Cukurbagli's Blog   My life in Turkey

Happy New Year everybody, may you get everything you wish for this year.

A few days after Christmas I went with my mate Bob who lives in the same village for a ride up into the mountains. My idea had been to get some good photographs of the snow covered mountains but when we got up there we found that we needed to go higher to be in amongst it and we didn’t have the time or equipment. We had a nice day out though and ended up doing a circular route from the village up to the reservoir at Gömbe, along to the main Elmalı-Finike road, down past Arykanda to Finike and then along the coast road stopping for something to eat outside Finike and a walk on the beach at Andriake then back to the village.

Climbing up to Gömbe through the villages and trees on a lovely day like that was very pleasant.

The reservoir at Gömbe was low but will fill up when the snow melts in spring to supply water to the villages.

A new road was built straight across Avlan Gölü and the ice was melting and steaming in the warm sun.

Down near Finike there are millions of orange trees. The juxtaposition of the snow covered mountain and an orange laden tree has been an idea for a photograph for a long time and finally I’ve managed it. It could be better though.

While I was taking the photograph a couple of local guys turned up because they were worried about people stealing the oranges. Turan and Hasan were very friendly when they realised that the only thing I was taking were images. I have to go back and give them copies of this photograph so I will try to improve on the other photo while I’m there.

On the coast road not far out of Finike we stopped for lunch at a roadside gözleme cafe that sold lots of oranges too. We spent a very pleasant half hour or so and had a gözleme and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice each. A gözleme is like a big pancake folded in half with a filling of various things, we had potato, cheese and parsley.

Directly across the road from the cafe was was a tiny pebble beach, the water looked very inviting but neither of us had brought swimming kit. The water would probably have been warm enough though.

A friend of mine calls winter days like this “bonus days” and that’s exactly how Bob and I felt about it.