Akseki Bay

Akseki Bay is a small, roadless cove on the Mediterranean coast of Antalya Province, on the stretch of shoreline between Adrasan and Olympos near the boundary of the Kumluca and Kemer districts. There is no paved access down to the water; visitors arrive either along a rough track or, far more often, by boat from Adrasan, roughly 4 kilometres away. Pine-covered slopes and low rock cliffs wrap around a narrow strip of fine golden sand, and the sea here is calm and unusually clear, which has made the bay a favourite with snorkellers rather than with the beach crowds found at the larger resorts along this coast.

Swimming, Snorkelling and What to Bring

The water is the whole point of the place. Visibility on this section of coast is exceptional, reaching 25 metres on a clear day at neighbouring Adrasan, and the mix of sand, boulders and rock walls gives the sort of varied bottom that holds fish. Because the shoreline combines large rocks with pebbles in places, most skippers recommend sea shoes for anyone swimming ashore. The bay's best-known feature is a shallow sea cave at one end, nicknamed the Love Cave by local boat crews and usually the first thing people head for once a day boat has dropped anchor. There are no cafés, no lifeguards and no fresh water on site, so whatever you need has to arrive with you; day trippers normally eat aboard.

Getting There by Boat

Almost every visitor comes on one of the day boats that leave Adrasan beach in the morning and work their way along the coast, taking in Akseki alongside Sazak, Ceneviz and Korsan coves and the uninhabited island of Suluada, about four nautical miles offshore. Adrasan itself is a neighbourhood of Kumluca district with around 2,600 residents, strung along 2.5 kilometres of sand and shingle, and it is the main small-boat base for this part of the shore. Larger yachts and gulets running between Antalya and Finike use the same coves as lunch stops, since the pine-covered headlands give reasonable shelter from the prevailing summer breeze.

The Coast Around Akseki

The bay sits in the middle of one of the most historically dense stretches of the Turkish coast. Just to the north is Olympos, a city that held three votes in the Lycian League and fell in the first century BC under the pirate chief Zeniketes, who burned himself alive rather than surrender to the Roman commander Publius Servilius Vatia. Above it, at Yanartaş, methane seeping through the rock feeds flames that have burned across an area of some 5,000 square metres for at least 2,500 years; the ruins of a temple of Hephaistos lie just below the vents, and in 1811 the surveyor Francis Beaufort argued that this was the Chimaera of Greek myth. To the south the coast ends at Cape Gelidonya, where a Bronze Age wreck of about 1200 BC was excavated in 1960 by George Bass and Peter Throckmorton, the first ancient shipwreck ever dug in its entirety on the seabed.

Inland, the mountains behind the bay are protected as the Beydağları Coastal National Park, and the Lycian Way footpath runs along the ridges above the shore, linking Adrasan to the flames of Yanartaş in one direction and the Gelidonya lighthouse in the other, each less than half a day's walk.

Anchoring at Akseki

With nothing built on it and no road to it, Akseki keeps the feel of an undeveloped Mediterranean anchorage even at the height of summer, when day boats pause just long enough for a swim before moving on. Evenings are quieter once the tour fleet has gone home, which is when the cove is at its best, and it remains one of the anchorages you'll visit on a private gulet cruise in Turkey tracing the coast between Kemer and Adrasan.