Datca Turkey

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HIKING IN DATCA - Text, Photo: AKGÜN AKOVA

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Hike the paths of Datça and breathe invigorating sea air. “What does a hiking enthusiast dream of doing?” I once asked a hiker friend of mine. “Wading in the Aegean’s blue-bead blue in the morning, and plunging into the Mediterranean foam at dusk,” he said. “How can that be?” I asked, astonished. “If you go to Datça you’ll understand!” he replied with a sly smile.
Datca Turkey

So I went to Datça, and I understood! I understood better as I was carrying my backpack along the paths of Resadiye Peninsula, which juts out into a flood of light. Even better when I met the sea’s blue eye to eye. “The trees of the Taurus never grow tall, that the Mediterranean may come into view without delay!” declares poet Sunay Akin. Even so, with the Aegean under one arm and the Mediterranean under the other, Datça was for me a maze of paths.
Paths in every direction. To Palamutbükü and Murdala Bay, to Çati and Domuzbükü, to Gebekum and Gereme, to Kargi, Gökliman, and Hayitbükü, to everywhere, and everywhere they end at two seas. All paths in Datça end in rock cliffs and secluded coves.

BLUES EYES AND DAISY HAIR
One of those paths led from Degirmenbükü to Cnidus (Knidos), where I saw thousand-year-old olive trees. I embraced them to learn the secret of their immortality. I entrusted the pollen of the blossoms to the wind, the gulls to the sea... Silently I crept up on the partridges, blending in with the scent of the grasses.
I ate bread dipped in olive oil flavored with wild thyme. "May it come easy!" I told the grasshoppers, butterflies and turtles. I told the mountains and stones too, and the beekeepers and fishermen. Nor did I leave out the lovers! I arrived at the lighthouse that flirts with ships like a lover, and I waved to the clouds.
First however we went from Datça to Yaziköyü. The spring rains had washed out the road to the sea and our car broke down, leaving us and our team in the lurch. So we took off on foot, down to the sea through vineyards and fields of blood-red poppies and scattered daisies.
On Degirmenbükü’s pebbled shore we waded in waves that fluctuated between green and blue. The cool of the water refreshed us. Tall purple flowers grew along the shore, and how lovely were the wood pinks. Then, following goat trails and the paths of the Cnidus sentries who once knew them by heart, we clambered up into the hills. Datca Turkey

Ancient stone walls peeked out at us from below the earth in this region which could be considered the backyard of the ancient city. And not only walls. Also sage, whose Latin name signifies ‘health’, French lavender with flowers like tiny pine cones, carob trees with their pods like peas, caper bushes, yellow broom, olive trees and, of course, wild thyme...
Oktay Sönmez, who has written a masterpiece about Cnidus entitled ‘Sleeping Beauty in Blue’, has this to say about thyme: “‘Wild thyme is the mother scent around here’ say the peasant women. The scent of thyme is the breath of the mountains. Thyme... a millennia-old celebration.”

A FEW TIPS ON HIKING
Partaking in the celebration means hiking the paths of Datça. In a little while we will descend to a plain where the grass is already beginning to yellow, and see on a hilltop a section of the outer walls of Cnidus stubbornly standing up to time.
But while we’re on the subject, let’s mention a few tips for hikers. One, if you set out by sunup you can avoid the heat of day and take a dip at the first sign of water. Two, don’t forget your hat and a water bottle in your bag. Three, don’t wear shorts or sandals.
The thorns and brush could leave your legs covered with scratches! And if you’re allergic to plants, don’t forget to take an antihistamine beforehand.
You won’t find any restaurants on most of the routes, so pack a lunch or take along a sandwich. Don’t use perfume either, because the bees that produce the famous thyme honey might mistake you for a flower! Finally, don’t set off without a guide. The Datça Environmental Society will be glad to help you find one.

CNIDUS : CITY OF ART AND SCIENCE
Now it’s time to hit the road. When you reach a clearing after an hour’s walk you can consider yourself half way there. But the most difficult part of the walk awaits you in the next hour to Cnidus. So you need to take a break, which you can do under the ancient olive trees.
When you leave the shade of these gnarled trees whose branches resemble ship’s hawsers twisted over and under each other, and continue on your way, you will negotiate a difficult ascent through thick brush and scrub until you see, a little later, the silhouette of a lighthouse heralding the enchanting ancient city of Cnidus.
Datca Turkey

After the lighthouse the sailboats in the bay, the toppled and fractured marble columns, and the people strolling amidst them will catch your eye. For 2500 years Cnidus has stood here, the most famous of the cities founded by the Dorians, who came from the North, settled on the Aegean islands and spread from there to the shores of Western Anatolia. Once a city that sailors who came here could never forget.
But the real spell lay in the welcome of the world’s most beautiful statue of Aphrodite, which rose like a temple at the city’s western edge. From astronomy and medicine to architecture and pharmacology, which had its source in the peninsula’s therapeutic herbs, Cnidus made a name for itself in many fields.
And many of her men have added their brilliance to this enlightenment, from the architect who built the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, to the mathematician Eudoxos, one of the world’s first astronomers.
As we descended from the hill to the city, it was those days, not war and destruction, that we tried to picture. And of course, as is customary at the end of every walk on the paths of Datça, we shed our weariness with a dip in the sea.
A line of Ilhan Berk’s was constantly in our minds that day: “Yesterday I wandered in the mountains / I was not at home.” Now, as I write these words, I am adding one more line from Berk: “The countryside plumbed the depths of the sky / And then came and wrote the story of the sea.”

SOURCE: SKYLIFE JUNE / 2004