Final Part - Jottings
This final post on the subject of our Summer holiday in Adrasan has no particular theme and is just a few random thoughts and descriptions.
2004 was the first year we travelled to Adrasan. At that time the focus of the bay seemed to be on catering for the dwindling band of British tourists. I say dwindling as I think it was a year or two before that the tour operator First Choice had pulled out of the area. In our earliest visits there were quite a large number of Turkish tourists but the beaches were almost empty even in August and only a few patches of the beach had been colonised by sun loungers and sun shades. There were not many cars around and those that were tended to be old models. Today, most of the beach has been occupied by the sun-umbrellas of hotels and bars. The area is very popular with Turkish tourists but now they have the latest cars and finding a parking space is becoming a problem for them. Of course, the number of cars and Turkish tourists is a result of Turkey’s booming economy. Adrasan also seems to have become a popular weekend destination for people from Antalya. The emphasis of many of the traders along the bay has, in recent years, become more focused on catering for the Turkish tourist.
When we arrived this year at the end of July, I thought the decline in the numbers of British visitors was continuing. However, by our second week I began to notice more and more British visitors. Not only that but there were quite a lot of French, Belgium, Dutch and German visitors. With the opening of a few more largish new hotels set back from the beach perhaps the tide has turned? Is this good?
Eleanor’s Friends
My youngest daughter has celebrated her birthday in Adrasan every year for the past 7 years. She now knows a lot of people in Adrasan and a whole crowd of teenagers from a multitude of nationalities that holiday there at the same time as us. She keeps in-touch with all these friends throughout the year on the interweb. It is probably mainly due to her wishes that we return every year. No, actually we like it too! This year she spent much of her time with this crowd of friends and it was quite strange for Mrs Musa and I just to have each others company for the first time in years! The following 3 photos show ‘Eleanor’s gang’:
Above: Eleanor and friends head off to go wake-boarding
Above: Eleanor & Friends
Above: Some of Eleanor’s friends and a bit of Photoshop
Turtles
Over the years I’ve come to know that turtles lay their eggs in Cavus Bay (Adrasan), we have on many occasions helped the newly-hatched turtles to the sea. The good thing is that their numbers have increased greatly in those years with frequent sightings of them. They are Loggerhead turtles or more precisely Caretta caretta and are enormous. I decided to take my underwater camera (Canon D10) on an early morning snorkelling expedition to see if I could find them. So, at 7:00 am, just as the sun was rising, I was about 100 metres off-shore opposite the Mithat Hotel and there they were! I found three feeding on the sea grass! I must admit that I felt quite scared, the turtles are huge and I felt very alone. Diving down, I managed to get some some photographs. I’ve since been told that these creatures have very powerful jaws and can give one a nasty bite – I’m not sure how true this is – they seemed very placid. Anyway, it was a turtley fantastic experience!
Above: Loggerhead, Caretta caretta, Turtle
Kumluca and The New Road
The new road from the Antalya Highway to Adrasan opened 2 years ago. It was built to provide a better link to the main highway than the existing tortuous route. However, within a year, one half of the road had slid down the mountainside whilst the other half was occupied by rocks and earth from the mountainside above. This year the new road was closed for repair. This did not stop our taxi driver on the way to taking us to the nearest town, Kumluca. We dodged around the barriers and made our way uphill until our path was blocked by 
major earth-moving works. It seemed impossible to get through but our taxi-driver waited patiently, after about 5 minutes a bulldozer and roller machine came and created a surface just capable of allowing us through. It all seemed quite normal to our driver and the road-repair crew!
Kumluca is the nearest town to Adrasan and has a popular weekly market. We had not been to the town for a couple of years but we 
needed to go to the bank. The town is surrounded by acres of glass houses growing early season vegetables, it is not a tourist town. However, the vegetable growing business has obviously made it a wealthy town. The town looks very well-kept and clean with plenty 
of open spaces and places for people to sit in the shade.
The town celebrates its economy with giant vegetables adorning the streets and squares.
We took the opportunity to visit an old friend Seymus. He is pictured left sitting outside his restaurant in Kumluca
And . . . . Finally
The ‘Bay’ has changed over the years we’ve been travelling there. We’ve always thought that the big resort hotels would move in and the character of the place would change. There have been some new hotels but they are small/medium sized, there is still no UK tour operator in the area and luckily the place has not changed that much. On the down side the bay area is a bit shabby in places with some piles of rubble and rubbish, The beach has become over-populated with sun umbrellas (but not people), But I still enjoy going there for the scenery, friendly people and a really relaxing break. I guess we’ll be going back!
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