Antalya Airport to Köprülü Canyon transfer
Köprülü Canyon is a national park in the Taurus foothills north of Serik, where the Köprüçay has cut a gorge through the limestone and a Roman bridge still carries the road across it. The bridge, the cold clear water and the cypress woods along the banks are why most people make the trip; the other reason is rafting, run from the riverside camps between Beşkonak and the bridge. Ruins of the ancient city of Selge lie higher in the hills. Either way it is a driving job: the approach is a long mountain road and nothing runs up to Beşkonak on a timetable.
The canyon road leaves the coast highway east of Serik, about halfway between Belek and Side, so neither resort has the edge: from Belek, Kadriye, Side or Titreyengöl reckon an hour to an hour and a quarter to the bridge, a little less from Çolaklı. From Avsallar or Alanya it is an hour and a half to two hours, so a full day with an early start. Kemer and Beldibi sit on the wrong side of Antalya for it. Aspendos lies on the same road in and is the usual second stop. A coach excursion runs to its own timetable; with your own car you are at the bridge before the buses and leave when the children have had enough.
Straight from the terminal it is 85 km and about 75 minutes, so the drive is not what rules it out. From the coast highway the bridge is still more than 40 km up a valley road, in the wrong direction for every resort on the coast, and the last climb after a night flight is a poor start to a holiday. Nobody visits with cases in the car and then drives back down to the hotel. Keep it for a full day later in the week.
Visiting Köprülü Canyon
Without a raft, the day is made of the bridge and the water beside it. You walk out onto the Roman arch, look down at the colour the Köprüçay turns over pale stone, then follow the bank on foot as far as the path holds; twenty minutes in either direction is enough to leave the parked cars behind. The platforms built out over the river are where the middle of the day goes, and their whole point is that the air above moving water is noticeably cooler than anything on the coast. Three to four hours covers the canyon itself. Selge, higher in the hills, adds two to three hours and a rough road to reach it.
Rafting is the other half of this place, and it is worth being plain about how it works: the trips belong to the camps along the river, they are booked with those camps and not with us, and our part is the road in and the road out. Two things follow from that. The run does not finish where it starts, so somebody has to know where the car will be standing and at what time — settle it before anyone climbs into a boat. And if half the group is staying behind, the bridge and the platforms are where those hours will pass, which is the right place to leave grandparents with a view.
So this is a day rather than a stop, and it is booked as one: the car comes up with you and stays, or it returns at an hour agreed in advance, and either way that is arranged before you leave the coast and not from the riverbank. Underfoot the banks are rounded stones that roll, and the boards over the water stay damp where the spray reaches them; the river is cold enough that most people put one foot in and think better of the rest. Later in the season the water runs lower and the camps work to a different rhythm, so if rafting is the plan, confirm it before the car is booked.
- Walk out onto the Roman bridge first: it is the one picture everybody comes for, and early in the day you get it with nobody else in it.
- If half the group is rafting and half is not, decide where the non-rafters will be before the boats leave, because the two halves finish in different places.
- The bank is loose rounded stone that turns an ankle if you hurry, and the river is cold enough to shorten any swim to a minute or two.
- The buses arrive in a block in the middle of the day, which is the moment to be walking the bank rather than standing on the bridge.