Side → Kaş Transfer

Side to Kaş private transfer

Side and Kaş are the two ends of an argument about what a holiday on this coast is. One is a beach strip with ancient columns at the end; the other a steep harbour town where the swimming happens off platforms and the day is spent under water or in a kayak. People book this leg to move from one to the other mid-trip: a dive course, a paddle above the sunken houses at Kekova, the sand at Patara, the cove at Kaputaş, a wedding at Kalkan, the start of the Lycian Way. Flying is little help: the nearest airport at the far end is itself hours away by road.

The D400 carries all 255 km and changes character three times. First the flat coastal run west through Manavgat, Serik and Aksu, then the ring road behind Antalya, the one place where traffic can genuinely cost you. After Konyaaltı the mountains take over: cliffside curves and short tunnels past Kemer and Tekirova, then the greenhouse plains of Kumluca and the orange country around Finike and Demre. Beyond Demre the road leaves the sea for good, climbing in long loops across high, almost empty ground before dropping into Kaş. Allow about 3 hours 20 minutes, with a break somewhere on the Finike plain.

• Set off in the morning: the upland crossing after Demre is the slowest hour of the day's driving and it is far better done in daylight.
• The driver waits at your Side hotel with a name sign, and in the old quarter the car cannot always reach the door, so agree the exact corner when you book.
• Kaş hotels on the Çukurbağ peninsula sit along a single ridge road west of the harbour and carry a different address from the town, so say if that is where you are going.
• Three hours twenty is driving time, so count nearer four hours door to door once the break is in; if you want to stop at Myra and the church in Demre, say so at the start rather than deciding at the roadside.