Dalyan Boat Trips: Choosing the Right Day on the Water

From the quay at nine in the morning the boats look interchangeable: wooden hulls, yellow awnings, a painted board with four photographs on it. They are not, and the gap between the right one and the nearly right one is the difference between a good day and a long one.

So this is not a walk through a single route. It is an attempt to sort the water into decisions, in the order people actually make them: which stretch of water you want, how many hours you will give it, and what to establish before anybody writes your name down.

Start with the water, not with the boat

Dalyan sits on a river, and every boat that leaves the town quay is a river boat. The delta is flat, green and shallow, there is no swell in it anywhere, and people who are frankly nervous about boats get on these ones and are fine by the second bend.

Salt water is a separate decision. The one properly maritime day that still starts at the quay runs out through the river mouth and west along the cliffs to Ekincik, and it is the only trip here the weather can take away from you. The islands in the Gulf of Fethiye are a drive rather than a sail: you are collected by road, you spend the day on a gulet over there, and driven home again.

To our mind the river is the reason to come to Dalyan and the salt water is the reason a second week fills itself. Anyone arriving with a picture of deep blue over white rock in their head should know that the river is green, that this is not a fault, and that the clear water is up the road.

The days, sorted by what you came for

Almost every disappointment we hear about comes from somebody who bought a perfectly good day that was not their day.

All of these leave from the town except the gulf day, which begins with a drive. The trips themselves, with timings and current prices, are set out on our sister site.

Three hours shape the day and only one is advertised

The departure hour is the one painted on the board. The hour that decides whether you enjoy yourself is the one you get back, and it is the question fewest people ask. A trip that is alongside two hours before the rest of the fleet has bought its low price with your afternoon.

The third hour is the middle of the day, which in July and August is not usable for a great deal. The local pattern is an early start, a flat shaded middle and a second life after six. A boat that has you on open water under no awning at two has misjudged the country it works in.

So ask for the return time, in hours, out loud, before anything else. If the answer arrives vague, that is itself an answer.

Things worth settling before anybody writes your name down

• Whether you are buying a seat on a boat or the boat itself. Those are two products, not one product in two sizes.
• How many the deck holds when it is full, rather than how many have booked so far.
• Whether the boat lands at Kaunos or slows underneath the tombs and carries on. Both are sold as the same trip, and they are an hour and a climb apart.
• Which thermal stop is on the route: the pools on the river north of town, or Sultaniye across on the lake shore. Everybody calls both the mud baths, ourselves included.
• Whether lunch is included, and what the word is being made to cover.
• What hour the boat is back at the quay, and whether that hour moves in high summer.
• Which fees are paid at a gate on the day rather than at booking, and whether that gate takes anything other than cash.

A boat that answers all seven plainly is usually a boat worth getting on, whatever the answers turn out to be. Ask us the same seven and expect the same courtesy.

What moves the number, since we do not print numbers

There are no figures anywhere on this site, and that is deliberate rather than coy. A number written here would be wrong within weeks and wrong differently in each language. The current prices sit with the trips on our sister site, where they can be kept honest.

What is worth understanding is the shape of the quote. Shared or private moves it most, then the size of your party, since a private boat is indifferent to how many climb aboard and the figure per head falls accordingly. After that: the date, because August is not October; the route, because landing at Kaunos costs a boat time; the hours, because early starts and evening runs keep a crew out late; and lunch, the commonest reason two quotes for the same trip disagree.

Then there is the money spent on the day rather than at the booking: site entry, the thermal gate, an umbrella on the sand, a drink at a kiosk. None of it is concealed and all of it is separate, so establish which sum is which.

Iztuzu is a nesting beach first and a beach second

The sandbar at the river mouth has been protected since 1988, which is why there is no hotel on it and no natural shade anywhere across its four and a half kilometres. Loggerheads nest there, and the rules that follow are enforced by wardens rather than merely suggested by signs.

• During the nesting season the beach is closed between 20:00 and 08:00.
• Nests are staked and marked. Do not walk inside a marked area.
• No umbrella and no sunbed on or beside a marked nest.
• No powered speedboats within one kilometre of the beach.
• No torches and no flash photography on the sand after dark.

The dates of the season shift a little from year to year, so the board at the beach entrance is what counts. You may well see a turtle in the river near the boats. Nobody can promise you one, and a skipper who does is promising what he does not control.

Fitting the water into a week

One day in Dalyan makes the decision for you. Take the full river day, because nothing else puts the rock tombs, the thermal water and the beach into the same afternoon.

With a week there is a better shape than doing everything at once. The river day early, while the geography still surprises you. A beach day on the shuttle in the middle, once you have worked out that the sand was the best of it. The evening run late on, when you no longer feel obliged to look at things. The sea day on a morning you can afford to lose to the wind.

We would not put the gulf day next to the river day. Both are long, both are spent sitting in strong sun, and back to back they blur into one very tired Wednesday. Nor would we book any boat for the day you land: eight unshaded hours after a flight is a poor first impression of a place you have paid to like.

Where we think people go wrong

Buying the day trip as a beach day is the commonest error. The shared day gives Iztuzu whatever is left after three other stops, and it is the shuttle rather than the tour that hands you the whole afternoon.

Booking the sea day as the only trip of the holiday is the expensive one. The delta does not care about the wind; the open coast cares a great deal, and the morning the skipper calls it off is the morning you discover you had no second plan.

And then there is the cheapest boat on the quay, which is usually cheapest for a reason that would have been perfectly acceptable had somebody mentioned it. Four hours on the water without lunch is fine to buy on purpose and dispiriting to discover at four.