Another early morning on the road, having had a terrible night’s sleep due to misbehaving air conditioning in the hotel. I know, privileged much? It’s alright if you know it’s going to be hot, you’ll get a fan or change how you sleep - but alternating between 21 and 30 degrees in the room was no fun at all.
First stop this morning was the Saklikent carpet weaver’s collective. A group brought together with government and other funding to promote the ancient skills of knot-work carpet weaving. They work in wool, silk and cotton to make some truly spectacular pieces of art. One of the pieces I saw today has a knot count of over 440dpi, which is incredible to see in real life.
We learnt a lot about the weaving process, the silk extraction process and also to just burn-test everything if they’re offering you silk or wool :) Silk shouldn’t burn at all, as the weave should be impossibly tight and there’s no air. Similarly wool will only singe. After that we saw a great variety of different styles and were plied with company, beverages and comfort to choose our perfect rug (or more, “why not?” they say.)
I really liked a few of the options they showed me, but they were not to be mine this time. Much richer people than I will have them in their homes and hopefully love them as much as I would.
After the rug bonanza (I was the only one not to make a purchase) we headed to Saklıkent Gorge, a huge natural gorge with a super-fast flowing spring-fed river down the middle.
There’s lots of adventure sports and similar things happening in the area, and watching the rafts periodically head off is pretty fun. The local eatery has seating right on the edge of the river and you can sit with your feet in the ice cold water on western chairs, or relax on ottoman style couches, enjoying the water whenever you’re too hot. I stood on the bank for a while, enjoying the cold and having my ankles go numb within a few minutes.
For 6TL each we got to walk up the canyon somewhat. Due to a lack of time, we didn’t make it the full 2km up to the waterfalls, but we got to see a couple of hundred meters of the canyon before heading back. It was definitely an exciting rock-hop for the first little bit, where the spring emerges from the rock face and turns the rocks in the area into slick stepping stones. With a little care we made it across without getting drenched. Many more adventurous souls had covered themselves with the grey mud which settles along the bottom of the gorge, I guess it’s cleansing?
After lunch we headed to Kaş, a lovely little seaside town with views to the mediterranean and some Greek islands. Of course there was an ancient Greek theatre on the coastline, which gave us a lovely place to hang out and polish off a bottle of Turkish Shiraz while enjoying the sunset.
Dinner was at the Çınarlan Restaurant where we were stuffed full of delicious mushrooms and other meze items, then I had the seafood casserole, full of prawns and calamari and swordfish and delicious.
I may have also picked through AuntyMary’s lamb shanks as well, which fell straight off the bone and tasted delicious.
