As I get up this morning, the weather looks totally different than yesterday - quite cloudy, really windy and sometimes also rainy. Not too enjoyable, I hope it gets better.

The planned route for today basically just continues along the hillside above the coast, passing Bahceli and continuing towards the southernmost village of the peninsula, Taslica. As the weather is bad and there's not really a point in lazing around in the rain, it's soon obvious that I will get much further than this though.

So I keep walking the rocky and sometimes muddy path with stunning views down to the coast, the wind blowing mostly from the side and into my face. However annoying wind is for me, at this windspeed it actually starts to get interesting again - arms and legs being unexpectedly blown away by gusts of wind every now and then. So it partly feel more like stumbling along, and taking pictures is not too easy as well. Especially getting a straight horizon line.

Shortly before Taslica, I finally descend into a sort of wind-protected valley with lots of flowers, I quickly feel much warmer again. In Taslica, the sign of the Carian Way is easy to be found, just like the mini market. Here, I meet probably half the village population - kids waiting for the school bus and a bunch of old locals drinking their usual tea. Seldomly have I seen people this friendly - everyone seemed to be interested in what I'm doing, where I come from, where I want to go next...
Happily some of the older men speak some bits of English and can translate for the others. As I told them I wasn't sure whether to really continue to the southern and very remote tip of the peninsula or rather just go back north along the western coast, they start telling me of how awesome it is down there. One guy tells me about the fascinating ruins of Loryma, and I definitely shouldn't miss them, and also the beach is supposed to be nice. We have some more smalltalk and my decision is clear - the south it's gonna be.
The kids (mostly about 10 years old) are of course really interested as well. Some want to know how heavy my backpack is and whether they can try to lift it ('very heavy' they decided).

Upon leaving I get offered a ride to Serce Limani, which is the end of the road halfway to the end, but I politely decline as I'm here for hiking after all. And I don't want to miss the ruins of Phoenix, yet another ancient settlement along the Carian Way.

As I pass these, it's again sad to see how destroyed everything is - cleanly worked rocks litter whole fields and are sometimes even used for building goat shelters. The sheer amount of the remains is incredible though, I continue to see ancient things for probably half an hour of walking time.

Finally, I reach the endpoint of the road and scramble up into the mountains. The weather is kind of gloomy again, the small mountain valleys through which the path leads me are barren and uninviting. In the end I even manage to follow wrong waymarks into a wrong valley, so I have to turn back to find the right way again. Without proper maps or any sense of orientation (up here literally everything looks the same, especially in weather like this) I don't want to risk improvising.

Eventually I reach Loryma in the early evening. And I have to admit, the ruins look impressive, even from a distance. Since I'm quite exhausted and visiting Loryma would need one or two kilometers detour from the main path, I decide to drop visiting the ruins up close and instead just continue to the next well described in the guidebook, less than an hour ahead. Naturally, I lose the waymarks again in some grassy field - just to find out there are actually people living in a hut nearby! A man seems to have heard me and calls me, so I go to him and we talk for a bit. Yes, talk! He speaks English fluently, since he works on tourist boats in summer, bringing people from nearby holiday resorts to these ruins. The season didn't begin yet though. As it usually happens in Turkey, I of course get instantly invited to have dinner with them - and what can I say, it was awesome. Pita bread with herbs and cheese, I really enjoyed the food and the company.

As I get asked what I'm doing here, I wonder a little bit - I mean the hut is basically ON the Carian Way, one of the waymarks is actually on the wall. Yeah, the guy says, he has seen those, but didn't know what they were good for. I ask how many people usually come by here (it's the best hiking season and I still didn't meet anybody, really strange) and he chuckles - the last hikers he saw were a few weeks or months back, he can't really remember.

He then recommends me to go visit the ruins after all, and I leave my backpack at his house. As I come back, he also shows me roughly where the path leads and where the well is located, and assures me that it definitely has water. I could also camp at his hut though and fill up water if I wanted to. But, he also says, the view to the Greek island of Rhodos is good from there and worth a view at night. And I have to visit the ruins of Karamaka, a Greek ghost village which I'll pass tomorrow. I thank him a lot for the food, the company and the valuable information and hike the rest of the way, set up my tent and go sleeping. Even though I had felt kind of down all alone in the mountains today, this evening was one of the best I've had on all my hiking trips.