Escape the coast.
Enter the mountains.

Ten minutes past the last hotel the asphalt ends. The track turns to dust and stone, the temperature drops a few degrees, and the coastline you have been lying on all week disappears behind the first ridge.

What follows is the part of Antalya most visitors never see: orange and pomegranate orchards, cotton fields, an old Roman bridge, the arches of ancient aqueducts, and Yörük families who still spend their summers in the foothills. The convoy stops where there is something worth stopping for — never to sell you anything.

By midday you are at Oymapınar, where the Manavgat river backs up into a gorge so deep the water turns emerald. There is time to swim, time for fresh Turkish pancakes, and then lunch on a terrace above Green Canyon. In summer the drive back is loud, wet and completely undignified — the water fights between jeeps are a tradition, and children usually rate them above everything else on the holiday.