Sunday Times Travel Magazine, August 2006
IN AT THE DEEP END
Is a real holiday possible with kids? Sara Burns tests the waters in Turkey
All the scene lacks is Simon Le Bon with a breeze in his hair. I’m posing on the prow of a luxury motor cruiser as it bobs gently in the blue Aegean Sea beyond Kalkan town, on Turkey’s southern Riviera. The white-uniformed captain skilfully refills my glass with pink champagne, and I stretch out across the polished wood and gleaming brass. There’s nothing to mar the daydream – the daydream that this is my boat, my crew, my champagne cellar, my beautiful life…
Except my children, screaming with glee as they dive into the ice-cool Aegean. Because, much as I want to believe I’m on my own private summer-long odyssey, the truth is, this is just a day trip from down-to-earth and back-to-nature Turkish village in which we’re staying. These days my summer getaways come with two energetic little extras: Gabriel, eight, and Georgie, four. And, believe me, they like their organised fun.
Personally, I’d rather swallow worms than endure one of those branded family-resort fortnights, served with endless side orders of fried food, plastic inflatables, manic activities and shrieks from the offspring of parents too long inured to the din to the do anything about it. But what’s the alternative? Take two young fun-seekers on ‘real’ travels and how long will it be before they’re pining for the face-painting classes and the hotel pool? I wanted a taste of Turkey; they wanted the usual trimmings. In search of a compromise we could all digest, we settled for the country’s southwest coast – and a rustic-but-restored traditional farmhouse.
Turkey’s southern beauty comes with splashes of Mediterranean glamour and rural Eastern authenticity in equal measures. And it’s a big, wide natural playground for young minds; goats, sheep and cattle suddenly cross the way ahead; breezy fields ripple with vivid wildflowers; and Technicolor waters beckon.
Then there’s the fun. Slicing at full tilt through crystal waves off Kalkan on our glamorous yacht trip entertained Gabriel and Georgie more than any theme-park ride I can remember – and they even managed a semblance of being mesmerised as we gazed down through the depths at the eerie, sunken city of Kekova – a fortified port in the days of trade between Greeks and Lycians. But it was lunch that really floated our boats.
We docked in the hair-dryer heat of noon at a simple wooden mooring by the valley of Sicak, and followed a baked-mud track through a biblical landscape. Above us unspoiled the Lycian Way. Close by clustered the ruins of an ancient city, Arpelia. Rising from blood-red earth, the rocky terrain resembled a cratered moon, and in the distance a herd of nervous horses brayed. We passed a family living here alone with their livestock: goats, donkeys and hens scratching in the earth: a snapshot from another age.
The living may not be easy here, but boy do they serve a good lunch. We are ushered up a mud-baked path to a white umbella’d table, crisply dressed with silver cutlery and a white tablecloth. An oasis of elegance in the midst of the jutting rocks, it feels a little like the last days of Raj, but initial awkwardness soon fades as our hosts’ native friendliness kicks in. We’re presented with a procession of fish, squid, chesses, salads, cool white wine, while Gabriel and Georgie learn a smattering of Turkish foodie words, forget them and scramble off over the rocks in a stealth approach of whinnying horses – and I luxuriate in my Merchant Ivory moment.
It’s all just as i’d hoped: tourism served with the most genuine of smiles and welcomes, living bang alongside the harsher realities of life in this region of Turkey. And I like my children seeing this.
Kalkan has certainly played the tourist card successfully. Two decades ago it tended to attract Istanbul’s intelligentsia with its unassuming white-washed tranquillity and its nights of raki (aniseed spirits), downed to the guitarry laments of old folk singers. Today, international panache has overtaken the port, and the pretty cobbled ways heave with boutiques as chi-chi as you’d find in any Mediterranean heaven.
After dark, dining unravels below the skies; every rooftop sprouts romantic candlelit tables, with soundtracks of tinkling pianos. But, in refreshingly Mediterranean fashion, Turkish evenings aren’t kids-to-bed and adults-only affairs. It can’t escape you how Turks fuss over juniors. My kids loved it – and they loved, even more, the thrill of staying up until well after midnight, welcomed and adored by the waiting staff.
There’s life beyond the late-night carousing, too, as we discovered in Islamlar, our home for the week. The village lies a bumpy 20-minute drive away, tucked up in the hazy folds of the Toros Mountains that dominate this part of the coastline.
Some of the buildings looked as old as the rocks they sit alongside; ours – not quite as ancient – had bedrooms opening onto an old balcony scattered with woven cushions and lit by glass lamps. We woke at dawn to the calls of the local imam chanting his summons to prayer over a crackling microphone. Every morning I hunched in a little wooden bath tub while ‘eau de goat’ wafted on the air.
Once upright, we’d go out to the village – where women, traditionally dressed in long skirts and bright headscarves, toiled away carrying wood, herding goats, picking crops. (The men were busy too, of course, sitting outside the local café, chatting.)
The only shop was a sort of Turkish Open All Hours affair: a sepia-tinted world of brown shelves, brown packages and a kindly brown-toothed owner. We also found a market in nearby Fethiye, brimming with herbs, spices, fruit, honey, olives and Turkish delight. There we ate the best pancakes ever, pounded paper-thin by women evidently limbering up for the World Wrestling Federation. This, it was obvious, was no ‘holiday village’ laid on for tourists.
Gabriel and Georgie woke daily to a captivating new world: one morning it was four pairs of legs passing by on a moped – two men and an upside-down sheep. Another day it was an old lady dressed head to toe in black, hauling a huge bull on a rope towards the village garage, complete with broken-down family saloon intow. The kids were unfazed: perhaps there’s not much difference between authentic Turkish life and an episode of Scobby-Doo.
Day four, and – while the children had adjusted – the bathtub was cramping my style. So we soothed the limbs at the family hamman in the Kalkan Regency, a decent hotel apparently built round a large swimming pool on the hillside above Kalkan’s bay. The traditional salt scrub and soap massage, combined with full family nudity, was a learning lesson of its own as the masseur, a grinning Robin Williams lookalike, produced clouds of white bubbles with effortless sleight of wrist.
If you want bathing of the kind, Kalkan Bay is studded with beach clubs. The Mahal is idyllic, though not particularly child-friendly – on several occasions I had to pretend I was not the mother of the two shrieking children by burying my head in Jilly Coopper. Luckily we found Patara beach, the archetypal sandy fantasy: 18km of seemingly endless white sand conserved in a national park with its own café. As we left, waiters were scouring the sand for rubbish.
Were the kids happy? Yes. And did the holiday scratch my ‘real’ Turkey itch? Yes – at least I knew I’d seen the real Turkey.