Postcard #21

Heleny Campoy

Olympus, Antalya, Turkey

It’s the mountains and the sea. The ancient and the modern. Olympus National Park is a place for discovering the old legends from ancient civilizations and the pleasure of ours.

Beydağları Coastal National Park a.k.a. Olympos Beydagları National Park is a national park in Antalya Province, southern Turkey.

The national park was established on March 16, 1972. It stretches over an area of 34,425 ha (132.92 sq mi) beginning in Sarısu, located southwest of Antalya and reaching out to Cape Gelidonya parallel to the Mediterranean Sea across the Kemer-Kumluca shoreline.

The ancient settlements Olympus, Phaselis and Idyrus are situated within the national park, which lies between the shores of the ancient regions Pamphylia and Lycia.

The tallest mountain in the park is Tahatalı Dağı. The Yanartaş burning gas field is found on the foothills of that mountain.

The national park offers a place for activities such as beach and sea sports, picnic, camping, trekking, mountain climbing, paragliding and much more. Visiting the archaeological sites within the national park is possible all around the year.[

Published by Heleny Campoy

My initial step in gaining a concept of ‘living’, was to read. Books became my first love, the toy I most cherished; my ultimate desire. From this viewpoint, I have already been living life to the full. I can remember the very first book I held in my hands. It smelt of fresh ideas escaping into a dead world…bringing it to life. The pages were the path I took to transform that four year old girl into a dreamer. I grew up dreaming: with my books, with 78B2308F-FB45-4C8B-8106-C92EF928305Amy music. The myriad of places I visited, exchanging my simple clothes, living life aplenty through the lives of each of those characters I adored. I was a fairy, a queen, a brave musketeer, a defiant knight, a wise philosopher. Those were my steps to becoming the ‘me’ I am today. Idealistic, but not with my feet off the ground. Full of innovative ideas, yet always ideas imbued with a sense of real fantasy. Believing that everything is possible, I built my byways to now, to this very moment! Today, when I turn my eyes to the tree with its autumnal vestment, the birds are flying to another place far away; I will fly there too… Indeed, travel has been the other cherry atop my fairy-cake of life. The absolute pinnacle. The best moments happen when I am on the move – in Asia or America. Dry and sunny deserts, or snowy mountain-tops. In the middle of a Thai market full of people thriving to live. In a jungle, where every species competes to stay alive. It doesn’t matter where, life flows in my veins, a life worth being lived. This amalgam of books, travel and ideas, has created a person who is hard to define. Strange, reclusive, naïve – the ‘labelling’ has been persistent, but I have learned to accept it and move on. This space is about ideas (mostly mine), mixed with travels, sensations and feelings. It’s not to anybody. It’s for the chosen. But, it is not for me to choose… it’s for you. Welcome then. Give me your mind, and take my hand, it will be something of a roller coaster through uncharted territory.