Hoorah! The rain has gone, at least for the time being. Despite the guest-house's shortcomings (no hot water and a rubbish owner) we had a lovely sleep and the balcony came in useful to dry our very wet tent.
After we had cycled back up the hill we had come down yesterday, we set about the long climb out of Kaş (5.6km to be precise). The sun and warm weather was firmly back this morning and we were soon down to t-shirts and shorts (at least I was, Debs isn't keen on showing her legs in a Muslim country. I think it's because she has a moon tan!?).
The 5.6km of hill somewhere along the line changed to 25km of hard hill climbing, so coming across a restaurant we stopped for lunch. I ended up eating two lovely bowls of soup when they turned out to be fish. This is the problem of eating in local restaurants and knowing very little Turkish. Fortunately we had a huge salad, rice and some beans, so Debs got to eat too.
Back on the road we had been led to believe that we only had a few kilometres to go before the road started to descend. 5kms later, a sign appeared telling us of a 13.8km descent, whoo hoo!
In typical fashion this road descended for about 800m and then went back up; it all seems completely unfair! However, the road did then descend dramatically for the next 13kms until we eventually rolled into the town of Demre.
Due to the uncertainties in terrain we had been unsure how far we were going to get today, so a guest-house was always on the cards. Free-camping is fine if you are in the middle of nowhere, but finding somewhere inconspicuous when you are on a narrow coast road is a little tricky.
Heading through the town I spotted a sign for camping, so we went to investigate. After about 3km riding through roads lined with polythene green houses, we began to doubt the signs. Our perseverance paid off though, when we arrived at the beach and found a restaurant with camping. Our luck got even better when after pitching we found a lovely warm stove, friendly restaurateur, plenty of cold beer and some great music being played.
Sometimes things just work out. We love our lives!
Today has been very tough with a huge amount of continuous climbing, but the beauty and tranquillity of our surroundings as well as the amazing sense of achievement truly made up for the physical effort.
For those interested the camping restaurant was Kumsal Beach (cool place with an old BSA motorbike inside the bar). The music we were listening to was from an internet radio station called radioparadise.com (well worth a listen, we definitely will be!).
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