Best Time to Visit Bozburun

Bozburun sits at the far end of the peninsula that carries its name, about an hour by road from Marmaris along a route that climbs over pine ridges and drops into one bay after another. It belongs to the Marmaris district of Mugla province, and it has stayed a boatbuilding village rather than turning into a resort: the yards along the waterfront still put wooden gulets in the water.

The coast around it breaks into coves that no road reaches, which is why so many visitors explore Bozburun by private gulet charter. On land the peninsula is just as broken up, with villages strung between the bays and long stretches of empty hillside in between.

What There Is to Do

• Villages and coves: Selimiye, Sogut, Taslica and Orhaniye are all within a short drive, each with its own harbour or beach, and there are inlets along the way with nothing on them at all.
• Ancient sites: the Carian settlements of Hygassos and Syrna lie inland and are heavily overgrown; Loryma, at the southern tip of the peninsula above the anchorage at Bozukkale, still has its curtain wall standing.
• Walking: the Carian Trail runs 820 km through Mugla and Aydin, and this peninsula is where it starts. The Bozburun Peninsula section covers about 141 km, beginning at Icmeler near Marmaris and working around the coast through Bayir, Taslica, Sogut, Bozburun and Selimiye to finish at Hisaronu.
• Boatbuilding: Bozburun's yards build gulets and ketches by hand, to methods passed down within the village rather than learned in a factory. It is the reason the name is known to anyone who charters in this part of Turkey.

When to Go

May, June and September are the best months. The sea is warm enough to swim in, the air is not hot enough to make walking or sightseeing unpleasant, and the villages are working normally rather than at full stretch.

July and August are the hottest and the busiest, and they are the months to pick if the beach is the whole point. Winter is short and mild; most of the tourist businesses shut, but the village carries on and the peninsula is at its greenest.

The Weather in Numbers

• August is the hottest month, averaging around 26 C (79 F) across the day, with afternoon highs well above that. Sea temperature peaks near 27 C (80 F) and holds that warmth until the end of September.
• January is the coldest month, averaging around 13 C (55 F). December is the wettest, and the rain is what turns the hillsides green again.
• June gets the most sunshine, about 12.9 hours a day on average; January the least, around 7.1 hours.

What to Bring

• Sun protection. The summer sun here is strong and the shade on the coast is patchy: sunscreen, a hat and sunglasses.
• Shoes you can walk in, for the trails and the ruins, plus sea shoes — most of the beaches on the peninsula are pebble rather than sand.
• Water. Distances between villages are longer than they look on a map, and there is nothing to buy in between.

Festivals

The International Bozburun Gulet Festival is held at the end of October, timed to the point when the shipyards finish their season's work. It runs to gulet races, music, local food and craft stalls, and it is the one weekend of the year when the harbour is full of boats that have come for the town rather than for the coast.

The Bozburun Canoe Festival takes place in June, with races and a concert, drawing entrants from Selimiye and Sogut as well as the village itself. Diving and sailing events fill in through the rest of the summer.