April 7th: Xanthos and Letoon -- Turtles and temples

Today we bid good-bye to our pension in Kalkan and headed for the tourist resort of Dalyan.  On the way we saw the ancient sites of Xanthos and Letoon, which were the capital of the Lycian League and its religious centre, dedicated to the goddess Leta and her twin children Artemis and Apollo.  These two sites together form a UNESCO world heritage site, and we saw many amazing examples of architecture and tombs, including an amazingly well preserved Roman road.  After an hour of rather frantic searching, we found our pension in Dalyan, and after checking the beds, we were glad we had brought our mats along.  The evening was spent in a successful search for cooler clothes, in arranging our river boat excursion for tomorrow, and getting a really nice meal in the garden of cats.  As we didn't have an Internet connection, these are being posted a couple of days late!

Click "Read More" to see the photos.

This tomb in on the ancient road from Xanthos, outside the theatre at Letoon.  You might recgonize the stinging nettles around it.  I didn't!

Letoon was absolutely full of animals including these large lizards that were the exact colour of the stone.  You couldn't see them until they moved.  Ian had to be reminded to look at the ruins themselves.

We're pretty sure this is a copy of the original mosaic inside the sanctuary of Apollo, one of the three gods worshiped here.   The three symbols are appropriate to Apollo:  the bow and arrow; the sun; and the lyre, a musical instrument.

Even in ancient times, this was a marshy area, and the road had to be raised.  The pond near the temples must be fairly permanent, since there are lots of turtles in the water.  Do you think this turtle knows he's perched on an antique?

The famous "Harpy" tomb at Xanthos.  The Lycian/Caryans were unique in that their honoured dead were buried right in the centre of town.  The original marble panels are in the British Museum in London, along with the Nerieid monument, so Alanna and I will see them later.

The obligatory theatre picture, this one at Xanthos.  When they added the upper seats, they had to move one of their tomb pillars, and they have an inscription naming the contractors who successfully carried out the work, moving it just behind the theatre.

 

Another column monument.  I was surprised to learn that the oval hole was not caused by looters (this time) but was left as an access place for adding more ashes from the same family.

The Lycian Acropolis.  These are the remains of two Byzantine mansions, each complete with a triclinum, or dinind hall, and a central courtyard with a fountain to cool the whole place down.  Of course, you need to use your imagination, but I had an excellent guide book.

The amazingly intact road, at the crossroads.  The square object in the right foreground was the pillar of one of the gates.

The dancing women tomb.  A bit of a hike to get to this one.

An olive grove.  Not many people take the goat track around the back to see the last few tombs. . .

. . . but not us!

The walk around the back of the park was lovely:  incredible views of the mountains and the countryside, and up through to some more * tombs.  (I asked Ian for another word for "amazing" for the tombs.  He has suggested "exigent", "supercilious" and "dashing".  He is NOT a very good thesaurus!)  Please fill in your favourite adjective at the *, because they really were amazing.

 We  continued down the goat path and ran into a vehicle track.  It was beautiful, not just for the bright red dirt with the rich green grass in between, but because I was wearing capris, and the goat path ran through nettles, gorse, and thistles. 

We knew we'd be able to find the goat path again when we got to the falling over tomb.

My guide book assured us there was an excellent view from the top, so up we climbed.  Just before the summit, I told Ian I would be somewhat vexed if there wasn't a path down the other side of the mountain.  The view was excellent, but, somewhat vexed, we retraced out steps to the car.

That's the theatre way down there below, and I have a photo of Ian taking a picture, so why can't I find the picture he took?  The flat whit stuff beyond Xanthos is actually the tops of greenhouses:  huge valleys here are totally encased in plastic, but the tomatoes and other veggies grow in the dirt, so they taste amazing.  The Mediterranean is over that hill,