Antalya → Pamukkale Transfer

Antalya to Pamukkale private transfer

Pamukkale is the one inland excursion holidaymakers on this coast actually make, and most of the people in the car are staying in Antalya — Lara, Konyaaltı or a small hotel in Kaleiçi — with a single day set aside for it. The alternative is a shared coach whose departure hour was decided for you, with other hotels to collect from on the way and stops that belong to the itinerary rather than to you; a private car leaves when you do and stops where you say. The rest of the bookings are one-way: travellers moving on to Denizli or onward to Cappadocia, and the leg back down after a night spent up beside the terraces.

The road is the D650, and it goes north rather than along anything: 250 km, about 3 hours 20 minutes, the shortest of the three runs up from this coast. Within half an hour of leaving Antalya the sea is gone and the car is climbing through pine and then bare hillside towards Bucak, which is where most of the clock goes. After Burdur the country opens into wheat and stubble with the lake off to one side, then the white salt flats of Acıgöl, then the ring road at Denizli. The last 20 km run out to the village and Karahayıt, and the air up there is noticeably cooler and drier than the morning you left.

• Leave early: the terraces are walked barefoot and the white surface throws the sun straight back at you, so the first two hours after opening are worth the alarm.
• There are two gates — the lower one beside the village, the upper one on the plateau by Hierapolis — so say which you want, because it decides whether you climb on foot or walk down.
• Take something with sleeves: Denizli sits far higher than the coast, and a cloudy day up there is nothing like an Antalya afternoon.
• Karahayıt and its red spring are two kilometres past the village, so adding it on the way back costs a few minutes rather than a second trip.