Gazipaşa Airport → Kızılağaç Transfer

Gazipaşa Airport to Kızılağaç transfer

Kızılağaç is two places under one name: a working village up on the D400, with greenhouses, cotton and tractor traffic behind it, and a line of large all-inclusive hotels a kilometre or so down at the water. Nothing joins the two but the access road. The hotel guests are mostly on a summer package and stay inside the grounds; the people in the village are farming. Okurcalar is the next resort east, the bay at Çenger and then Kızılot follow to the west, and Manavgat — the town for markets, banks and paperwork — is further west again.

The leg is 85 km and takes about 75 minutes. The road drops off the plateau the airport sits on, joins the D400 and follows the shore west through Mahmutlar, Kestel, Alanya and Konaklı; from Avsallar onwards the traffic thins and the last half-hour runs between cotton fields and polytunnels. Kızılağaç announces itself with hotel boards on the verge rather than with a village centre, and the turning down to the beach comes before Manavgat rather than after it — the opposite of the way most guests picture this coast.

• Coming from Gazipaşa you enter Kızılağaç from the Alanya side, so Side and the Manavgat waterfall lie further west and not back along the road you travelled.
• The village and the beach hotels are a kilometre apart and share a name, so tell the driver which of the two you are booked into.
• There is nothing walkable behind the hotels but fields, so ask for the supermarket stop while the car is still on the highway.
• Gazipaşa airport is sold as simply 'Alanya' by some tour operators while Antalya is a different airport altogether, so check the three-letter code on the ticket before you book the car.