Day 075 Ortaca - Kemer

A hard day. We still have some distance to cover until Antalya and we have to be there on sunday. Therefore we decided to start early. We managed to get up early, but still had a long breakfast - partly because when we were nearly done the owner of the lemon grove treated us to tomatoes, delicious warm bread and cola. Even when we were leaving he gave some more bread for the way. Turkish people are so incredibly hospitable - we just turned up at their place when the sun was nearly setting and asked to put up our tents - and they treated us so nicely. Just try to imagine what would happen if three dusty sweaty foreigners would turn up at dusk in a German village and try to put up some tents in a garden - in most cases this would lead to some involvement of the police.
Cycling started with a long ascend. When we thought that we had reached the peak we saw that our planned route went through a tunnel which was closed for cyclists. Grmpf, so we had to go up even more. All three of us feel the last days in our muscles so we are not particularly keen about going uphill anymore. Unfortunately there were some more hills until we reached the sea again. We were considerably tired when we sat down for lunch after a short bath. Jörg and Wolke were even more tired than me because barking dogs and many crowing roosters (who seemed to mistake the full moon for the sun as they were doing it all night) kept them from sleeping most of the night. I was not so much disturbed by it - maybe because I am already used to sleeping in noise, maybe because I was simply too tired.
At our lunch spot many tourists were baking in the sun. The water was pretty warm and not clear at all - after cycling it was ok, but certainly yesterdays swimming was much better. Poor tourists, they will probably never experience the beautiful hidden beaches with wonderfully clear water - not to speak of all the other beauties of Turkey and its people.
When we finally sat on the bikes again we had one more hill to master before we could roll down to the city of Kemer on the foothills of some real mountains. We just bought some groceries and found a camp spot near a river and with the mountains on our back - great Feng Shui here!