The Turquoise coast of Turkey is teeming with opportunities for authentic adventure. The day I went hiking in Butterfly Valley Turkey took an unforgettable turn. One moment I was drinking a beer on a quiet beach, swinging in a hammock, chasing butterflies, and looking in awe at the dramatic cliffs behind me. And then next I was holding onto ropes anchored into rock, getting hoisted up by a local man named Burcu who was trying to keep my silly friends and I from tumbling to our deaths from those same cliffs.
When I was visiting Oludeniz during my year living in Turkey, parts of the region like Faralya and Kabak, felt very wild and unpredictable. The roads and beaches were quiet and some places felt undiscovered. I know that since then the area has developed into more of a go-to tourist destination, where everything is larger now – the hotels, the boats, the buses, the groups of people stamping the ground and setting up on the beaches. But the Lycian Way is still there and is absolutely worth exploring.
Butterfly Valley Turkey, a fairy tale place
The itinerary was simple: First, hitch a ride on a gulet or water taxi from Oludeniz to Butterfly Valley, a nature preserve and hippie hideaway in between two cliffs and only accessible by boat or by a steep downward hike from a tiny village on the plateau above. Then, spend some time relaxing on the beach, chasing butterflies, exploring the waterfalls. Later, hike up to the village, named Faralya, and catch a bus to Kabak, which is less a town – it actually doesn’t exist, according to Google Maps – than a scattering of family-owned bohemian camps of wooden huts built on a steep hill facing the sea. If all went according to plan, we’d reach Kabak before dark, locate a decent place to stay, and hike down to the beach for an evening swim before snuggling into treehouse beds and having fresh-air fueled dreams of butterflies and frolicking mountain goats. In most ways, this itinerary was followed and the intended experiences ticked off the list, but it wasn’t easy.
Getting there – arriving by boat
Jenny, Wendy and I met the Fun-da 2 at 10AM on the beach in Oludeniz. We’d taken the full-day “12 island tour” the day before and had befriended the captain and boat boys, who said we could hitch a ride to Butterfly Valley for a small fee and then stay after the boat left. It did occur to me that this would leave us stranded with no way out except the hike to the top of the cliffs, so I was careful to note Jenny’s flip flops when we positioned ourselves on the sunbathing deck of the boat. The boys were pulling up the anchor and starting the motor, and we had a moment of question – should she go back and risk missing the boat and plan to hike in flip flops? We reviewed the Lonely Planet guidebook description of the hike from Butterfly Valley to Faralya, which denoted a moderate level of difficulty with its brief clip, and went something like this:
“Hike time: approximately 40 minutes. Be sure to stick to the path, as an Australian climber died here in 2009.”
The obvious choice was to go back for the shoes, and Jenny made it back to the hotel room to grab her sneaks, which she stuck in her small backback. I had brought my larger pack with a change of clothes, and Wendy – never unstylish – had brought along her white leather shoulder bag with necessary provisions, including her nail polish. On our boat tour the previous day, we’d had several unexpected adventures involving – but not limited to – taking a ride with an entrepreneurial Turk who had turned his rusty dingy into a floating ice cream truck, and swimming to an island where we drank wine right from a bottle that was carried by a donkey from a remote hilltop winery. Day two on the Fethiye coast was sure to offer of some treats of its own.
After a 20-minute ride the Fun-da 2 turned into the inlet at Butterfly Valley, which was already occupied by a few other pirate-esque ships. The cliffs jutted up at a sharp angle, and brightly colored tents peeked out from the jungly vegetation just beyond the small sandy beach.
A private hippie hideaway, waterfalls and butterflies
We spent time exploring the beach, the cafe, the bar perched on a rock ledge. We bought some huge tomato mozzarella sandwiches for lunch, and as I sat on the beach gnawing at the baguette and sipping an afternoon beer, I thought that I’d pretty much found heaven. After lunch we asked for directions to the nearby waterfalls, a thirty minute flat hike from the shore, and began walking through the nature preserve.
Although the sign indicated a 5TL fee, there was no one to collect it and no one else on the path at all. In fact, after the day-tour boats like the Fun-da 2 sailed away after their requisite 60 minutes at the valley, the place was empty. Maybe suspiciously so. I thought, maybe it’s because the busy season hasn’t quite started? But I thought there would be at least a few other groups hiking up to Faralya.
When we asked for the way to the hiking trail up to the top of the valley a burly man working the counter at the cafe eyed us, and then gave us each the once over. I mistook this for the usual female form check-out that I was used to, and later realized he was trying to assess our athletic ability. He disappeared and a few minutes later returned with a bespectacled guy with a goofy grin. His name was Burcu, and he was going to accompany us on our hike. This wasn’t presented to us as an option and for all we knew tourists weren’t allowed to hike alone because of preserved vegetation or something.
Cliffside and above – hiking in Butterfly Valley
We hit the path with Burcu, whose English was excellent, and within a few minutes I was so glad he was with us. The path was unclear, the incline incredibly steep. Jenny remarked that if she hadn’t gone back for her sneakers she wouldn’t have made it more then 5 yards onto the trail. I kept looking up at the cliffs thinking, how do they call this a hike? It’s a climb, often on all fours, feet slipping every few steps. I tried to look neither up nor down so as not to give up (it was too late anyway, the downward hike would have been more dangerous) or cry, but of course it was impossible to avoid. Looking up, the rock cliffs swept upward at 90 degrees. Looking down it was just the tops of trees, a view similar to one you’d get from the window of an airplane a few moments after takeoff. At three points during the hike it was so steep there were hanging ropes with knots to help with patches of 10-20 feet. Each time, sweet Burcu tested the rope first to make sure it was secure, and then spotted us from the bottom before climbing up himself, Wendy’s white should bag slung around his neck.
After only about one hour of sweaty, nervous climbing, we reached the top. The path let out in one of the gardens of a place called George House, a small hotel and farm. George was on his knees, digging, and waved to us without any expression of surprise as we appeared from behind the cliffs. Before Burcu headed back down (he said he does the trip with tourists several times a day) we took a picture, hugged him hard, and all sat down for a beer.
Butterfly Valley to Kabak
We took a dolmus to Kabak, which was marked by a couple of old buildings and closed businesses. In the growing dusk, we ventured partway down into a valley past mountain goats and farmer women in floral headscarves to the family-owned Full Moon Camp, a pansyon made up of small wooden bungalows with incredible views of the valley and sea below. We quickly stashed our bags into our assigned stilted hut and chased the sun down to a deserted crescent beach where we took a quick but much-needed plunge in that perfect water. We hiked back up to the Full Moon Camp on a path much friendlier and softer that the one we had conquered earlier that day.
That night we enjoyed a delicious vegetarian dinner made fresh by the owner Mustafa’s mother. Following dinner we chatted with Mustafa at the bar – a long piece of wood and a few stools at one corner of a large platform that felt like a treehouse. Turns out Mustafa was the region’s official climbing expert. We played a game of Tavla and listened to his stories about rescuing hikers from precarious situations, or retrieving bodies of those who hadn’t been so lucky and met their doom somewhere on the Lycian way.