I also found solace with Nancy. We went kayaking in the evenings.
“I could ask my dad,” she said. “He might give you a loan.”
“No,” I said. “It would be better to avoid that, don’t you think?”
“I’ll just ask,” she said. “It can’t hurt.”
I thought it was a terrible idea, but I didn’t say no again. I was that desperate. I had to at least consider any possibility.
Our next stop was Fethiye, where we toured local ruins. We climbed two hundred stone steps to a Lycian cliff tomb overlooking the harbor, and as we stood in the shade of this ancient monument, our guide told us that Alexander the Great had wanted to take this town but couldn’t. Something about the narrow harbor or the prowess of the local militia. So one of Alexander’s generals, Amyntas, sent a bunch of soldiers into town disguised as musicians, their weapons hidden in their instruments. Once inside, the soldiers played a memorable little ditty and opened the city to Alexander, who left Amyntas behind to govern.
I liked these tales. It was always hard to know how much was truth and how much was local myth, fabricated over time, like the stories Seref was telling me, but they were certainly entertaining.
We drove in a minivan through town and then along a highway through a great valley, chatting and enjoying the landscape. We crossed into another valley and climbed, finally, into foothills and stopped at Tlos, which became my favorite site that summer.
Tlos sits on a rocky bluff rising from the Xanthos valley. It has Lycian tombs carved on its lower faces, including one with Bellerophon riding Pegasus, probably a tomb for royalty, some of whom claimed descent from Bellerophon. Above these are house tombs cut deep into the rock and a few sarcophagi standing on the more level area. The acropolis at the top of the bluff is mostly Ottoman, from as late as the nineteenth century. The view from here is idyllic. High mountains behind, snowcapped even in summer, forested foothills, and a broad, fertile valley leading to the sea, holding the ruins of Xanthos, Patara, and Letoon. Truly one of the most beautiful places any of us had ever seen.
Behind the bluff that contains the tombs is a great field, now growing corn, which was once the agora, or marketplace. There are still a lot of significant structures scattered up the hill, including a large stadium, aqueducts, and our favorite, the baths. We had seen a lot of Roman baths, but these were on a cliff overlooking the valley, the arches still intact; we could sit under them and gaze out on much the same view the ancients enjoyed, with the same warm breezes coming up from the valley.
While we took these tours, my Turkish crew was working hard on the varnish and other tasks, doing a great job. I wasn’t making any progress with the deck seams, however. And in Kas, farther down the coast, I ran into some new difficulties.
Kas is a beautiful little town. The harbor area has narrow cobblestone lanes closed to vehicle traffic. Up a hill is a large Lycian sarcophagus right in the middle of the street. The shops cater mostly to tourists but are small enough to be cute.
I needed to renew my tourist visa, so while my guests enjoyed the town on the morning of our arrival, I went to the ferry, planning to hop over to the Greek island that was only a few miles away. The roundtrip, including paperwork, would take about two hours. But after I had bought my ticket and boarded, I was called off the ferry because my personal visa was linked to my boat. I couldn’t be cleared out of the country unless my boat was also cleared out.
I had discussed this issue explicitly with Seref when he was doing my charter paperwork in Bodrum. It was supposed to have been arranged so I wasn’t chained to the boat. I had paid for various licenses and permits and had even paid a $6,000 bed tax for running charters: it had been expensive, and I had expected it to be done right.
I called Seref, who told me there was nothing he could do. I would have to take the boat with me to the Greek island and back.
“But what about my guests?” I asked him. “And it’s Saturday. What if I can’t clear out today?”
“I am sorry, David. But Kas is good place. Your guests will like. And Saturday is no problem.”
So I collected my boat papers to clear out of customs and immigration. Then I’d clear in and out of Greece and back into Turkey.
When I found the customs office, though, it was locked. The hours posted on the door showed that they should have been open right now, but they weren’t.
I asked in the restaurant next door if they knew when the customs officers would be back.
“He’s never there,” a pretty young woman told me. Then her parents, apparently the owners of the restaurant, told me the customs inspector always took time off for his own business and let people wait here for days. He was not responsible, they said, and I should report his absence to the police station.
I didn’t want to become involved in local politics, but hours later, after I had called the number posted on the door and asked around and was still waiting, I finally went to the police, with Muhsin as a translator. I found the port authority section and asked if they could just clear me out.
My request was too complicated for the guys at the front desk, so I was ushered into the office of an inspector who said he’d be happy to help. I would only have to fill out a statement saying I had been unable to find the customs inspector. Then he could clear me.
So I filled out the statement and waited. The clearance didn’t come, so I asked again, through Muhsin, and was told that I would still need the customs inspector. And he wouldn’t be in on Sunday, so I would have to wait until Monday morning.
“But I just filled out the statement so that I wouldn’t need to see him,” I said.
“I’m sorry, but you must come back Monday morning,” the police inspector told me in English. “And we keep your passports. We give back to you on Monday.”
I managed to remain calm, because I couldn’t afford trouble with the police, but really this was a bit unbelievable. Muhsin tried talking with the inspector again, as politely as possible, to discover other options, but there didn’t seem to be any.
Everyone was annoyed by the delay, but especially Cristal’s friend Jen. She was upset to be trapped somewhere on her vacation. A few hours before, the town had seemed lovely. Now it was a prison. I arranged for a tour to Saklikent, which would fill the entire next day, but we were spending too much time parked in one port. We were supposed to keep moving and seeing new places.
Saklikent is a deep canyon near Tlos, a narrow gap in the face of steep mountains lining the eastern side of the Xanthos valley. The river is cold and silty, rushing out of the canyon to twist along gravel spits to the ocean. Restaurants line either side where it pours out, with platforms for tables built over the water. Fifty feet up from the restaurants, at the entrance of the canyon, a walkway built along the rock wall leads to another restaurant tucked inside. From here, the water was low enough to cross at the fork of the river’s two sources, just inside the canyon walls, and hike up the drier source, the most spectacular part of the canyon. The walls were marble, polished by the river in winter. As we continued up, we passed beneath natural cathedrals, the marble colored red and pink and even a bluish tint.
As in all of Turkey, no safety measures had been taken. Every time I walked that canyon, rocks came down to shatter against nearby stone or splash into the water, and we all ducked, too late, then grinned sheepishly at one another.