Antalya Airport to Sapadere Canyon transfer
Sapadere is a narrow canyon in the Taurus inland from Alanya, where a wooden boardwalk of roughly 750 metres threads between rock walls that stand only a few metres apart, above pools of very cold water and up to a waterfall at the end. The walk itself is easy and close to flat; the canyon does the work by being dark, loud and far cooler than the coast. Reaching it is the real undertaking, up a long mountain road through villages. One road serves the canyon, and the car that takes you up is the car that takes you back down.
Sapadere is Alanya's canyon and nobody else's. From Mahmutlar and Kargıcak it is fifty minutes, from Alanya and Kestel an hour and a quarter, from Konaklı and Türkler an hour and a half, from Avsallar and Okurcalar nearly two — a half day at the near end, a full one at the far. From Side it is two and a half hours each way, and Köprülü Canyon gives you the same boardwalk and cold water at half that distance; from Belek or Kemer it is no proposal at all. There is nothing else up here to pair with. A coach decides when you leave; your car leaves when you do.
From the terminal it is 170 km and about 140 minutes, the last stretch on mountain road. Nobody should attempt that on an arrival day: it is the far end of the province, the final half hour is slow whatever you drive, and you would reach the boardwalk at the hottest hour with the luggage still in the car. It belongs to a full day from an Alanya hotel, started early.
Visiting Sapadere Canyon
Inside, the canyon is shorter than the road that reaches it. Walking in to the waterfall at the end and back out takes about three quarters of an hour at a normal pace, an hour and a half if anyone gets into the pools or stops to photograph the narrow part. Against that stand two to three hours in the car, depending which end of Alanya you started from. That arithmetic is the honest description of a Sapadere day: the ground you cover on foot is modest and the day is still a full one, which is why people who enjoy it are the ones who set out early and expect nothing else of the afternoon.
The boardwalk is bolted to the rock, so what you walk on is planks with metal steps at intervals rather than a path. There is no gradient worth the name, but there are plenty of short climbs and drops, and the planks stay wet where spray reaches them. The middle section is the reason to come: the walls close to within a few metres, the light drops away and the sound of the water fills the gap, and that is where everybody slows down and puts a hand on the rail. At the end there is a pool with the fall behind it, cold enough that most people stop at their knees and go no deeper.
Two things make the hour you choose matter. The gorge is markedly cooler than the coast, which is most of the reason anyone drives up in August, and it shows best when the sun is high enough to reach into it — mid-morning rather than first light. Coaches arrive in the middle of the day, and on a boardwalk that is single file in places you feel that at once. Nothing else up this valley is worth pairing with it, so the car stays at the gate from arrival to departure: this is a day hired rather than a ride booked, and that is the thing to settle before you leave the coast.
- The gorge holds cold air even in August, so carry a layer for the stretch where you are deepest in it.
- Aim to be walking in mid-morning, when there is light down in the canyon and the boardwalk has not yet gone single file.
- If getting into the water is part of the plan, the towel has to come in with you, because the pool is at the far end of the boardwalk from the car.
- Sapadere makes a poor second stop: with nothing else up the valley, plan it as the day itself and keep the coast for the evening.