Kemer → Olimpos Transfer

Kemer to Olimpos private transfer

This is the short version of a trip that hotels further east spend half a day on. From Kemer the Olympos valley is close enough to fit into an afternoon: the ruins scattered under the trees between the lane and the sea, the pebble bay where the turtles nest, and the flames on Yanartaş above Çıralı — the one thing here that is better after dark than before it. Guests book a car rather than a coach seat largely for that reason, since an excursion bus has to be back at its hotels by the hour those flames start earning their reputation.

Forty kilometres, forty minutes, and it is a hop rather than a drive. Out of Kemer the D400 keeps the sea on the left through Çamyuva and Tekirova, passes the brown sign for Phaselis and the lower station of the Tahtalı cable car, then lifts inland to Ulupınar among the trout restaurants. The turning is there, and after it the surface narrows and drops through the valley in loops: half of the forty minutes sits in that last stretch. Add ten if the hotel is up at the Beldibi end of the strip rather than down by the marina.

• Forty minutes each way makes this an evening rather than a whole day: an afternoon swim, dinner at Ulupınar, and the climb to the flames once it is dark.
• Guests at Tekirova are already a third of the way there, so the same outing is barely half an hour and can start later.
• There is nothing to flag down at the bottom of the valley, so on this leg the point of a private car is that it waits with you rather than dropping you off.
• Take a torch: the lane and the shore at Çıralı are deliberately unlit in nesting season, and the walk back to the car is the part people underestimate.