From Aspendos our tour group went almost all the way back to Antalya. Our destination was Perge, another ancient city of Pamphylia, but first we stopped for a picnic lunch and rest break at nearby Kurşunlu Waterfall Nature Park. This was a beautiful, peaceful place in the middle of a pine forest with a small tributary of the Aksu River running through it.
At the entrance to the park there was a mill with a waterwheel. The mill didn’t say when it was built; I would guess not more than a couple of centuries ago, but water wheels have been in use for grinding grain since Roman times.
Attila had thoughtfully brought along picnic lunches, and we settled down at a picnic table to enjoy the meal, while Chuck and Elouise Mattox snapped pictures of the group.
But we soon found that the park was beset with predators. A pack of hungry cats prepared to launch a raid on our picnic table.
Chuck and Elouise headed off the attack and saved our lunch by selflessly sacrificing their own.
Meanwhile, Sandie sacked out under a nearby tree and ignored the battle with the cats entirely.
After lunch we strolled to the falls. Along the way we encountered the sign pictured below. I didn’t know what a geziyolu was at the time (I later found out it means “roadway”), but I assumed that steig was the German word meaning climb, so that the geziyolu, whatever it was, was a climb of 5 km away. In any case, we never made it that far. The sign below it was also a puzzle. I didn’t know what border we might be approaching, let alone what “strinking” meant, so I didn’t know what to avoid.
We did shortly arrive at the falls, where another sign announced that picnicking was forbidden there. But since we had already had our lunch, that didn’t bother us.
The waterfall emptied into a beautiful blue-green pool with lush vegetation growing all round – an idyllic scene.
The waterfall was a photographer’s dream, and it was nearly impossible to take a bad picture here.
The boughs of an old tree framed a perfect shot of Sandie with the waterfall as a backdrop.
Spring had barely arrived in Anatolia, and we were fortunate to encounter some of the early flowers blooming in Kurşunlu Park.
I have no idea what species these flowers belong to – I’d welcome help in identifying them.
This day, the 28th of March, was Sandie’s and my fourth wedding anniversary, and Kurşunlu Park made an ideal setting for an anniversary snapshot of us.
At the exit from Kurşunlu Park, a camel ride was offered. It turned out that the “ride” consisted of sitting on the camel, which remained motionless on the ground, and having your picture taken, for a fee of 3 euros. We declined the offer; we would have to wait until 2017, when we went to Morocco, to take a real camel ride.
