Yildiz Island

Yildiz Island is not an island. Also called Cennet Adasi (Paradise Island) or the Nimara peninsula, it hangs off the southern shore of Marmaris Bay about 8 km from town, joined to the mainland at Adakoy by a low neck of land that locals call Yalanci Bogaz, the Fake Strait. Pine forest, a cave that people have used for some 12,000 years and the best diving in the Marmaris area are packed into a headland you can walk across in an hour.

A protected headland

The peninsula sits inside Marmaris National Park, established on 30 January 1996 and covering 33,350 hectares of coast, forest and islands; the first- and second-degree protected zones take in Nimara (Cennet) itself, the Adaagzi shore, Gunnucek forest and the Keci and Bedir islets. Nimara Cave and its surroundings were listed as a first-degree archaeological site in 1999. On the highest point of the headland stand the remains of an older settlement - a stretch of city wall, a watchtower and house foundations - one of three ancient sites around Marmaris, reached by a walk of roughly an hour uphill.

Nimara Cave

The cave lies in the middle of the peninsula, a karst cavity estimated at around 100,000 years old, with travertine sheets on the walls, stalactites overhead and stalagmites rising from the floor. Two female sandstone statues were found here in 1998, and excavations by Mugla University in 2007 pushed the record of human use back roughly 12,000 years, from the Palaeolithic through to the Bronze Age. Among the finds are some 1,500 coloured glass beads, which point to a Bronze Age bead workshop, along with stone and bone tools, terracotta figures and Roman-period coins from a time when the entrance served as a votive shrine; the worship there is associated with the goddess Leto. The cave also shelters trogloxene butterflies, of the same kind found in Fethiye's Butterfly Valley.

Diving off Yildiz

The water around the headland is the main dive ground for Marmaris, and the sites are close enough together that a boat can run two in a morning.

• Ince Burun light: 3 to 40 metres, dense fish life and sponge growth on the wall - the best known site of the group.
• Abdi Reis Cove: local schools call it the Aquarium for the clarity of the water. Depth runs from the surface to about 33 metres, with fish gathering along the rubble slope from around 12 metres down.
• Aksu Cove: a 40-metre wall pierced by a circular hole, with fragments of ancient amphorae on the bottom. The site drops past 50 metres, so beginners stay shallow while deeper dives are left to the experienced.
• Yazili Kaya: big boulders in open water facing the island at about 30 metres, with schools of white seabream, two-banded bream and saddled bream. Best dived in the morning.

Fosforlu Magara, the phosphorous cave, is the other stop on most itineraries: light bouncing off the water gives the interior a greenish glow. Snorkellers get plenty from the shallows alone, where sea hares and small bream work the rocks.

Ashore and afloat

The coastline is high cliff and pine down to the waterline, cut by small coves and caves that only open up from the sea; several are shallow enough to swim into off a tender. Ashore, forest tracks cross the headland between the isthmus and the cave, and the walk up to the ancient wall on the summit is the one climb worth making in the cool of the morning. Trekking, swimming, snorkelling and diving are the whole programme here - there is no village on the peninsula, no shops and no road traffic beyond the marina.

Anchoring and season

Marmaris Adakoy Marina, on the Adakoy side of the isthmus, is the usual berth. Marmaris Bay is among the most sheltered on this coast - Bedir Island closes off part of the northern approach - and the marina is protected from the south while staying open to the northerly breeze that makes summer afternoons workable. The season runs from June to early September, when air temperatures reach around 33 C (91 F) and the sea is warm enough to swim from first light.

The bay below the cave is one of the anchorages you'll visit on a private gulet charter from Marmaris, usually as the first stop of the week: it is barely an hour out of the harbour, which leaves the afternoon free for the climb to the cave.