Beautiful little kas (pronounced "cash")
23/09 - 28/09
post by allana
Kas is a gorgeous little town on the sea surrounded by towering mountains. Greek islands, in particular Meis Island, are very close- you can see a few stretching out on the horizon. Kas is cute and sweet with little side streets cloaked in blooming bougainvillea, fushia, orange and white everywhere you look.
There are really good restaurants- catering to the pounds of the mature UK crowd, and silver shops, boutiques full of flowy white clothes & carpet shops. In addition to the Montville-esque village charm Kas is the “extreme sports capital of the Med!” Some of the adventures on offer are diving, canyoning, paragliding, coasteering (where you rock climb along the cliffs of the coastline jumping into the sea when it is too hard to climb, then scrambling back up whenever possible to do so), kayaking, mountain biking, “extreme hiking” you name it Kas has it. So we were really keen to settle into a comfy pansiyon (family run cheap hotel) and get some adventure on!
The pansiyon we ended up in was called 'Maltem Pansiyon' and like most of them was a lovely family run place where they really looked after us. One of the nights we had a big BBQ with the other guests and it was so friendly and relaxed. Turkish hosts are just so good at making you feel at home. This place had an awesome roof terrace which was perfect for relaxing on with a nice Efes beer (or falling asleep on in Scott's case).
There are really good restaurants- catering to the pounds of the mature UK crowd, and silver shops, boutiques full of flowy white clothes & carpet shops. In addition to the Montville-esque village charm Kas is the “extreme sports capital of the Med!” Some of the adventures on offer are diving, canyoning, paragliding, coasteering (where you rock climb along the cliffs of the coastline jumping into the sea when it is too hard to climb, then scrambling back up whenever possible to do so), kayaking, mountain biking, “extreme hiking” you name it Kas has it. So we were really keen to settle into a comfy pansiyon (family run cheap hotel) and get some adventure on!
The pansiyon we ended up in was called 'Maltem Pansiyon' and like most of them was a lovely family run place where they really looked after us. One of the nights we had a big BBQ with the other guests and it was so friendly and relaxed. Turkish hosts are just so good at making you feel at home. This place had an awesome roof terrace which was perfect for relaxing on with a nice Efes beer (or falling asleep on in Scott's case).
That first arvo we eased into it with a nice afternoon dive to a spot called “aeroplane”. Why aeroplane you wonder? This is why:
It was quite bizarre swimming along where there was absolutely nothing around whatsoever, just sand sand sand then all of sudden this huge shape comes looming out the blue and then there it is! An old Turkish parachuters plane from WW2. You can go inside and have a look around which was very cool, Scott went right up to the pilots seat and pretended to fly. The plane did not crash here, turns out the dive companies were sick of diving over boring sand so they all pitched in and bought the plane to sink so they would have something interesting to dive over. The plane has become quite the attraction! The other cool thing was a cute little moray eel living in the wing. Times like this really make us wish we had a decent dive camera. (photo credit google)
Dive day 24/09
We were really impressed with this friendly dive crew so we booked in with them for the next day, and were excited to hear they were heading to ‘Kanyon’, one of the best sites off Kas.
Kanyon certaintly did not disappoint. It was us, another friendly Aussie Sharon and our dive instructor Emre. We dropped in really shallow, only about 2.5 m, and started to make our way towards the drop off. Emre had mentioned casually that there might be a strong current; all of sudden we found ourselves hanging onto rocks for dear life as crawled our way towards the 25m drop off. It was really fun actually, a bit Mission Impossible-style using our fingerpads to cling to rocks like a frog and our legs flailing behind. We eventually made it to the drop off after 11 mins of scuba-crawling and flung ourselves over into the blue. Straight away the current dropped off and we were gently descending down a dramatic underwater cliff, 25m straight down into the bright blue. We swam along the cliff face for a while until we reached the corner. I have to mention that the visibility was just incredible- at least 30m. It was so clear it almost felt like we weren’t under the water, that we could have been floating beside this cliff on land. Around the corner we were confronted with a dark and narrow cave in the cliff, where you could swim right in and explore. The cave itself was not that exciting, not much life apart from some sponges on the walls, but when you turned around to swim out again there was the dramatic vista of endless sapphire blue framed by the caves entrance. Photo credits once again go to google...
After the cave and being wowed by the underwater cliffs we hovered over an old wreck and caught sight of some big grouper. Unfortunately my ears had started playing up at this point so we couldn’t go too far down to investigate the wreck. Even so this was an awesome dive that we really loved.
Kanyon certaintly did not disappoint. It was us, another friendly Aussie Sharon and our dive instructor Emre. We dropped in really shallow, only about 2.5 m, and started to make our way towards the drop off. Emre had mentioned casually that there might be a strong current; all of sudden we found ourselves hanging onto rocks for dear life as crawled our way towards the 25m drop off. It was really fun actually, a bit Mission Impossible-style using our fingerpads to cling to rocks like a frog and our legs flailing behind. We eventually made it to the drop off after 11 mins of scuba-crawling and flung ourselves over into the blue. Straight away the current dropped off and we were gently descending down a dramatic underwater cliff, 25m straight down into the bright blue. We swam along the cliff face for a while until we reached the corner. I have to mention that the visibility was just incredible- at least 30m. It was so clear it almost felt like we weren’t under the water, that we could have been floating beside this cliff on land. Around the corner we were confronted with a dark and narrow cave in the cliff, where you could swim right in and explore. The cave itself was not that exciting, not much life apart from some sponges on the walls, but when you turned around to swim out again there was the dramatic vista of endless sapphire blue framed by the caves entrance. Photo credits once again go to google...
After the cave and being wowed by the underwater cliffs we hovered over an old wreck and caught sight of some big grouper. Unfortunately my ears had started playing up at this point so we couldn’t go too far down to investigate the wreck. Even so this was an awesome dive that we really loved.
We then had one hour of surface time before the next dive. This time we were heading to “oasis”, so named because the site is a barren sand flat with a surprise “oasis” of sea grass habitat where centuries old ship wrecks had also left ancient amphoras for us to explore. It was very cool to be diving over a 200 year old pot and thinking “hmmm, it’s a pity that all this olive oil went to waste”.
After the pots there was yet another small wreck, this time home to a couple of stripey trigger fish. We swam on and were amazed to come across a full on feeding frenzy of yellow jacks and some massive trumpet fish plunging into a large school of mullet, or some other small silver fish. Considering this part of the med is not known for its fish abundance we were really hitting the jack pot today! All of us just floated there and took it all in, the school of mullet even came behind us at one point, perhaps for cover, and the jacks had no qualms about spearing straight for us! So all in all another great dive.
After the pots there was yet another small wreck, this time home to a couple of stripey trigger fish. We swam on and were amazed to come across a full on feeding frenzy of yellow jacks and some massive trumpet fish plunging into a large school of mullet, or some other small silver fish. Considering this part of the med is not known for its fish abundance we were really hitting the jack pot today! All of us just floated there and took it all in, the school of mullet even came behind us at one point, perhaps for cover, and the jacks had no qualms about spearing straight for us! So all in all another great dive.
One of the loveliest things about Kas was the sun setting and turning the mountains different colours, from deep rusty red to light yellow, we would sit on our pansiyons rooftop terrace with a beer or in town and admire the view. The other great thing about Kas was its dogs! All Turkish towns are either dominated by friendly gorgeous dogs or evil street cats. Thankfully Kas is full of dogs! They are all owned by the shop keepers but are free to roam around the town square where they really enjoy the dogs life-- napping in the sun, playing rough and tumble, getting pats from tourists, using plastic bottles as chew toys. The town square is right on the harbour and surrounded by cafes & pubs, so it was an excellent dog watching spot. There were two in particular who made us laugh, whom we named Dick and Harry, a gorgeous spaniel and a bitsa (didnt get any photos unfortunately). These two fellas were madly in love and just couldn’t stop chasing each other or cuddling up on the sidewalk. So that’s how we spent our lazy afternoons in Kas; beautiful mountains behind us, the sea in front and playful dogs and children running around the Attaturk statue of the charming Kas town square. No wonder we got stuck here for 6 days!
25/09 scooter day #2
Luckily, no bees this time. We spent the day whizzing along an awesome stretch of highway hugging honeycomb cliffs and the bluest sea. Our aim was to visit a beach right off the main highway, absolutely the middle of nowhere. We had driven past in the bus the day before and couldn’t believe our eyes seeing this bizarre little beach full of people just appear out of nowhere. To reach it you have to walk down a hundred steep steps down to the pebbly beach where dumping waves would pound tourists into the gravel. The water was absolutely delicious and it was awesome to float out, look up and see the towering cliffs around you.
A complete lack of shade meant we left this beach after we’d finished swimming, and it was a another beautiful ride home along the scenic highway. Almost ran out of petrol but managed to just get back in time. With a full tank we took off again, this time up to the cliffs behind Kas to take in the view. It was up here we decided, yep, if we are ever going to go paragliding it should really be here. The views were awesome! We whizzed around on our little scooter all afternoon and had a sneaky peak up on the headland where all the really posh hotels were- some of the yachts in those hidden bays would have cost more than Australia.
26/09 Paragliding!
Every morning at brekky we'd been watching the paragliders gracefully weave their way down the mountains, before landing right on the wharf with the dive boats. We'd decided we had to do this after seeing the views on our scooter ride the day before.
We got picked up in an old beat up car, I thought, "well that's good they must put all their money into maintaining the important equipment". We bounced our way up to the top of the mountain and had a nervous wait for the wind to be just right. Before long it was time to suit up and get going!
My confidence lasted right up until my feet left the ground, then it was an exercise in being petrified! We went 1km up and zoomed way too close to the cliffs for comfort! My guy also liked getting really close to Scott's parachute ("for the photo op") but this did not impress! As scary as it was being that high up the views were just awesome. After a while I got used to it, besides once you're up there what can you do?!? Scott on the other hand was dealing with a pilot who loved to do tight spins and was zipping around all over the place, so he was feeling extremely nauseated. So between being petrified and sick as a dog we might not have been the toughest parachuters that day, but we were glad we did it once safe back on hard land!
We got picked up in an old beat up car, I thought, "well that's good they must put all their money into maintaining the important equipment". We bounced our way up to the top of the mountain and had a nervous wait for the wind to be just right. Before long it was time to suit up and get going!
My confidence lasted right up until my feet left the ground, then it was an exercise in being petrified! We went 1km up and zoomed way too close to the cliffs for comfort! My guy also liked getting really close to Scott's parachute ("for the photo op") but this did not impress! As scary as it was being that high up the views were just awesome. After a while I got used to it, besides once you're up there what can you do?!? Scott on the other hand was dealing with a pilot who loved to do tight spins and was zipping around all over the place, so he was feeling extremely nauseated. So between being petrified and sick as a dog we might not have been the toughest parachuters that day, but we were glad we did it once safe back on hard land!
27/09 Kayak trip over the sunken city
This is a "must do" when you visit Kas... but unfortunately we got stuck with a huge tour group and bloody annoying guides. 40 of us were crammed into kayaks and told to stick together so amid all the whitewash and people falling off and guides splashing on purpose not much of the sunken city could be seen. Still, it was nice to be out on the water getting some exercise, and this is certaintly the first time either of us had kayaked over an underwater world heritage site.
The sunken city is off a tiny island called Kekova. The ruins are from the ancient Lycian civilisation which was destroyed by an earthquake during the 2nd century. The city was rebuilt by the Byzantine Empire until it was finally abandoned due to those pesky Arab incursions (thanks wikipedia). All you can really see from the kayaks are huge slabs of rock under the water and a few old stairs. Unfortunately the guides didn't really give us any info about what we were paddling over, but you could imagine how impressive this ancient city must have been in its heyday, before falling into the ocean.
Our last day in pretty Kas… we were sad to leave, mostly because we really did not feel like undertaking a 14 hour gruelling bus trip. “But that’s travel baby!” So we soon found ourselves getting on a bus to Antalya with the worlds grumpiest bus driver and then changing buses for a dreaded 10 hour overnighter to Cappadocia…