K I Z  K U M U

Kiz Kumu

As you enter into the harbor of Orhance you are taken back by the high mountains that dramatically meet the sea, and the remnants of a castle that is atop the mountain to the right. In front of you there is a thin line of red sand that stretches from one end of the harbor almost to the other end – almost cutting the harbor in two. I haven’t been able to find information about the castle, but I did learn the legend of the thin red sandbar “Kis Kumu” or Girl’s Sand. Here is the story, but if anyone finds out why this phenomena occurs, then please let me know - I am so curious (I think it may be a fault under the harbor).

It is said that a wealthy landowner had a beautiful daughter. She fell madly in love with an ordinary peasant boy, to the father’s displeasure. The father forbad the girl to see the boy, but the two were so deeply in love that even the father’s threats could not stop the two lovers from each other. Seeing that the children were not going to obey his wishes, the father restricted his daughter to the confines of her home on the north end of the harbor and had the boy held captive on the south end of the harbor. Knowing that her lover was on the other end of the harbor, she ventured out each evening after her father had gone to sleep, and slowly moved the sands, handful by handful, and built a pathway of sand, a few inched wide, to cut across the harbor. Each night until morning, inch by inch, she would move the sand, unbeknownst to her father. Until one night, when the moon was full and shown brightly upon the harbor, the father awoke and peered out the window and was enraged to see his daughter standing on a pathway in the center of the harbor - almost to the other end of the harbor. Incensed with betrayal he brandished his sword and followed the path his daughter had built across the harbor. When he reached her, he unsheathed his sword and in a fury sliced her in two. As her blood spilled into the harbor it turned the sand on the pathway to her lover completely to red, as it remains today.