Planning a River Day in Dalyan from Fethiye or Gocek

Almost everybody who makes this trip is staying somewhere with better swimming than Dalyan can offer, and it is worth saying so at the top. You are not coming for the water. You are coming for the things the gulf has none of, and the water is what you give up to get them.

What you are actually buying is a river with a road at either end. The river part is the same for everyone who steps onto the quay. The road part decides whether the day feels generous or slightly harried, and it is the part most people plan last.

Work backwards from the drive home

The usual method is to plan forwards from the hour of the pick-up, and it is the wrong end to start at. The fixed point of this day is not when you leave your hotel. It is the hour the vehicle has to be turning out of Dalyan if you are to be home at a reasonable time, and everything else hangs off that.

Settle it first, then work up the river from it. The boat is back at the quay before that hour, the beach stop ends before the boat turns, and the mud happens earlier still. Planned in that order the day holds together. Planned the other way round, you find out on the sand in mid afternoon that the arithmetic never worked.

For what it is worth, we would give the evening leg more room than looks necessary. An hour of margin costs you an hour on the sand. Not having it costs you the last stop altogether and a bad tempered drive.

Where the hours actually go

The river is not shortened by the road. Everything you do beside it is.

Not a timetable. Take the hours from your own driver and skipper on the day, because the pick-up run and the summer traffic through Ortaca both move them about.

The one question worth asking before you pay anybody

Does the boat land at Kaunos, or does it slow down under the tombs for photographs and carry on? Both are sold as the same trip, in more or less the same words, and the difference between them is an hour ashore, a site ticket bought at the gate and a climb in the open with no shade at the top.

For somebody staying in the town that hour is free. For you it is not, because it comes out of the afternoon the road has already taken a bite from. Our own view is that a first visit from up the coast is better spent on the water and the sand, with the site kept for a holiday that begins in Dalyan. Ask anyway, so the answer is one you chose.

The mud, and the seat you sit in afterwards

Sultaniye is grey clay, a cold and public rinse, and hot sulphur water to sit in afterwards. It is the part of the day people arrive least prepared for, and the wrinkle for a day visitor is what comes next: not your own bathroom, but a couple of hours back on the river and then a vehicle with somebody else's upholstery in it.

None of it is compulsory. Plenty of people watch the whole performance from the shade with a cold drink, and we have never met one who regretted it.

• An old swimming costume. The grey does not always come out of pale fabric and the smell can outlast a wash or two.
• Rings and chains left in the room. Sulphur blackens silver and does not give it back.
• A dry change of clothes for the road, and a bag that will carry the wet ones.
• Contact lenses out, or your head kept above the surface.
• Cash, because the pool has its own gate and the boat has no part in it.

Iztuzu on borrowed time

This is where the road takes its cut, and it takes it from the best stop of the day. Boats land at the river mouth end, where the kiosks, the lavatories and the warm shallow water are. The road end is four and a half kilometres away along soft sand, so with a driver waiting in town that walk is not a decision, it is a trap.

There is no natural shade on any of it. In high summer an umbrella and the first hour after you land are worth more than any amount of advance planning.

• The beach is closed between 20:00 and 08:00 during nesting season.
• Nests are staked and signed. Do not walk inside a marked area, and do not put an umbrella or a sunbed there.
• No powered speedboats within one kilometre of the beach.
• No fires, no barbecues, no tents, no vehicles on the sand.
• Do not use flash photography or torches on the beach at night.

Wardens enforce these and the signs on the sand are what count on the day, because the dates of the season shift a little year to year. Anyone hoping to stay on the sand until the light goes should read the first line twice.

The argument for not doing it in a day

The obvious answer to a day with two road legs in it is to delete one of them. Dalyan has more beds than it needs outside August, and a single night changes the shape of the thing. You arrive in the afternoon, take the evening at your own speed, and are on the quay for the first boat while everyone else is still being collected from their hotels.

The evening is the part day visitors never see. In season the tombs are floodlit from below after dark and the riverfront eats late, and both happen well after your minibus needed to leave. The lighting is not ours to promise, but it is usually on.

We would take one night over a long day almost every time, and we say that knowing it sells nobody a transfer. It does not suit everyone. If a villa up the coast is already paid for and there are eight of you, moving the party for one evening is more trouble than the evening is worth.

Hiring the boat outright buys back some of the road

The drive is a fixed cost and there is nothing clever to be done about it. The boat is not fixed at all. A shared boat leaves the quay when it leaves, which suits people who slept two streets away and suits a minibus coming down off the hill above Oludeniz considerably less.

With the whole boat, the river day starts when your vehicle arrives and turns for home when your driver needs it to, and you can shorten the stop you care least about rather than the one you care most about. For two people that is an indulgence and we would say so. For six or more with a road journey at either end, it is usually what makes the day work at all.

Why two quotes for the same day disagree

There are no figures on this site, on purpose: they move with the season, the boat and the size of the party, and anything written here would be misleading within a month. What is useful is the shape of what you are being quoted for, because two people can be sold the same sentence and buy quite different days.

• Where you are sleeping. A vehicle is priced for the journey, and a lane above Ovacik is not the same journey as a street in Gocek.
• A seat, or the whole boat. Two products, not one product in two sizes.
• How many of you there are, because the vehicle and the boat do not care and the figure per head does.
• Whether the boat lands at Kaunos, which makes a longer day for the crew as well as for you.
• Whether lunch is aboard, the commonest single reason two quotes for one trip do not match.
• The date. High summer and the days around a public holiday are not the quiet end of the year.

Site entry at Kaunos, the thermal pool and the umbrellas at the beach are normally paid on the spot rather than to the boat, so the sum you book at and the sum you spend are two different figures. Current prices sit with each trip on our sister site.