Bicycle touring: Yeşildağ (Beyşehir) to Manavgat

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Bryan Keith

My notes from this section keep saying “another great day of bicycle touring!” Even though we had a 200m climb through Kayabaşı, the day that Ahmet and I rode through Yeşildağ was the flattest of our 10-day trip.

IMG_20230617_112556 by bryandkeith on flickr
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Yet another loop NE of Antalya

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Bryan Keith

My first bicycle tour of 2023. It has been 10 months since Ferda and I finished our long (four-month) spring/summer tour in Munich last year. For this 10-day tour Ahmet and I headed into the mountains to the NE of Antalya, at least my fourth bicycle tour into this fantastic area.

I’ll start with a map. This year’s route is in purple. Ahmet and I rode the red route together two years earlier. This year Ahmet had the idea to take the tram from Antalya east passed Aksu, avoiding about 25km of city and highway riding. That worked well.

s%C3%BCt%C3%A7%C3%BCler_derebucak_ibrad%C4%B1_done_130dpi by bryandkeith on flickr

We were quickly off the highway and into a fairly flat agricultural area — veggies, olives, and pomegranate mostly — before the climbing started.

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Bozburun Dağı with Özgür, Philipp, and Ferda

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Bryan Keith

Bozburun Dağı at 2504m is the highest peak that we can regularly see looking east from our apartment in Antalya, and I had never climbed it. (On very clear days we can see higher stuff even farther to the east, and of course looking west there are many closer and higher summits.) Philipp can also see Bozburun from his apartment, and he’s been trying to summit every peak near Antalya so it’s a bit surprising that he hadn’t been up Bozburun either. (BTW, Sivri Dağı is still on his list!) Özgür had probably been up Bozburun before, but he’s not really sure as he followed his father up heaps of mountains around Antalya when he was a kid.

The drive is kind of far (over two hours), but with Özgür’s fancy car we were able to continue up the forest road all the way to about 1300m.

IMG_20230527_083845 by bryandkeith on flickr

The walk ended up taking about 7.5 hours, half in the forest and (the funner) half above treeline. It didn’t seem so steep going up, but it felt surprisingly steep the whole way going down. I was the only one to bring poles, and I was glad I did.

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Posted in Trekking, Turkey | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Flowers (and fish?) in Orange County

Posted on September 11, 2023 by Bryan Keith

Continuing on the flower theme and even specifically orchids we visited Sherman Gardens a couple times near my parents’ house.

IMG_20230217_135134 by bryandkeith on flickr
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Posted in Traveling, United States | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Tijuana and San Diego (and how to use the Tijuana airport from the US?)

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Bryan Keith

Tijuana’s airport is right on the US border. Here’s Ferda just across the street from the Tijuana airport with the US-Mexico border fence behind her.

IMG_20230504_173047 by bryandkeith on flickr

For years I’ve wondered why they don’t make it into a multinational (or whatever the right term is) airport like Basel or Geneva. Ferda and I found a US$98 ticket from Tijuana (TIJ) to Tuxtla Gutiérrez via Mexico City to visit Zane in Chiapas so I was excited to learn about CBX. Does that make TIJ into a two country airport? Well, yes. Does that make it useful? No!

Why not? The biggest problem with CBX is that they charge US$30/person to use this service. Then there’s the issue of getting there. We paid US$20.50 each to get (by bus) from Orange County to San Ysidro, then another 20 pesos each (US$1.12) on the Mexican side for a bus to the airport. For a bus from Orange County to CBX, however, they want US$38 each. So using CBX instead of simply walking across the border at San Ysidro would add over US$46 each to our trip — for what advantage? Avoiding one city bus in Tijuana and perhaps saving an hour. Really? Switzerland and France can figure this out, but the US and Mexico can’t? Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.

Anyway, since we weren’t taking a bus directly to CBX, it was easy to add a stop to our itinerary in San Diego (another advantage of not using CBX). First we visited Old Town San Diego which I suppose eases one into Mexico.

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Posted in Mexico, Traveling, United States | Tagged , | 3 Comments