Olympos: Night Swimming and Turkish Friends

Onward to the coast. The Mediterranean coast that is!

We took an overnight bus from Göreme to Olympos. We stepped off the coach and waved a weary, squinty, hello to the blazing hot sun of the south coast.

Olympos is a beach town. Well, not really a town per se. It's really just a single dirt road lined with budget pensions, bungalows and treehouse accommodations.

The beach in Olympos was beautiful, but very, very crowded during our peak season visit. We rented a scooter and explored the beaches a few towns over and found this piece of heaven.



The water was bathwater warm and so salty there was no need to even swim. Just float in the water so blue it looks like someone was waaaay overzealous in Photoshop. But they weren't. It really just is THAT blue.

Scooting around Olympus from katie lapi on Vimeo.

We stumbled through the overgrown ancient ruins nestled in among the forested valley leading to the Olympos beach.





At night we explored Chimera, a geological phenomena where fires are scattered across rocky terrain. An unknown mixture of gases is emitted from rocky crevices that burns and will apparently reignite if you try and extinguish the flames.



But the best thing about Olympos was none of the above. The best thing about Olympos was the friends we made. The chilled out common area at our pension, filled with comfy sitting lofts and hammocks was the perfect place to meet people. It was here that we met Umut and Emre from Istanbul and Kamal, Serkan, and Furkan from Bursa.



We had two wonderful nights of moonlit swimming, fires, dancing, and singing. Lots of singing. Each night the ring of people around our beach fire would grow bigger and bigger as people joined the group. Our new Turkish friends passionately sang traditional songs about Turkey with a level of patriotism I have never seen before. Everyone seemed to know all the words to every song.

Turkish people LOVE Turkey. And it's infectious. Shane and I hummed along and tried our best to mimic the word sounds so we could be a part of the gigantic sing-a-long.

Olympos Sing-a-Long from katie lapi on Vimeo.

At one point Shane and I were asked to sing a Canadian song. Like a traditional one. Like one that every Canadian would know. Hmmmmm.....

Knowing that there was no way I could get through the entire national anthem (yah, I don't watch hockey, okay?) I quickly struggled to remember all the words to the land-of-the-silver-birch-home-of-the-beaver song but Shane had never even heard of it. I joked that we both knew the chorus to Crash Test Dummies "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" but we knew that wasn't a strong pick. We both felt a bit - I don't know - culture-less. We weren't able to represent our country as tunefully as our Turkish friends.

Luckily, by night two, a large British contingent joined the group so together we were able to think of some English songs to sing. We contributed stirring renditions of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall to the evening's entertainment.

Olympus Fire Dancing from katie lapi on Vimeo.