What a luxury, no alarm, no walk and a lingering 900am breakfast.

The only walk we got was to the beach and return about 5km in total.

The walk into town twisted below the mountain and across a completely dry 30 metre wide river which led to the sea. Makes you wonder when every house, farm and town draws it water from upstream whether it has an impact.

Walking to the hum of a band of quad bikers we ended up in a completely new world. Huge modern hotels and apartments, fabulous roads and kilometre long streets filled with high end shops.

While the hotels and their private beaches were packed with guests there was hardly a soul in any of the shops or on the streets. Perhaps end of season and being a Sunday was the reason.

Access to beach was difficult as Security  Guards were stationed  at each gate making shortcuts impossible.

Finally found the Public beach and paid our fee to have a chair and shade. I asked the Cashier for my tickets in case they checked and his response was ‘ do you really’ – sounds like he might have pocketed the proceeds.

Typical stony beach,  with reef shoes making for an easy entry into slightly chilly water, which was 2.5 metres deep within 10 metres of shore. The high level of salinity certainly let you know where all your scratches were.

After some time relaxing in the sun we walked  back to town and came across and amazing hotel called the TRANSTLANTIK which is built in the shape of a ship and fitted out similarly inside. Thought we would look inside and must not have passed the ‘looks like a rich Russian ‘ test and were politely asked to leave by Security. Suppose wet cosies hanging off the backpack might have been a giveaway that we were not guests.

The town is a little Russia with most stores names displayed in both Russian and Turkish – none in English.

Found a cafe for lunch with usual band of Turkish blokes just drinking tea and eating nothing. Maybe it was because they were only serving the breakfast menu – so we had Spanish styled eggs and usual basket of bread.

We were more in the old town and it really showed that Goynuk is now a town serving the visitors rather than the locals. Along the beach it was like Surfers Paradise and five streets in you were on dirt roads.

The local taxis do a roaring trade on the flash side of town while on the other old men in converted two person mobility scooters were ferrying  people around. 

Interesting building codes here, one 3/4 storey place had all of

Made our way back to accommodation and sipped on a beer waiting to be ferried about 40 Kms back into the hills.

Interesting ride back with our driver, a former pilot,  running several red lights – guess there were no red lights in the sky.

The coastline was beautiful, lined with beaches and fantastic views in both directions. The mountains were craggy giants and we got our first sight of Antalya. It was gobsmacking, firstly there was a huge harbour and in the distance the entire peninsula looked to be occupied by multi level apartments. It was a bit like a Legoland.

The roads were great and often tunnelled through the mountains. There were plenty of police doing random checks- mainly motor bikes. Luckily not speeding vans,  else we would have been pinged more than once.

We branched off through an estate , supposedly built specifically for Russians and Ukrainians, which resembled areas around Mascot airport. Just wondering how relations are presently.

Our trip up to 1200 metres on a windy road passed dozens of cars pulled over on the side of the road with people taking advantage of the sea view and having picnics.

We ended up on a hillside B and B about a kilometre from town with great mountain views from our first floor room, accessed by a stairway which might not pass building code.

Dinner was billed as likely best on tour- it must have been self rated. Yoghurt soup, baked  beans, rice and a frozen pepper. No signs of the much written up wife, only a male guest or a close personal friend joined us for dinner.

As with 99.99% of Turkish B and B’s ,  this was no exception with 6 at one stage with one sharing our sofa seat at dinner. Poor old Lucky had been blinded by the grandson poking him in the eye with a pencil. Jane, the cat lover she is, nearly added to his tale of woe by ‘gently’nudging him under the expandable table which  thankfully did not collapse on impact. Don’t think mine host was too impressed because he picked him up and sat him on his lap while eating dinner muttering something like ‘ he is my family’.

Planned for a shortened walk tomorrow to try and save the guy a couple of 80 Kms round trips and us a ridiculous up and down. Same the next day by amending the trail we will also help both groups out and have some extra time in Antalya.. We think we negotiated the arrangement over dinner, but only time will tell- you can only rely on Google Translate so much.