MELAS VALLEY______Coffee House Lodgers Day 9___Mentesbey-Akseki-Antalya

Happiness!

Three mountaineers on the beach

Volkan Balik, highly recommended

Our first beers hold a special place in our hearts

Our breakfast spot at Akseki

Last day of the tour was going to be spent with bus and plane rides, but we made sure to leave some room in between for the end of journey celebrations. Going first to Akseki, and taking another bus from there to Antalya, there was an unspoken aggreement about what we were going to do once we set foot in Antalya. We took a seat at the very first bar we came across and ordered cold beers. We had been fasting from alcohol for the last 8 days, both because of the difficulty of finding it along the way, and also to let our bodies recuperate, but after those 8 long days we had deserved every sip of that nice cold beer. We had a toast honoring the beautiful look of the Mediterranean, and found the sea inviting us in. We couldn’t possible turn that invitation down, therefore went straight down to the beach. When we went into a private beach run by a hotel with our huge backpacks and mountain outfits looking quite shabby, all the heads of tourists laying in their swimsuits on beach chairs turned toward us naturally. Much like Superman, we went into changing cabinets with our mountain outfits and came out with swimsuits. We were overjoyed from both concluding a journey filled with beautiful memories, and swimming in the sea. We had completed the sea and beer session but not yet the celebration. Because throughout the hardest moments of the journey when we thought we couldn’t go any further, thinking that it all was a big mistake coming there, and was feeling like screaming out to the mountains in protest there was one thing that kept us strong, the tought of which alone kept us going: Raki & Fish! (a combination with an immense cultural background in Turkish society). There was a casual but pleasant raki&fish place I remembered from my days living in Antalya a few years ago. I led the way to the restaurant, but found it closed since it was still quite early in the day for such serious drinking. But finding it closed was actually a favor the universe was doing us, as it took us to another restaurant just down the street that turned out to be even better. In the heavenly garden of a restaurant named Volkan Balik we had the freshest fish and the tastiest mezes (Turkish tapas), while filling our lungs with the anise seed smell of raki. Now the mission was complete, we could return to our homes happy and content…

MELAS VALLEY______Coffee House Lodgers Day 8___Aksahap-Mentesbey

Breakfast at Teacher Vahit's

Via Sebaste

When the village gets within the eyesight Bambina gives "that was a piece of cake too" look

Getting our share from a prosperous pomegranate tree

A beautifully renovated house at Mentesbey

Mentesbey guest house

We woke up in the best of the spiritS the next morning, because we were invited to teacher Vahit’s house for breakfast. After spending many days on the road without a shower and covered in mud, we tried to minimalise the sharp odor radiating from our bodies into the atmosphere by changing into the cleanest clothes we had. Teacher Vahit had prepared a complete breakfast table with piles of food including eggs, which we hadn’t had for the past week, had toasted all the bread and brewed tea. Since we were all well educated and well behaved people we supressed our wild instincts to stuff our mouths with the food and slowly started eating. Whoever finished their plate went on to fill it with more food with such grace and nobleness. Finally we finished everything found on the table down to the last piece of olive and were feeling full and content. Teacher Vahit, Uncle Kemal, and Mr. Erdener accompanied us through the village and we said our farewells hoping to see these nice people again. When we had climbed half way up on the slope we could still see them down below on the road. After waving each other one last time we heard Teacher Vahit’s voice telling us “Don’t get scared, don’t get scared!”. First we couldn’t make anything out of what he was saying but the sound of gunfire revealed what he meant. Hunting crazy Teacher Vahit had brought his rifle along with him and wanted to fire it in our honor, but thought it would be better to warn us city kids beforehand so that we wouldn’t piss our pants. After this warm farewell we headed over to Mentesbey village, which was going to be our last leg due to our days running out, even though there were still more to complete the whole route. When we reached the village we had the first parting from the group. Ali and Asena caught a ride to Akseki to return home. The rest three of us decided to spend the evening at the village and get on the return journey the next day.

Mentesbey village was no different than the other villages with its quiteness, but had a much finer and elegant look thanks to a recent renovation done by a wealthy family on many of the old houses, which used to be famous for housing many judges in the Ottoman period.  After a unfruitfull walk in the village to get ourselves invited to a house for dinner, we returned to the guest house to eat whatever was left in our backpacks. We first were happy to find a stove and gas cylinder in the house, and started preparing soup and tea, but soon the whole kitchen was smelling of gas that was leaking from somewhere we couldn’t quite figure out where. A person of average intelligence would immediately turn the stove off and cut off all the connections with the gas cylinder, but I had a stubbornness ten times my intelligence, so insisted on getting that tea brewed. When I finally gave in to the pleas of Benoit and Gamze going over to turn the stove off, the tea that I almost gave my life for was already brewed. (e.g. “to go bananas!”)