25 June 2021

Great Journey 🏍 Day 293
It's slowly getting warm. As we are used to in Switzerland, we are drawn to the mountains in the summer heat.

So let's go: to the national park and its lake Bafa Gölü. Here the mountains are in the shape of blob castles that little children spill out of sand on the beach.

When we arrive, we quickly realise that we are at 58 metres above sea level (nothing to do with it getting cooler at altitude), the mountains tend to keep the wind out and the lake is quietly bobbing along. The weather forecast for the small town of Kapıkırı reveals it: the next few days we expect up to 42° Celsius, it will be cosy.

We skip the planned hike into the mountains and get up early at 6am to at least have a look at the excavation sites of Herakleia in a light coolness.

The lake we are looking over was still sea at that time, a little before we were born, about 11,000 years before. The Kleckerburg mountains were the boundary of the sea back then. That could explain why the shapes here look so washed out. Could. But not necessarily.

Since we are not geologists, we make our own explanations. And they go like this: Giants used to live here. They played on the beach and at some point the earth warmed up or cooled down, the sand mountains petrified and the beautiful mountains were formed. Only where the giants stayed has yet to be clarified. We'll report back as soon as our imagination comes up with new findings, okay?

And because it is supposed to be so hot, we sit on Malou early and speed like the wind back to the sea. We hope to cool down a bit in the crystal-clear water.

#Riesengabsreally #bafagölü #herakleia #lickerburgLove