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Turkey’s Dalyan Delta: Where luxury embraces a slower pace of life on the Turquoise Coast

story by By Jenny Coad, Daily Mail.
Last updated at 3:25 PM on 5th May 2010

The villa is equipped with all the mod cons, but life outside moves at a slower pace. Turkey produces almonds — a fifth of the world’s supply — pots of honey and piles of pomegranates. Women clad in wide-brimmed white hats and flowery harem trousers ride past the villa on tractor carts.

My friend Isabel and I find bee-hives by accident when we run down the track only to find ourselves at the epicentre of an ominous buzz. We beat a swift retreat.

Even so, wildlife is a good reason to visit this abundant region. Birds, from herons to storks, abound on the delta, bordered by the sea on one side and lake Koycegiz, a natural harbour, on the other.

In between are narrow reed-lined waterways. On Iztuzu beach, a 15-minute trip from Beyaz by car, turtles nest.

Here the sand is compact, charcoal in colour and the sea is choppy. You won’t find a sunlounger, but that’s part of the attraction. It’s virtually empty and surrounded by wilder, dry and rocky landscape.

A drink in a roadside cafe — a sort of treehouse teetering on the mountainside — provides low-key refreshment. Stalls selling homegrown honey line the route home.

Our nearest market is 42 miles away in Fethiye [Bryden: Correction, there is a market every Saturday in Dalayan] , a breezy port full of carpet and jewellery shops.

The market is off the main drag and you have to follow your nose before you get to the good stuff. Here a roly-poly woman fries spinach pancakes on hotplates. We try everything from roasted sesame coated nuts to salty feta.

We return laden with goodies and set about marinading what we think is beef (English is not spoken widely) in spices. Interesting, if chewy — perhaps it was goat.

Fish proves a better option. Midweek, we try it barbecued aboard a private boat we hire for a day from Dalyan to explore the delta. The excursion offers a closer look at the Lycian tombs high in the cliffs.

We are dropped off at a jetty to tramp around the dusty heat of ancient Kaunos, a site which is still being excavated. The top of the 2nd-century BC amphitheatre provides a panoramic view over the area.

Some of the Doric temple columns have been rebuilt in marble, so you can see how they might have looked in their fuller glory. We virtually have the place to ourselves.

Back in Dalyan we find a lively eatery where the action happens around the oven. Fresh flat breads and sizzling meats are a speciality, and cocktails are served with half a banana skewered on the rim of the glass. Novel.

The atmosphere is buoyant, and later the villa provides the ideal place to lounge off our meal. The billionaires know their stuff — this is definitely the way to live.

In Turkey, bathing en masse seems to be a past-time. Perhaps Cleopatra started the trend. If the number of ruined baths attributed to her are anything to go by, it seems she bathed with abandon — all the way along the Turkish Coast.

At the Sultanye thermal baths, ten minutes upriver from Dalyan we sign up for soft skin — which means covering ourselves in mud, standing around in grimy puddles and waiting for it to bake. We wash it off in one of the thermal sulphur pools. These can reach 40 degrees and, it’s claimed, cure all sorts of ills.

Glowing, we return to the boat and chug about on the delta amid reedy lanes. The area is part of old Lycia and there are 4th-century cliff tombs built high into the rock. These hold the Lycian kings. At night they are lit like candles eerily suspended in blackness.