Alex Smith
Well as I sit and write this the real height and heat of summer is upon us. The temperature gauge has just touched 37 degrees and those of us that don’t have to roll out of bed and go to work in the mornings are even more grateful than usual. My normal pursuits of walking and bike riding have already begun to seem like a sadistic form of torture and have long since been abandoned for a daily swim in the eastern Mediterranean. I remember when at school in our Geography lessons we were taught that the Mediterranean climate was characterised by long hot summers and warm wet winters. My experience living here has taught me that the long hot summer part of that was perfectly correct and the warm wet winter part variable so far as the wet bit is concerned. (Editor’s note: A bit about Alex Smith )
Of course this time of year is when the majority of people who live and work in the Kaş area earn their living working extremely long shifts, 9 in the morning till 2 the following day hardly being unusual. The Turkish tourists from the cities (usually Istanbul and Ankara) have arrived as the schools finished in the middle of June and the children do not return until the middle of September. This means that most of the hotels are quite full and that the beaches are the place to be during the day when the centre of town is hot, sleepy and stifling. In the evening however the centre transforms and becomes populated with whole families taking their evening stroll before and after dinner. The bars are populated with young people especially as the night wears on and the night life begins to get into full swing and the dancing to the kind of music that baffles the older generation, who learned to gyrate to Tamla Motown, begins in earnest. It is also common to see young local children playing in the Meydan (town square) until the early hours as there is no school and therefore they can sleep the heat of the day away and run around in more comfort late into the night. Also I can’t let this article pass without mention of the on-going Kaş tradition of the “Wall Bar”. This consists of a low wall or high kerb (take your pick) running along the outside of the Meydan which skirts many of the more popular bars most of which are either playing music or featuring live bands. Not a summer’s evening passes by without the wall becoming fully occupied by people who wish to give bar prices a body swerve but still enjoy the benefits of the different atmospheres generated by these places swigging away on bottles of Efes and the odd Rakı. Each year I half expect some enterprising official from the Belediye (local council) to run off some tickets and start flogging places on the wall for the bargain price of 5 lire!
By the time you read this the school holidays in the UK will have begun and this event usually sees acceleration in the number of British visitors to Kaş as families can then come in their entirety. Fortunately Kaş never becomes completely overwhelmed with foreign visitors but there is always a fair smattering of them especially in high summer. This is the time when many of us living here were first introduced to Kaş back in the distant past when, in my case, I was confined (if that is the word) to teacher’s holidays.
This year Ramadan, or Ramazan as the Turks call it, begins on August 1st and will probably signal a drop in the number of Muslim holidaymakers in the town. Not all Turks observe the fasting required of the faithful but many of those that don’t feel that it is not exactly the done thing to be seen holidaying and partying the night away at this time of denial. As Ramazan is a moveable feast, moving back 11 days each year this means that it will fall in the middle of the tourist season for a good few years to come and will undoubtedly affect trade in the town. All other considerations aside the thought of going from dawn to dusk during these scorching summers without so much as a drink of water makes this commentator, who gets through litres of the stuff, shudder. Not easy.
Paul Jenkins
Finally I need to mention the Meis to Kaş swim mentioned in the previous newsletter by Ufuk. This year a good few of us turned out to welcome the swimmers back to Kaş at the end of their gruelling swim. There was a good reception for them on arrival with the winning swimmer coming home a good 15 minutes before his nearest rival. We were there specifically to cheer on 45 year old Paul Jenkins who was here to attempt the feat. Paul is a regular visitor to Kaş, usually with his wife and children, and the brother-in-law of Phil and Alison Buckley. In a field of 180 competitors he finished 60th in a time of 3 hours 2 minutes. A sterling effort which would have been all the more remarkable had he taken my advice and consumed a whole bottle of Raki the night before instead of the mounds of pasta that he plumped for.
Congratulations Paul, well done lad.
(Many thanks to Alex Smith for his insights and comments on expat life in Kaş)
