occasions, it is unlawful to fast on these days. Fasting on Eid-ul-Adha (Kurban Bayrami) would, in fact, defeat the whole object of the festival for food is to be eaten on this day with a cheerful heart in remembrance of God's bounty and provision for mankind. Umar once said:
The Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) prohibited fasting on these two days. As regards Id al-Adha, you eat the meat of your sacrificial animals. As for Id al-Fitr, you break (i.e. end) your fast. (Sunan Abu Dawud, Vol. 2, p. 663).
So there you go a small description of Alanya and our first impressions of Turkey, all good I might add. The next post will be marina life in Alanya.......
