I just got back after spending one crazy day in the beautiful Mediterranean city Antalya. I only wanted to stay for one day because I really only wanted to do one thing: to see the Lower Düden Falls (Düden Aşağı Şelalesi), the beautiful 40-meter (roughly 130-foot) waterfall that empties into the sea. I had planned to spend my entire day with the waterfall finding new ways to photograph it and to listen to it fall into the sea. For a variety of reasons that have to do with common sense, that wasn't possible. Still, after months of staring at online photos and YouTube videos of the waterfall during my prep periods in the teacher's room, I ached to see this waterfall.
My flight was supposed to get in at 7:50, giving me just enough time to see the waterfall by sunset. The flight was 3 and a half hours delayed because the engine had broken down (much better than the 5 hours the airline predicted, though), and I missed that chance. But when I got to my hotel room at 11:00 I still wanted to see the falls, even at night so I could hear it, so I went to check it out. I followed this pedestrian bike/walkway that I took a picture of during the next day (it turns out Antalyans are kind of fitness nuts):
Soon, however, I ended up in a construction site, abandoned in the nighttime. I passed mounds of dug-up soil and propane tanks and half-assembled concrete outdoor amphitheaters. I knew the way to the falls after studying the map so many times leading up to my visit, so it wasn't hard to figure out that the government was gentrifying the area around the waterfall. On my right was gravel construction tools, then the sea; on my right were half-finished cinderblock apartment buildings and condos. It didn't take long to feel like I wasn't supposed to be there, and being arrested for trespassing in a foreign country, let alone a city besides Istanbul, was an experience I'd be comfortable never having. But no one was around anywhere and I hadn't crossed caution tape or any barriers, so I kept along. And I really wanted to see this waterfall.
Of course when I got there I couldn't see it because it was far too dark - I could make out a few trails of dark gray along the black cliff side. I could hear it, though, and that was worth it in itself. But the bridge going over the top of the falls was blocked off by my-sized hills of dirt. I decided to brave it and climb onto the bridge as I'd seen a could motorcyclists do a moment before, and then I found myself caught in the headlights of a distant police car, which switched its red and blue lights on and I could even hear the siren over the rushing water below me. I guess I'm trying to write this poetically, but there's nothing poetic in how I instantly turned around and sped-walked away from the waterfall, frantically rehearsing what I'd tell the police if they caught up to me, reminding myself not to speak a word of Turkish, intentionally wearing my camera around my neck, and looking back every once in a while to see the car bounce over the dirt mounds blocking off the bridge. I think the car instead found a couple Turkish men I'd seen earlier, and I was off the hook. On the way back I saw the sign whose picture is above this paragraph.
As you can see, I got plenty of photos of the waterfall during the day (and as the picture above shows, people crossed the caution tape all the time), so my anxieties were unnecessary. But back in the hotel room I was devastated. I'd flown here to this city wanting nothing besides the waterfall, and that had been taken away from me. Why did they have to do construction while I was there? Why didn't anyone tell me? My English script of confused tourist prepared for the cops turned into a Turkish, intentionally broken and American-accented, plea to the construction workers to let me in for "sadece beş dakika, lütfen, beş dakika, Antalya görmek istemiyorum ama bu şelale çok görmek istiyorum" (bad grammar for: "I just want 5 minutes, please, 5 minutes, I don't ant to see Antalya but I really want to see that waterfall"). I even had a bribe price ready in my head, plus an argument against bribing if they demanded too much.
I took a shower and calmed down a bit, then came to the conclusion that the waterfall was telling me something. It wanted me to see the rest of Antalya. It didn't want the pressure of being the make-or-break experience of the 4 day holiday (Gençlik ve Spor Bayram, or Youth and Sports Holiday) that I'd been looking forward to for so long. It wanted to be beautiful, but not the be-all, end-all. So I made up my mind to walk along the Antalyan coast to the city center (ended up being about 11 kilometers, or 7 miles) the next day and try and swim in the sea (which is the one thing I failed at, but I don't mind). But first I'd convince those construction workers to let me see the waterfall in the early morning.
That cliff is just about the only place, besides a boat, where you can get a view of Düden Aşağı Şelalesi
Turns out I didn't need to convince anyone of anything. All the Antalyan health nuts were biking or jogging along the under-construction path around the waterfall anyway, so I just followed them and spent a couple hours with the waterfall. Even the bridge over the top of the falls was walked and cycled over. By the time I left the day's first tour groups were snapping photos all around the cliff area. It seemed silly that I had been so worked up the night before, but I somehow felt the waterfall could be more freely beautiful for me after I had dealt with the stress the day before.
Düden River suddenly jumps off the cliff and into the sea
Lower Düden Falls actually isn't a waterfall you can spend all day in front of, as I had originally planned on doing. For one, there's only one place you can get a clear photo. This also applies to the waterfall's sound. The cliff side is so verdant where the water drops that you hear two sounds: the normal mighty roar of a powerful waterfall, but also the calm spray of mist along the plants, a beautiful combination of bass and treble. Furthermore, the acoustics of its small gulf are so good that you can't really hear the waterfall at all until you reach the end of the opposite cliff and can actually see it. Even walking alongside the cliff and heading to the bridge, at one point you nearly lose the sound entirely, even when you can still see it. It's a gentle waterfall: just look at how calm the river looks just before it makes it's 130-foot drop (but I wouldn't recommend swimming!). However, the falls is powerful nonetheless, as evidenced by the ripples it sends deep into the Mediterranean Sea:
I also found a way down to the bottom of the falls, which was probably illegal but I was only following these fishermen:
Below is the cliff I followed them down. I saw a couple pieces of tiling that obviously used to be stairs, plus there were thick nails hammered into the rocks as well as footholds, so it seemed to anyone looking that a person was meant to climb down this way.
At the base of the waterfall I listened to its still beautiful voice as I watched the fishermen work and airplanes pass overhead; it turns out we had flown right over the waterfall the night before and I'd missed it!
There had been 4 fishermen, but only one photographed this well. Later he put on a poncho. I wonder if there were many fish to catch at the base of Düden.
When I came back in the afternoon I tried to go down there again, but that time there was a policeman and he called the stupid American tourist who had inhabited my body outside the restricted area. I told another man nearby in Turkish that I'd gone down earlier with the fisherman and no one had said anything. Later, when I went to the policeman to ask about buses to the airport, he said with a serious face (in English): "You went down there with the fishermen?" The man I'd made the offhand comment to seemed to be his friend. It was all okay, though, and we were all quickly joking around in Turkish about how great California is and how crazy people try to swim in the Düden waterfall and the city of Istanbul. People were very friendly to me through the day as long as I gave Turkish my best effort. I get the feeling that police officer wanted to take a swim in the waterfall himself.
Well, I did enjoy the rest of the city as well as the Lower Düden Waterfall, although admittedly it would have been impossible to top the waterfall (I've called it the "loving" waterfall in this post because it helped me deal with many more stresses than just the one I mentioned earlier, but it would be too long and complicated to get into those other ways here). I followed the walking-cycling path down Antalya's eastern coast and watched the mountains on the west grow more defined as the sun rose to its peak. It was a really beautiful walk, and occasionally I'd look down the cliffs to see miniature beaches and people celebrating the holiday in the water.
Eventually I came to this place, the Chocolate Hotel, and decided I should see what's inside. My family, especially my brother, has a thing about chocolatiers, and if this really was a hotel attached to a chocolate shop it would make a place with great character. Inside I met the owner, a Portuguese man who spoke perfect English and seemed glad to speak something besides Turkish, and he told me that the name fools tourists all the time because there's no hotel for people, just for chocolate.
We ended up talking for an hour as I tried the chocolates and drank tea. I could have easily stayed longer but the owner convinced me that I had to see the Upper Düden Waterfall that feeds the waterfall I'd flown out to see, so I had to cut our pleasant time short. It's rare to meet a fellow English-speaking (there are quite a few Russians) immigrant to Turkey, and the ones I meet here in Bahçeşehir sadly tend to be a little tired of the experience. It was refreshing to talk with someone who had so much energy and love for the Turkish culture and community, and even though there were difficulties (such as acquiring cocoa beans) it was well worth it to live here.
Apparently it's quite difficult to make original chocolate in Turkey because of strict import laws. I'm not sure I understand all of it, but making chocolate from cocoa beans is impossible unless you're a millionaire. The cocoa beans in the picture above were gifts, but buying a cocoa bean in Turkey in unheard of. The owner had originally wanted to make the shop's logo a cocoa bean, but he had to change it because Turks don't know what a cocoa bean looks like and it would just confuse them. The Chocolate Hotel has to (and this is what I don't quite understand) bring in ingredients from elsewhere and make the chocolates they sell on site. So they don't make their own chocolate because it's impossible, but they make their own chocolates. Either way, the chocolates I ate were delicious, especially the pistachio and the different truffles. We talked a little about cheeses, too: these tough import laws must also be why I don't see cheddar or gouda in any of the stores.
Me and Jorge, the owner of Chocolate Hotel
Go there if you get the chance. It was very interesting to see the chocolate-eating culture in a Turkish city, since I've only really seen one chocolate delicacy in Turkey throughout my travels, that being the delicious Beyoğlu chocolates you can find on Istiklal Street in Taksim. Jorge said he started the business because he had been looking for something that Antalya was missing (that's a big simplification of a much more interesting story), and the locals have been loving it.
Obligatory picture of the Fluted Minaret in Old Roman Antalya
I didn't go for the city's historic center, Kaleiçi, so much. It was overly touristy and very hard to find your way around. It was so touristy in fact that even speaking Turkish wasn't enough to stop street vendors and taxi drivers from trying to rip me off or lie about distances to things in order to get me in their shop or cab. I think this city is very popular for Turkish tourists, of which I saw many more than I saw foreign tourists. Maybe I'm ready for a break from historical tourism in favor of natural tourism - after Florence and Istanbul that might well be the case. Either way, I'd have rather been on one of Antalya's beautiful beaches than in the historical center.
Another of Hadrian's Arches. I've taken pictures of 3 of them, plus saw a 4th without taking its picture. And, yep, I still don't know who he was.
A woman taking a picture of Hadrian's Arch from above.
The Upper Düden Falls, maybe 10 kilometers from the city center, is in an out-of-place high end park (2.50 lira entrance fee) in the middle of a working class neighborhood. But the park, as planned out as it may or may not be (I haven't decided yet), shuts off the rest of the world brilliantly. As Jorge has promised, the mini forest around the falls makes everything green and produces misty rainbows around the waterfall. And the water is so green. And it stays that way 12 kilometers later at Lower Düden Falls as you can see from the bridge.
Upper Düden is a powerful waterfall. There's nothing graceful about it like there is about Lower Düden, and that might be why I like Lower Düden so much more. You could hear it in the roar of the waterfall and you could see it in the haste of the river above - Upper Düden can't wait to make the jump and crash ecstatically downwards. The sound wasn't nuanced or deep at all. It was just a loud roar. Not to say that detracts from its beauty, but it's simply impossible to see and hear that just after seeing and hearing the same river empty into the sea.
In the end, though, I don't think I can think of the two waterfalls as being separate. Obviously I have my preference about which half I like best, but I like to think that the two waterfalls are the same being having come to important realizations after its 12 kilometer journey to the sea. The first part is young, inexperienced, anxious, nervous, excited, and unsure. The lower half is patient, understanding, comforting, and loving with the wisdom it gained throughout its travels. If only I could grow as much as a person!
The eastern mountains, my back to Lower Düden Falls
After that I had to see Lower Düden one more time before catching my 10:30 flight. I watched it as the sun set behind me, and it gave me a little rainbow as if to tell me I had learned something.
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