Dalyan, Kaunos and Iztuzu

A Reed Lined River Delta Between Koycegiz Lake And The Sea, With Lycian Rock Tombs Above It, The Carian City Of Kaunos Across The Water, And Iztuzu, A Protected Loggerhead Nesting Beach · Ortaca, Mugla

A river runs out of Koycegiz Lake through a maze of reed beds to the sea, and almost everything at Dalyan happens on it. Flat-bottomed boats are the transport: to the mud baths at the lake end, down to the beach at the other, and across to Kaunos, a Carian port city stranded inland by the same silt that made the delta. Above the water, cut into the cliff facing the town, are Lycian rock tombs carved as temple facades in the fourth century BC and lit at night - the image the whole town trades on. At the sea end is Iztuzu, four and a half kilometres of sandbar that is one of the Mediterranean's most important loggerhead nesting beaches. It has no hotels on it because a campaign in the 1980s stopped one being built, which is now a landmark in Turkish conservation, and the beach still closes at sunset through the nesting season. Dalaman airport is twenty-five minutes away, which makes all of it unusually easy to reach.

Maras Mahallesi, Dalyan, Ortaca, Ortaca, Mugla, Turkiye

The town and the river are open at all hours; river boats run from about April to October and sparsely in winter. Kaunos is a ticketed site with daytime hours. IZTUZU BEACH CLOSES AT SUNSET IN NESTING SEASON, roughly May to September, and sunbed and umbrella use is restricted to a marked zone; the rest of the beach is left to the turtles.

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