Antalya Airport to Olympos Ancient City transfer
You find Olympos a fragment at a time. The remains — Roman baths, a Byzantine church, rock-cut tombs, a theatre half taken back by the trees, the carved sarcophagus of a ship's captain — are scattered along a stream through a wooded valley in the Beydağları national park, and the path among them comes out on a long pebble beach. Higher up at Çıralı, the Chimaera flames burn out of the bare hillside, best seen after dark. Olympos and Çıralı have separate access roads and are about 20 km apart by car, though only two or three kilometres apart along the shore.
This is a Kemer-side day and almost nobody else's. Olimpos is a few minutes up the valley, Adrasan 20 minutes over the ridge, Çıralı about 25 by road, Tekirova about 30, Kemer itself around 40 on a winding coast road, Göynük and Beldibi 45 to 50. Central Antalya is an hour and a quarter over the mountain, Lara 85 minutes; Belek is an hour and forty each way and Side a little over two hours, so over three hours of driving from Belek and over four from Side, which is why guests that far east usually take Köprülü Canyon or Manavgat instead. The flames need dusk, and any fixed-departure trip must turn back before dark; a private car is what makes the late climb possible at all.
Coming straight from the airport only makes sense if the night is in Çıralı, Olimpos or Adrasan anyway: 98 km, about 85 minutes, and the valley is on the way. As a stop before a Kemer hotel it costs three hours once the descent and the valley path are counted, with the luggage sitting in the car. Most people leave it for a later day and keep the flames for an evening.
Visiting Olympos Ancient City
The walk in sets the tone: a flat track of sand and gravel between reeds and oleander, with the stream beside it and then across it. In the dry months the crossings are stepping stones, after rain the water is shin-deep, so dry feet are not something to plan around. Nothing is laid out for you — a wall appears among the trees, then a doorway, then tombs cut into the rock face on the far side — and the pleasure is in the finding rather than in any one piece. The track ends where the valley opens onto shingle the size of eggs, shelving so steeply that a few steps take you out of your depth.
Two hours takes the valley and the shore at a slow pace, and what makes that bearable is the canopy: this is the one ancient site on the coast you can walk through at midday without paying for it afterwards. The price of shade near water is mosquitoes. What has no cover at all is the shingle itself, which gets too hot to stand on and catches the people who left their shoes at the last wall. Come early and the valley is yours; from the end of the morning the path carries a steady line of people in both directions, most of them going straight through to the sea.
The decision that changes the booking is whether the day ends above Çıralı. The flames need full darkness to amount to anything, and they are a different road, a different hillside and a different piece of work for the legs, so adding them turns a morning in the valley into a day that finishes late at night. Say which shape you want when you book, not at five in the afternoon. Carry a torch for the way back down even if you went up in the last of the light, and reckon on being slower on the descent than the people you climbed with.
- Sandals with a strap beat both trainers and flip-flops here, because you go from water to hot stone and back within a few minutes.
- There is no signposted route among the ruins, so walk slowly and look off the path, or you will reach the sea having seen four walls.
- With an hour, go as far as the tombs on the far side and turn round before the shore, because the remains thin out after that.
- In the shaded part of the valley something for mosquitoes is worth more than sun cream, particularly towards evening.