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The Latest Buzz On Camping |
by Kevin Risner
The times I have gone camping always seem to have amusing side stories attached to them. What started in a rural campground in Ontario when I was a wee lad has culminated so far in a beachside cove in southwestern Turkey. While up north at Camp Ashtabula, in Canada, I had encountered spiders bunking with me in cabins, gutted fish (or watched it being done) with my grandfather, and waited for storms to blow over the lake and flood us clean into next Thursday. I also had brought out the tent with friends at music festivals in Canton, Ohio, while I was still in high school. The first time this happened Mother Nature turned the stay into a water-logged fiasco involving allergic reactions and chill vein. I should have received the warning signs that my vacation in Turkey during the summer of 2008 would be anything but carefree and easy.
My friend Gareth and I decided to leave the suffocating bustle of Istanbul and trek along the Mediterranean Sea to an out-of-the-way spot that most tourists wouldn't dare touch. We had read in multiple books about backpacking booze-a-thons in Antalya and the sun-tanners in Ölüdeniz lined up on white lawn chairs like sardines. We did not want that.
One spot caught our eye situated adjacent to a town called Kabak. After going here, I was astounded that no Turks that I had talked to had ever heard of Kabak; they had only heard about kabak, the food, never the place. They would always mention package-vacation locales of Bodrum, Marmaris, and Çeşme -- but that would be all.
Baking in the 100º heat, Gareth and I managed to grab a dolmuş (a taxi-van) from Fethiye, located north of Kabak, the little speck of land named after a large sea-green-colored squash. After picking up and dropping off passengers to other mega-touristy spots around the area, we made the ascent through the mountains along the Mediterranean coast, swerving around cliffside curves that had no guardrails, and picking up loose dirt and gravel as we careened along to wherever there might be a sign pointing to that delicious slice of isolation.
Finally, our dolmuş came to a halt; we prized our fingers off our armrests and looked around us. Two whitewashed buildings cracked and glistened in the lowering sun. Trees and shrubs and lots of dirt sat waiting patiently for something. I inched next to the driver and asked if this was the last stop.
"Evet, Kabak!"
Gareth and I gave each other "what-the-hell-is-this?" looks; then we disembarked with our backpacks, our overactive sweat glands, and a mounting unease at what Kabak might and might not turn out to be. We stood there for a few minutes, then -- thankfully -- located a painted sign wedged into the pebbly ground along one of the mountain cliffs. An arrow beneath the words Reflections told us where we had to go. And we hiked downhill, the earth not the sturdiest, the only assistance in direction being red gobs of paint like the trail of a wounded animal. This place was one of the stops along the famed Lycian Way: a series of pathways that curved around a large part of the Turkish coastline.
Soon, we stumbled upon the campsite, tents popping up and melting into the landscape like chameleons. There were also bungalows (for an extra price) set near to the biggest drop of elevation into the valley. My heart was beating with excitement; we had made it there without any major glitches, and we would be there for a few nights, soaking in the fact that we were far from busy people smothered by the city smog and car horns and apartment-lined streets. Gareth, repositioning the weight of his pack, claimed the place was like a hippie commune, minus the naturism, free love, and recreational drugs. The vast majority of people sported dreadlocks, there had been yoga classes and incense for sale posted on signs, vegetarian cooking ruled the day, and there was no washer/dryer anywhere. It was a pretty rough-and-tumble, do-it-yourself-for-the-most-part place.
Gareth had bought a tent for the occasion, as he was planning on doing more camping after my eventual return to Istanbul. He set it up.
Now, Gareth had warned me that it looked a bit smaller than it had on the travel website where he had bought it, but it looked worse than his description. The manufacturers had said that it housed two people; with it erected and staked as far into the ground as it could go, we noticed that it would probably fit two anorexic, fifteen-year-old girls comfortably. Maybe.
It wasn't time to worry about this yet; we wanted to explore. The campsite was nothing too exciting. There was a communal cabin-cum-kitchen-cum-lounge right near the bungalows. Showers and toilets were around the bend. One of the strangest experiences might have to be the toilets which had three walls, the fourth missing and in its place a glorious view of the valley, with trees and an endless green. At first I felt a touch self-conscious, but I shook it all away after a few seconds and vaguely wondered instead how the plumbing really worked here.
The beach was not large, but it did claim the lowest region of the valley and it wasn't too far from the campgrounds. We sat around that evening as the sky darkened to an encompassing, deep blue with a thin line of brightness near the horizon as the sea floated there worriless. We did the same. But this did not last long, for we had no flashlights. The rest of the night found Gareth and me beneath the open stars in the communal area, the canopies -- normally there during the heat of the day -- pulled back. Gareth and I sipped our beer as we listened to mellow songs, the other campers doing the same. We were the only English speakers in a muddle of rapid Turkish conversation. As Thievery Corporation hummed, we talked about past friends from our time at university in England, and what our plans might be for the next few years. The sky swallowed us whole, and the sound of the waves hitting rocks held me entranced. I couldn't get enough of this. I had never seen so many stars. I had never been so aware of how bright things could be at new moon. This needed to be endless.
It wasn't. We made it back to our tent and crawled inside. The mugginess stuck to me like flypaper. I curled against the side of the tent and tried to find a spot that didn't dig into my back. I was restless, and I hoped I would not move around as I slept, something I tended to do. One thing was true: I did not want a punch in the face from Gareth if I managed to roll onto him like an errant log into a river, so I made sure I remained where I was and prayed that I would become a statue overnight.
I must admit, the night passed by decently. Then it was 5:30 in the morning. And on cue was a bee crawling down the wall of the tent, inches from my face. Now, I'm not scared of most things, but bees for some reason give me goosebumps no matter how close they are to me, no matter how delicious their honey is, no matter how harmless they claim to be if not threatened. One was there in that cubby-hole of a tent -- and it was coming closer to me.
"Gareth!"
"Mmf..."
"Get up, let's get out of here."
"Wha's matter..."
He was slow to rouse. I almost wanted to smack him upside the head. He soon came to his senses, unzipped his side of the tent and emerged like a baby from the womb. I followed quickly, having been spared any malfeasance the bee might have tried to pull on me. It wasn't a clean escape, though. Another zoomed around my face. There was a swarm of them, ten or twenty, merrily flying around as though they had found a dropped snow cone at an amusement park. Not wishing to be kicked out for disturbing the peace, we put on our sandals, took our towels, and left the campsite, thinking -- as it was bright enough to try and have a swim before the baking heat emerged along with the sun -- the bees might not like water.
As we walked, the irritating buzzing sound ebbed; the bees became fewer and far between. We made it to the beach and sat down a few yards from the sea. It wasn't as glassy calm as the night before, but it did still have that inviting air to it, the pull on the senses and the faint saltiness, not as harsh as an ocean's smell could be. A few minutes passed.
There soon was a string of swear words from Gareth, and I knew why instantly. The bees were back. It was as if I had whispered the coordinates of the beach to the insect in my tent. For some reason human flesh held a temptation that eaten ears of corn-on-the-cob couldn't touch. Gareth made to ignore them, surrender hard on his mind. He did not seem to want to fight it. I, on the other hand, wandered around the beach, seeing whether this spot or that spot or that spot would render the bees less irksome. No dice. Things were becoming rough for me. If only I weren't that bothered so much by bees; it did not seem as if Gareth liked the invasion either. Maybe we were too used to the comforts of a hostel and a bar on the main street in a big city, and that there would be a TV showing the final matches at Wimbledon: Gareth's trip obsession.
We headed off. Our wanderings from the beach took us not too far away, to a jetty of rocks with sporadic trees; here the bees did not follow. We breathed a sigh of relief and wandered around this area, exploring with no set destination in mind. As the sun rose over the peaks of the mountains to the east, we soon found our way to the beach again. We hypothesized that the sun would scare all the bees away. It did. Elated, we soon pulled off our shirts and leapt into the water, which turned out to be quite cool but not icy, comfortable enough for an hour or so of swimming. We waded around for a bit and then made our way farther out.
If I thought our problems had vanished with the bees, we were mistaken. Soon, there were more swears by Gareth. This time, another animal made a dent into our plans. Gareth had grazed against a jellyfish, but he managed to escape from any sort of attachment with the thing and showed me the damage: faint red streaks that looked like welts soon appeared on Gareth's upper arm and a tiny bit of his back. They did not hurt much, according to him. Gareth had been done worse in the past, coming from Australia where giant man o' wars are known to eat surfers.
We sat on the beach drying off, Gareth nursing his injuries, me making a note to head back to Fethiye in the evening. We snatched some food from one of the buildings at the top of the cliff not long after, and stocked up on water before returning to the beach for most of the afternoon. I ventured back into the water, wondering if the jellyfish were like the bees and hibernated during the day when the sun was merciless. Gareth slept and read for most of the time as I floated aimlessly in the water and tried to forget about the troubles we had had in the morning. Gareth decided that, jellyfish or no, the water was too good to pass up as the thermometer climbed to bursting point. No jellyfish returned to wreak havoc.
It's always a few tiny things that can ruin a visit somewhere. One or two little nettles that prick you. I admit, that morning and part of the night before were uncomfortable; but what about our initial introduction to the "hippie commune" at Kabak? I was uncertain but anticipatory at the start. And it was just about perfect as the evening progressed; the rest of the day after the hellish morning held relaxation and nothing work- or Istanbul-related to worry me at all. The spots where Gareth had been stung soon faded and blended a bit into his skin. And I wasn't getting sunburned as I normally was.
Even with all the positives that stared at us as we lay there with a few of the campers littered here and there on the beach, we felt it best -- in the end -- to book a last-minute hostel in Fethiye and stay there for two nights instead of the one we had been planning on. The tent did not offer us enough elbow room or a decent barrier to keep the bees out. I needed the bees out. It's not as if I can't rough it. I can. I have. I will again. If it weren't for those honey-makers, I'd have embraced another night, two, heck let's say three nights at that place. The others there had been in hammocks, peeing in a spot that boasted a stage's proscenium setup, and ironically eating kabak for a few months already. If I had had longer hair, I'd be in a hammock too with righteous dreads and listening to Thievery Corporation, with a bottle of Efes in one hand and a flyswatter in the other. Just in case.
Kevin Risner graduated from Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio,
where he wrote articles for both of his college newspapers. He
recently spent a year teaching English in Istanbul, Turkey. He
currently lives in North Olmsted, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.
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