Antalya Airport → Ölüdeniz Transfer

The lagoon is the reason people come: a hooked spit of shingle closing off a pool of still, pale water at the foot of Babadağ, protected as a nature park and familiar from half the postcards on this coast. The resort behind it is small — Belcekız beach, a line of hotels and restaurants, and paragliding canopies dropping onto the sand all day from the launches on the mountain. Ölüdeniz has no airport of its own, so a transfer from Antalya Airport to Ölüdeniz covers 215 km, past Fethiye and over the ridge, and ends where the road does.

For most of the way this is the Fethiye run: the ring road around Antalya, the climb to Korkuteli, the Elmalı plateau, the descent into the Eşen valley — about 2 hours 50 minutes in all. What changes is the last quarter of an hour, when the road leaves Fethiye, climbs to Ovacık and Hisarönü on the ridge and then drops to sea level in tight switchbacks. Short, steep, and taken slowly. After dark parts of it are unlit and the pace falls further, which is why a late landing costs more time here than the map suggests.