Kekova

Kekova is the boat, and the boat is at three. The morning is the walk: olives, wildflowers, Lycian sarcophagi beside the path, no major climb. We need to be in Kaleüçağız in time to eat if we want a harbor lunch, and on the boat at 15:00. Do not treat the boat as optional color. It is the booked event of the day, and it is already paid inside the walking package.

The sunken city is a Lycian and Roman town that dropped in an earthquake. You see foundations in the water — rectangles of walls, the plan of a place — from the boat, in clear shallows. Our note says we go over that city and swim in a clear bay. It does not say we swim on top of the ruins. Swimming and landing on the submerged streets is restricted. Swim where the boatman puts us in the bay, and leave the foundations alone.

The island is Kekova; the harbor we leave from is Kaleüçağız, on the mainland, which is also where we sleep. Across the water, Kaleköy (Simena) is the castle village people mean when they say “the Kekova postcard”: a fort above the roofs, and a sarcophagus standing in the harbor shallows. Our written plan commits to the sunken city and a swim, not to a castle tour. If the boatman offers a landing, decide then. Do not assume it is included just because it is the usual circuit.

This coast was a Lycian city network — Teimiussa, Simena, Dolichiste — small ports and tombs rather than one imperial capital. The sarcophagi you walked past in the morning and the ones in the water are the same habit: the dead kept in sight of the living, often in stone boxes with a pitched lid. Kekova is that habit, after the land fell.

Baba Veli is the pansiyon on the harbor we depart from. Ask them to pack lunch before we leave Kapaklı; the harbor is the only table we can count on, and only if we arrive well before three.