It's not just a touch of flu!

"Infected tonsils" the doctor pronounced and instructed the hijab-clad nurse hovering nearby to prepare a penicillin injection. This was NOT how we'd envisaged our visit to the Libyan desert oasis town of Ghadames to proceed. Amber was by now too ill to show much concern, but I was freaking out...

"Just a number of small barbeques" he said...

"Near Adratchan, not far from the ruins of Olympus, a number of rounded serpentine hills rise among the limestone, and some of them bear up masses of that rock. At the junction of one of these masses of scaglia with the serpentine, is the Yanar, famous as the Chimaera of the ancients, rediscovered in modern times by Captain Beaufort. It is nothing more than a stream of inflammable gas issuing from a cavern, such as is seen in several places among the Apennines. The serpentine immediately around the flame is burnt and ashy, but this is only for a foot or two, the immediate neighborhood of the Yanar presenting the same aspect as it wore in the days of Seneca, who writes 'Laeta itaque regio est et herbida, nil flammis adurentibus.' Such is the Chimaera deprived of all its terrors. It is still, however, visited as a lion by both Greeks and Turks, who make use of its classic flames to cook kebabs for their dinners."

So wrote T.A.B. Spratt in his 1847 tome "Travels in Lycia, Milyas and the Cibyratis, in company with the late Rev. E. T. Daniel"

Hmph. I think ol' Spratty, like any tourist stuck in a group (no disrespect intended to the poor Reverend) didn't have the time to see this place at it's best. That, or he suffered from a distinct lack of imagination. Maybe even both.

Here be Faeries: Adventures in the Gardens of the Neo-Hip

We thought we'd spend a few nights at Butterfly Valley, a canyon near Fethiye that Lonely Planet described as a "paradise found".

A one, a two, a one two three!

Exploration of ruined cities (Roman, Greek and Lycean), visiting historical monuments and walking the galleries of archaeological museums are all great, but sooner or later there comes a day when all you wanna do is have fun!

So here we are: Eating the breeze high above Oludeniz on the Turkish Mediterranean coast.

BabaDag (Father Mountain) tops out at 1975m and we've just spent 45 minutes in a jeep doing the the low gear bump and grind to the summit ridge. Below us the sinous, island garlanded and canyon-riven coastline lies at the foot of the pine and olive treed hills that our mountain rears above.