Antalya Airport to Çıralı Beach transfer
Çıralı is a long curve of grey pebble in a protected bay, sharing its shoreline with the ruins of Olympos at the southern end. Because the bay is a registered loggerhead nesting site, nothing tall was ever built here: behind the stones are orange groves, a scatter of family pensions and wooden bungalows, and then the wall of the Beydağları. The pebbles are smooth and the water deepens quickly a few steps out, which suits swimmers more than toddlers. People come for the quiet, and for the Yanartaş flames that burn on the slope above the village after dark.
From a Kemer hotel Çıralı is 27 km down the coast plus seven kilometres of tight bends into the valley: call it forty minutes, which suits a morning swim or a late run to the flames. Tekirova is about twenty-five minutes away, Göynük and Beldibi forty-five to fifty, Antalya and Lara about an hour and a quarter. From Belek allow an hour and three quarters; from Side the drive runs past two hours in each direction, so the trip takes the whole day. Alanya, close to three hours, is not worth one bay. A coach keeps the group to one timetable; a car lets you swim in the afternoon and reach Yanartaş once it is properly dark.
Coming straight from the terminal is 95 km and about an hour and twenty, which only makes sense if Çıralı is where you are staying: the village lies seven kilometres of bends off the D400, so it is not a stop you fold into a run to Kemer or Side. On a late arrival that descent is unlit and slow, and the pensions sit behind the pebbles rather than on a lit strip, so daylight helps.
Visiting Çıralı Beach
Where you go down onto the stones decides the day, because the pebble bank runs on for three full kilometres. From the village end it is more than twenty minutes over stone to the stream mouth in the south, where the ancient city begins behind the shingle, and wading the stream is part of the crossing: in a dry summer it reaches the ankle. Barefoot the walk is slow and the stone is hot by noon, so most people swim in front of the pensions and keep the walk for the cool of late afternoon. One swim and that crossing fill three hours between them, and nobody here is in a hurry to leave.
Underfoot it is smooth grey stone, coarser at the top of the bank where people sit and finer at the waterline, and the bank tilts forward steeply enough that you end up facing the sea whether you meant to or not. Two or three strides in, the bottom is gone. Swimmers like that and small children do not, and the shallow water is at the stream end rather than in front of the village. Nothing grows on the stone, so shade means stepping back behind it, to the orange trees and the lane, and the hours after eleven are planned on that basis.
Turtles nest along this bank, so sections of it are roped through the season and none of it is lit after dark: at dusk the stone empties and the evening moves to the lane behind. Build the plan on that. The car is released here once the pickup hour is agreed before you get out, rather than a driver sitting with the engine running, because no afternoon ends at a predictable minute. Give a place along with the hour, since the pension gates look much alike once the light has gone. The Olympos valley in the south and the burning slope above the village fold in without a second day.
- On a pebble bank this steep a thin mat or a folding pad does what a towel cannot.
- For shallow water walk south to where the stream enters the sea, because that is where small children can still stand on the bottom.
- The southern end stays quiet simply because of the walk, while the first hundred metres in front of the village are the busiest stretch of the whole bay.
- Count the walk to the ruins as half an hour rather than a quarter, because stone is slower going than sand.