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A delightful cruise along the coast towards Caunos (or Kaunos), watching the sun rise – and managing to fall back to sleep on my glasses, an accentuated form of metal fatigue. Will have to replace them when I get home – and, in the meantime, will have to do without sunshades.

Kept an eye out for turtles, given that this is a breeding epicentre for them – but we did see them earlier in the journey, happily.

Snorkelling, I have also seen significantly more aquatic life this time than last, including a curtains of different types of fish, a ray, pipefish and an amazing scene involving an octopus that seemed to turned itself into something like a mobile blancmange, its colour whey-white and all its tentacles formed into something like a saucer.

Three fish in dramatic green and black colours had been dancing together above something like a small threshing floor on the seabed. Two on the outside fanned their fins, while the one in the middle simply hung motionless in the water, all three aligned and pointing in the same direction. As the octopus insinuated itself towards them, another fish, of a different species, darted in and out towards the octopus, as if accenting its presence. Sadly, had to leave before the drama fully played itself out.

Now back to Caunos. Switching to a smaller boat, we headed into the estuary, through the marshlands that once helped give local residents their unusual hue. Mosquitoes here carried malaria and those who lived in Caunos were well known for their green coloration, apparently.

By contrast, we loved this place – and I would have loved to have had time to climb up to the citadel. The view from up there must be utterly spectacular.

 

Morning  sail to Agalimani, one of my favourite places on the journey. En route, the Turkish flag at the stern gently embraces my neck as I ponder the passing wavescape and as the wind changes back and forth.

(But makes me think of the garrotting once practised in the palaces and prisons of  Turkish palaces and prisons alike, with silken cords sometimes used for those of royal blood.)

We walk up through pine forest, with me herding and supporting one or two older members of the group, encouraging them to persevere – because of what waits at the end. The ruins of the ancient settlement of Lydae.

I love cisterns and, though not wildly sophisticated, the one shown here is one of my favourites of all time.

The sage tea, too, was delicious – and the puppy, like pretty much like most animals we had come across, made a bee-line for Mary.

Though we bought some honey from the couple who run the end-of-the-world homestead that was our ultimate destination, I didn’t see the beehives this time, nor the baited dishes full of dead hornets – a predator on honeybees.

An odd combination of the primeval and the bang up-to-date, with modernity signalled by things including a rusty satellite dish corralled within a wooden fence and a photovoltaic array tucked away behind the farmhouse.

 

We headed to Fethiye, ancient site of Temessos, walking up to the Tomb of Amyntas in rain. If memory serves, the boat went around on its own, because of rougher weather.

I lagged behind to take photos of the statue to Captain Fethi Bey, after whom the place is named, at least in its modern incarnation. This year sees the centenary of his ‘martyrdom‘.

Fascinating visit to food market, stocking up in dried and crystallised fruit. Another slight panic when my haversack seemed to have disappeared again, but it turned out that Elaine had simply slipped it behind the bathroom door to save space.

A wonderful couple of days climbing over the ruins of some of the heartland Lycian cities, among them Xanthos, Patara, Pinara and Tlos.

But we kicked off with Letoön, with its temples to Leto, Apollo and Artemis. Walking away from the group, I saw turtles, frogs and a water snake.

In the theatre, the group enacted a Greek play, as I shot pictures of some of the shadows moving back and forth on the stone benching.

Later, we moved on to Xanthos, where we visited the Roman theatre, a large Byzantine church, the Byzantine citadel and a number of  Lycian tombs. These once included the Nereid Monument, now in the British Museum, a couple of blocks from our London office

We also went to Patara, where the excavations and restoration work has moved on considerably since we were last there. One odd thing was watching red dragonflies quartering the glass floor in a restored odeon, apparently under the impression that the blue glass was water.

Outside there was a tree whose trunk was alternately covered with small white snail-shells and extrusions of amber-coloured gum. When I broke off and chewed some of the gum, it was like a mixture of hard toffee and mastic.

At one stage, I ran up the slope at the back of the complex to take a look over towards the ruined harbour and distant beaches. Easy to see how the estuary that was essential to trade eventually silted up, leaving malaria-infested swamps.

But the highlight for me, once again, was Pinara. (True to form, the Wikipedia entry seems to have confused Pinara with Partara, at least in part.)

The ruined city contains the most beautiful theatre I think I have ever seen, largely because of its setting. I moved on ahead of the group to climb up onto the acropolis, later coming down to meet them in the lower acropolis, with its shady oak tree and ruined odeon.

We also took in Tlos, with its massive citadel. As we walked around the ruins nearby, I discovered something like a praying mantis, perfectly camouflaged to look like dried grass, with a smaller one on its back. Didn’t hang around, in case there was cannibalism in store.

For lunch, before the Tlos visit, we went to the extraordinary Yakapark fish restaurant that we had also visited last time – and which is like a rather more commercial (but still very pleasant) version of Rivendell in the film of Lord of the Rings.

Water cascades through the site, even through hollow trees. One new feature is the tanks of fish that are reputed to nibble your feet to health. Not sure I much fancy that – and it was reassuring to think that, because of their size, these small fish would never end up on the table.

One way to get a sense of the vicissitudes that have rocked the Lycian Coast over the millennia is to take a look at the white pebbles and other debris in the exposed soil column near the restored theatre in Myra. They signal a massive tsunami – one of a number that have hit the region.

Thanks to Andrew, we got to the site well ahead of the crowds – and enjoyed a fairly leisurely prowl around the ruins and excavated objects.

Then across to the Church of St Nicholas, which was heaving with folk from Russia and similar necks of the wood. One of them, several of us agreed, was the spitting image of Vladimir Putin – though, happily, he was wearing a shirt.

The group seems to have gelled well, somewhat better than in 2011 – when there were a few ‘stray cats’ among the group.

That said, and as I noted to someone today, it strikes me that I am something of an outsider on such adventures, either ahead of the group or lagging some way behind.

In the event that I had found myself in one of the armies that have swept back and forth across this landscape, I would have been either scouting in advance of the vanguard or watching over my shoulder in the rearguard – rather than marching in lockstep with the main body.