Waking early in Selcuk, we drove several hours inland to Afrodisius, a beautiful and quiet Roman ruins in a tranquil valley. This was far quieter and a more pleasant experience than Ephesus, but again, it's rather remote. We spent about 1 1/2 hours here, and could have stayed longer, but we had to drive another couple of hours to Hierapolis. Hiearapolis is a UNESCO site, but it was a little appaling to how badly it's been ruined, and I'm surprised the UN hasn't gotten around to removing it's status. The calcium travertine pools were all basically diverted or ruined in some way during the tourist boom of the 80s and 90s (I'd like to take a minute to lambaste the baby boomer generation for yet another thing they ruined). At any rate, the ruins are interesting, and if you get here with time, you can even walk barefoot on the calcium from the village up to the roman ruins... very cool. We then had to drive another few hours to Fethiye, so no time for dithering (which is fine, because Hierapolis is totally over run with tour groups).
The drive was pretty enough, but it started snowing (yes, snow... very novel coming from Bangkok) over one of the mountain passes. Luckily it wasn't cold enough to stick, and our 4 door diesel Renault handled just fine. We arrived in Fethiye, checked into the Yacht Classic Hotel (recommended) and had the evening to relax.
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