Fethiye → Antalya Transfer

Fethiye to Antalya private transfer

In this direction the car is usually leaving rather than arriving. The stay on the bay is over and the flight home goes from Antalya instead of Dalaman — a charter seat, a connection, sometimes just the cheaper ticket — which makes the last morning an early one. Other passengers are moving east for the rest of the trip: a week aboard a gulet has ended at the harbour and a hotel waits at Side or Belek, or a villa let runs out while the family carries on towards Antalya. A smaller but steady share are residents of the bay going to the city for hospital appointments, paperwork and the terminals themselves.

Read the same road backwards and the effort sits somewhere else. Out of Fethiye the route crosses the flat Eşen valley, turns up through Seydikemer and climbs steadily to the high ground; that ascent, more than the plateau itself, is where the clock goes. Then come Elmalı, the cedar forest and Korkuteli, upland that holds the cold long after the coast has warmed, and finally the descent on the D350 into the Antalya basin. Two hours and thirty-five minutes covers the 195 km, and the closing stretch of it is city traffic if you arrive between eight and ten. Autumn and winter mornings often begin with fog in the valley.

• Count backwards from check-in and not from take-off: two and a half hours of driving plus the queues inside the terminal put a pickup on this bay before daylight for anything leaving in the morning.
• Nothing is open on the plateau at five in the morning, so ask your hotel the evening before for coffee and something to eat in the car.
• Anything you meant to bring home from the bazaar or the fish market is a purchase for the day before — a departure this early leaves the whole town shut behind you.
• Hillside hotels in Karagözler often have their parking above or below the building with a flight of steps between, which counts for far more with four suitcases at six in the morning than it did on arrival.