Esmeralda Bay

Esmeralda Bay is a quiet cove on the Kekova coastline in Antalya's Demre district, prized less for any particular monument than for the colour of its water — a shifting blue-green that stays clear enough to see the seabed from a boat's deck. The name is often said to come from the word for emerald, a nod to that distinctive hue, though no single account of its origin is confirmed.

Unlike many of the region's anchorages, the bay has no sandy beach; steep cliffs covered in scrub and low trees drop straight into the water, which keeps the setting quiet and largely free of the crowds that gather elsewhere along the coast. That combination of depth, clarity and shelter makes it better suited to swimming and snorkelling than to going ashore, and the visibility is usually good enough to spot fish moving along the rock face well before you reach it.

It sits close enough to Kekova's other anchorages that it fits naturally into a single day's sailing, and for that reason it is best reached during a Kekova gulet cruise, folded in alongside the sunken city and the neighbouring bays rather than visited on its own.