Dalyan River

We took a ride across the bay to the Dalyan river and to the ancient city of Kaunos.

Early in the morning we saw a cormorant fishing near the boat. The water was a bit rough for kayaking, so I didn’t do that this morning.

We got on a smaller boat for the ride across the bay and up the Dalyan river.

This bay is one of the areas loggerhead turtles come to mate and lay eggs. We saw some turtles mating in the river. The beaches are protected areas for the turtles. Our guide had seen single turtles many times, but had not seen mating in 25 years of guiding groups.

I saw a tern flying by, and a yellow wagtail.

In the entrance gate to Kaunos, we saw one of the many tortoises here. They are all over the site.

Kaunos is not nearly as well excavated as some of the other cities like Perge or Ephesus that we’ll see in a few days.

We started in the theater at Kaunos that had seating for 5000. While we were there, a school group came in and our guide asked them to sing to demonstrate the acoustics of the theater. They sang the Turkish national anthem. I was at top in the middle and I had no trouble hearing them.

As I exited through one of the upper arched entrances, some sheep wondered up and sought shade in the entrance arch, it looked like they were contemplating going into the theater.

There was a church built in the 6th century AD.

There is a wonderful mosaic just outside the church.

We exited from the upriver entrance to Kaunos, and went upriver on the boat a little more to see some cliff side tombs.

We got to see how local people live along the river on the first part of the trip back.

We stopped at a place that sold blue crab and had some live ones in a tank out front.

A little more wildlife near the river exit. A seagull grabbed a fish and a crow immediately tried to take it away.

We had a longer boat ride back to the goulet, as the winds were picking up and the sea was rougher.

We left the bay right away and sailed for Marmaris, where we will get off the boat tomorrow morning. The sea was a bit rough on this couple hour trip. The captain found a spot on the bay opposite the port, and we were able to swim or kayak for the last time.

I elected to kayak again, as there was an island not too far away in the bay to go see. The rocks were interesting.

We had a nice sunset tonight.