Where Pigs Rule

In the daylight they are nowhere, but at night they play. They trample through orchards and stampede past campers in the mountains, waking them from their sleep as they root across the meadow in the light of the full moon - and if there is any doubt as to what those shapes are in the darkness - "What are those?! Goats?! Sheep?!" - then they stop, look arrogantly your way, and snort like only a 200-pound pig can do. Two nights in a row now they have alarmed me out of my sleeping bag, once so close that, while I couldn't see the animals in the brush, I felt the ground shaking as they thundered through.

Two nights ago I camped atop a 6000-foot pass west of Antalya. I had been eying it for weeks on my map, the highest paved patch of Turkey in the region, and I knew I would get there. Just as gravity pulls all things back to Earth, I was destined to sleep on that high saddle. As circumstances turned out, I met a friend up there; she, a backpacker from Australia, hitch-hiked and I biked, and we rejoined paths at about 5 p.m. with the best view in the county. She and I walked along the road a quarter mile before turning up a gully. We hopped a fence and made our way out of sight of the road, found a treeless alpine meadow peppered with goat droppings and called it home. All I wanted by this point in the long day was a drink of wine. We had a 1.5 liter bottle which, mysteriously, would have little to zero effect on either of us even after the whole thing was drained.

That night as we slept, a herd of sheep came through first. The pigs came later. We guessed a leopard would be next - but we just saw more pigs, a second gaggle trotting through the moonlight and trailed by a handful of scurrying piglets. We left in the morning, by bike and bus, and both headed for Kas, 135 kilometers away. I slept in an olive orchard two miles from the busy waterfront, and again pigs came.

Pigs live a fairly safe life here. Muslims, near as I understand, will not eat them, and the packs fear nothing, only avoiding campers by instinctual tendency, I suppose. Last night - my closest encounter - had me trembling and looking for the best tree to climb in case the swines made a go at me.

Kate the Australian and I are both booked into rooms at one Melmet Pension in Kas. The town is a beach resort overrun with Europeans. Every other local tries to coerce you into staying at their uncle's pension, and at the cafes the waiters only turn friendly once it's clear that you will be ordering a full meal. I want out. This will likely be my last room for some time, and so have spent extra time in the shower washing my shirts, my putrid socks, and my canvas shopping bag, which I used this afternoon on a mountain top for filtering out my second batch of road wine. It has, unfortunately, a nagging flavor of garlic on account of several rotten cloves that I unknowingly left in the bag. So we may just buy a bottle.

I am heading inland tomorrow, toward Saklikent National Park. My map shows a fun cartoon image of an antelope there (I saw several today) and I hope I may get lucky and see a brown bear.