VOYN! Field Trips

Right after completing VOYN!’s online talk series, which aimed to raise an awareness for Antalya’a cultural and natural assets to be better known and protected, we organised two field trips. By organising these trips, we had the chance to strengthen our knowledge that we gained in the talk series, as well as to visit natural and cultural assets at its place. First trip was organised in 19th March 2021 towards Kemer Valley and Phaselis Ancient City.

In a very sunny, yet chill enough weather to walk around, we met with our participants. Our botanic guide Başak,( you may check our interview with her at the VOYN! talks), showed us the very first plants of the day, Euphorbia characias and E. Rigida, just around the roadside of Kemer Valley. When we climbed to hills of the valley, Chris drew attention to the change of rock structure and plants accordingly. We saw other species that we aimed to see, such as beautiful orchis anatolica, iris unguicularis with its impressive blue-purple color, and Ophrys climacis which is an endemic plant to the Lycia region. After our lunch break under a century old plane tree near Gedelme Castle, we departed to our second stop, Phaselis. Our volunteer guide Serra Somersan accompanied us with appealing expression in the city ruins.

Spores under a Polipodium cambricum 

We organised our second field trip on 9th April 2021 towards Beycik Plateau and Olimpos Ancient City. In a very cold and windy day, we arrived to a foggy cedar forest with altitude of 1400m. Near a rocky hill in Tahtalı Mountain’s foot, we met with fritillaria carica plant, which had downward looking yellow flowers. Following a short hike in the plateau, we found one of our main targets of the day, beautiful and fragile looking galanthus elwesii. In spite of the fresh breezy air, we had to ramble around with masks, as well as having to avoid close contact due to increasing numbers of Covid19 cases. Besides, we had missing participants because of the same reason, so that we felt a little sad. Still, I can say that finding remarkable flowers made us very excited during the trip. Moving on after lunch, it was impossible not to see the stunning display of yellow-red coloured Lathyrus belinensis near the roadside towards Olimpos. Probably one of the best orchids to be captured, ophrys fuciflora was there, with an optical illusion as if a bee was standing on the flower. When we reached the sea level in Olimpos, there was a stiff breeze and a cold weather which could not prevent us to spend joyful time with our volunteer guide Ozan Yıldırım’s vivid expression about the region.

We would like to thank to all our participants; our botanic guides Başak and Chris Gardner from Vira Natura Tours, who made us meet with all of these splendid flowers in the region we are living in; and our volunteer guides Serra Somersan and Ozan Yıldırım from Başka Rota for informing us comprehensively about the ancient civilisations lived in the same land with us.

Ilgın Tufan

VOYN! Project Coordinator

(VOYN! is part of VAHA:Building Common Ground for Spaces of Public Discussion & Dialogue and is a partnership project of Antalya Culture and Arts, Culture Routes Society and Are Projects )

Ophrys Climacis

Galanthus elwesii – Kardelen

Lathyrus Bleninensis – Belen Burçağı