Day 072 Gölbent - Beçin

Travelling with children will bring excitement to your days.
We had to regain some sleep, therefore we only got on the bikes around 10 - starting with a looooong straight road through the maeandrian plain. Cyclingwise this was the easiest part of the day. What followed were many hills, most of them not very high but exhausting en masse (+ heat and full sunshine also added to that). First half of the day the road followed the coast of Bafa Gölü (gölü = lake) then up a little bit higher hill were a tüneli waited for us. We prepared ourself - installing lights on the first and last bike and driving in strict formation - but the tunnel turned out to be just about 300m long. We rolled down a bit, made a short break to stock up on water and a delicious ramadan mixed juice (won't be available much longer as ramadan is over for one week now), rolled down more along some ancient ruins, then fought up another hill and arrived in the town of Milas where we bought some breakfast supplies and ordered dinner - when Jörg noticed that his wallet was missing. Big panic! Money for the whole holiday, passport, everything gone, aaaaaah! After some brainstorming we figured out that it was last seen on the table of the last drinking stop, about 15km away. After trying to find a taxi we agreed with the owner of the dinner place that he would drive us there. Soon later Jörg and me sat in a new Mercedes with a crazy driver, envisioning what we would do if the wallet was gone or the owner of the shop had found it but would not admit it,...
When we arrived at the shop we saw something black lying on the white table from the other side of the road - it was the wallet, including all the money and passport,... Puuuuuhhhhh. It was lying there all the time and noone had realized, even though it was clearly visible from far away. The shop owner was surprised to see us again and seemed to be a bit disappointed that he missed a chance for some fast money. On the way back and during dinner we started to make fun about how travelling with children is sometimes really exciting.
All this took us a bit of times so we had only an hour left for finding a place to sleep. I first checked out a mosque, but could not find anyone there so we moved on and saw a beautiful castle ruin on a hilltop in the evening sun - even though we weren't particularly keen on going up yet another hill we decided that this would be the place. We could not enter the castle itself but we found a picnic spot nearby - simply perfect: beautiful place, great views and even a small toilet house with running water. As we started to pitch our tents some members of the nearby picnicing families joint us to ask us on our whereabouts, warn us of snakes and scorpions in the area and treat us to cola and later some meat (that one not for me though) - turkish hospitality is simply incredible. I used the chance to wash some clothes and decorated a tree with it before we enjoyed the rest of the evening watching the city of Milas from above, listening to the choir of muezzins which you can only hear from such place and marvelling at the full moon and the stars.