Olu Deniz

Turkey, Olu Deniz.

June 2013,


My first holiday without any adults, Yasmin my best friend at that time, had visited Turkey with her parents many times before but never to Olu Deniz, so we found a good deal and celebrated booking our holiday with a glass of snowball.
Weren't we adventurous!

We were booked into the Blue Lagoon for 7 nights on a full board basis. It was around 2am when we got to our hotel and this is where we made our first mistake. Instead of just going to straight to sleep we headed down the main strip to have a gander, unfortunately we were hounded to go into bars quite aggressively by one waiter. We couldn't avoid it as our hotel was at the top of the strip, so it was a quick walk up and down the strip.

Our first day there we booked 2 trips with a company called Hamish McTurk, I'd definitely book with them again. The transfers were always on time, the staff lovely as ever always laughing and they'd take your photos for you, either with your own camera or theirs but for a price.

12 Island Boat Trip:
We got picked up at our hotel and taken to the
docks at Fethiye where we boarded, we were one of the last ones on so we had to cram into a small space on the boat luckily it was just the two of us other we'd be sitting on 
people. If you want a relaxing day at sea this is definitely a trip for you, you go around 12 islands stopping off being able to explore them and have a swim in the sea the boat whilst the boat is anchored so many decided to jump off the top, you got your lunch included in the price of the trip but you had to pay for drinks and ice creams.




 Dalayan Mud Bath Trip.
This was by FAR my favourite trip! Considering this holiday was 6 years ago, currently I've done this trip 4 times now. Unfortunately I don't have any photos from this the actual mud bath itself but I was very self conscious and deleted them. Like the 12 island tour you also get picked up, get on another boat and have your lunch. However after your lunch you get on smaller boats which take you to the mud baths. After the mud baths you go on to Turtle Beach which is beautiful, on one side you have sea water and the other is fresh water where you'd just sink. You can walk for ages in the sea water and the water level stays the same.

Both of these trips were well worth the money, its best to book through the same company as most give you a discount and its generally the same tourists as the last trip. On both trips we had a very enthusiastic driver called Jimmy, he'd always look at us weirdly and drop us off last even though we were always the first pick up definitely a creepy Jimmy.


A few times we also decided to venture out on our own:
 Fethiye Market:
There are plenty of dolmus's to take you there. It's one of the biggest markets I've seen selling anything from table cloths to designer bags. There were two separate markets one for mainly food and the other clothes and bags all fake. If you can't haggle you, you'll get fleeced. We tried and the guy laughed in our face, safe to say we were crap at it! And you'd never guess who was following us around the market, Creepy Jimmy! He gave us his number and we went straight for the bus back to our hotel.


 One night we got talking to a couple and they said we should go to a place called Kayakoy. So we did just that the next day. It was a pretty scary experience as we had no clue which bus to get turned out we got the wrong one then when the right one came along we got off a stop too late. Walking back on one side of the road we saw a bunch of nuns walking a dog, as you do, and the other side a pub so you can guess we went in the pub. We asked one of the guys who worked there how to get to Kayakoy he showed us and gave us a map to get to a nice local beach. Kayakoy itself is a complete ghost town, once the residence of both Greeks and Turks I can't remember exactly what happened but I think they left due to a war.


We did try and follow the map to the beach but it took us to a tiny never ending footpath, we literally thought someone was going to grab us, unlucky for them if they did.

Olu Deniz is such a beautiful small town, not many people like it as there isn't much to do in the town itself except to visit the actual Blue Lagoon, we just thought it was the main beach but it was around the corner we never noticed until we flew over it going home!
You can get buses and book trips that takes you away for the day. You have Hisaranou literally 5 minutes up the road and Fethiye a 20 minute dolmus ride. The hotel was right on the main strip where all of the bars and restaurants were, how ever just be careful as there was one man in particular who grabbed our arms and tried pulling us into his bar each night we went down the strip, walked on the other side, took a different route just to avoid him. Our favourite place was V.I.P we ate and drank in there it was brilliant they made you feel right at home.

For a first holiday on our own, it couldn't have been any better.

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