When you fly in from Warsaw, the final approach to Dalaman
airport is spectacular, as the plane winds its way down through the surrounding
pine clad mountains. For much of it,
even when the plane is low, a few hundred feet above the landscape, there is
little sign of life – a network of unpaved tracks cutting through the trees
(you can hardly call them roads) linking occasional clusters of
abandoned-looking buildings that may or may not be houses in a small village or
large farm, but there are no cars or trucks or tractors to be seen. Only in the last couple of minutes, when
you’re down almost to ground level, does that change, as you cross a motorway
that when we flew in on a Thursday lunchtime had little traffic, then the town
outskirts and warehouses surrounding the airport perimeter, dry looking
smallholdings and olive groves, and you touch down at a small and slightly
down-at-heel tourist airport.
The Arrivals and Baggage halls were a short walk from our
gate, through a surprisingly quick and efficient passport and visa control – a
cursory glance at our passports and on-line visas, a stamp on the page and a
cheerful “Welcome to Turkey” – none of the chilly and unsettling waiting in
line under the suspicious gaze of gun-toting Homeland Security gorillas that
welcome you to JFK and Miami and the other US airports, or bumbling
inefficiency and interminable queues at Heathrow and Gatwick. By the time we reached the carousel, the
first bags were emerging, barely ten minutes after the aircraft doors
opened. As arrivals go these days, it
was a pleasure.
Another 15 minutes and we were on the coach to Fethiye,
blinking in the hot sunshine as we waited for the last few passengers and the
Itaka travel rep to join us. Then we
were off again, less than an hour after landing. The drive to the hotel, just over 40km, was
spectacular too, passing along a windy and undulating dual carriageway through
those same mountains, through tunnels and dusty towns and villages with their gold-roofed
mosques and tin roofed sheds and houses, all of which had water supplies in
rooftop tanks like oil barrels. Smaller
properties had one tank, apartment blocks (seldom more than three or four
floors) had perhaps a dozen, presumably one for each apartment. Most had solar panels next to them,
presumably for heating the water. It was
a far cry from suburban Ursynow.
On the road to Fethiye
Our hotel, the Jiva Beach Resort, lay at the end of a quite narrow
and ill-maintained road, and was worth the trip. It’s new, no more than three years old I
should think (before we left home I found an aerial photo on Google of the
resort next door, taken from just offshore, and the land where the Jiva stands
was then scrubland with no trace of building work. The picture dated from 2010). It’s a clean and well maintained resort-hotel,
with a selection of apartments and bungalows spread around the site, some with
swim-up pools at their back doors. The
honeymoon suite has a larger deck and pool area, part enclosed for some privacy
by thin curtains wafting in the breeze that also hide an outdoor Jacuzzi – very
nice too. We had a 2 bedroom family room,
immediately opposite the honeymoon suite, and both had a lovely view west
across a narrow road straight to the beach and the warm blue sea of Calis bay,
dotted with dozens of little islands and providing the most beautiful sunsets.
Fethiye sunset from the Jiva Beach apartment
For entertainment, these is a good sized infinity pool with
a generous allowance of sun beds and umbrellas, and behind it a splash pool
with a selection of slides and a smaller toddler’s pool, again with sunbeds and
umbrellas. There is a decent pool bar
with comfortable chairs, sofas and umbrellas, backed and surrounded by
landscaped lawns and shrubs that form the venue for daily exercise sessions and
darts matches. There is also an outside
pool table and a table-tennis set up that host tournaments too. Further along is a small zoo (some ducks,
chickens, peacocks and rabbits that seem to have the run of the place, plus a
caged parrot), located behind the amphitheatre that caters for a nightly show
of some kind, and close to that a building that houses the Kid’s Club. So there was plenty to keep us occupied. By the road, overlooking the beach and across
from the honeymoon suite, is another larger bar, on stilts in the landscaped
natural pool that runs down one side of the site, that stays open until
midnight and serves a good selection of beers, cocktails and coffees as you
relax in your armchair or sofa. The pool
itself houses getting on for fifty big fish – no idea what sort – and a colony
of turtles that all seem to congregate around the bridge that crossed the pool
to provide access to one of the apartment blocks (ours, in fact). The ducks are frequent visitors too. Finally, there is a big restaurant area,
partly an outside terrace, that offered a good and varied daily selection of
hot and cold meals, and a sumptuous range of quite delicious sweets – our diets
were blown away within a couple of hours of arriving – and, below the main
building that houses the reception and restaurant area, there is a spa facility
offering a range of massages and treatments.
Our suite
The slides.....
....and into the main pool
All in all, it’s possibly the best place we’ve stayed at in
our various holidays, and our all-in package (so including all flights,
transfers, and all the food and local drink we could consume, for a family of
four) offered exceptional value. I’m
told there are no travel agents in Britain that offer it, but we met one couple
from Manchester so that may not be the case – or they may have booked direct
from the resort’s web-site (http://www.jivabeachresort.com/)
and travelled independently. In any
case, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
We were there for a very special day, not merely for a
holiday: namely, my eldest son Doug’s wedding.
In the event, the timing was ideal and provided the chance to take a
break between finishing one project in Bermuda, and starting a new one, long
term, in Amsterdam, and at the same time spend some quality time with my
family. And not just Ania and the kids –
my three nippers, all fine grown men now, from England were of course there
with their respective partners. We had
been looking forward to the trip for some time (since the invite at the end of
last year, in fact) but didn’t book anything in travel terms until August. Doug had reserved accommodation for us in the
same resort as everyone else – by coincidence the one right next door to the
Jiva Beach – but finding flights from Warsaw was a nightmare.
We looked at many options, but whether we went through
Frankfurt, or Paris, or Amsterdam or Istanbul, there was a minimum 5 hour
connection between flights. We even
checked the possibility of flying to Rhodes (served direct by LOT) and then
catching the ferry across to Fethiye – it only takes a little over an
hour. It might have been fun, but the
return was again a problem, with the flight departing at 6:00 a.m., which would
have meant crossing back to Rhodes the night before and staying at the airport
for the night – a definite no-no. The
only direct flights from Warsaw were charters, linked to package holidays,
which is why we ended up going the all-inclusive route. In the event, the choice was brilliant, as
the all-inclusive cost was only a little more expensive than the direct flights
would have been (on any route) which made the value even better.
Of course, going this route mean having to leave the booking
until the last minute to get the best price, and opened up the risk of not
being able to get anything at all in the resort we needed. But fortunately, we had met somebody, the
friend of a friend, a good 5 or 6 years ago at a weekend canoeing trip, who
worked in the travel industry, so Ania enlisted his help. He came up with the Jiva Beach offer, and we
would have taken it on cost grounds alone – but its location right next door
(separated only by a narrow road) to Doug’s resort made it perfect.
The wedding made packing a little more complicated and bulky
than a holiday would have been, since it included suits and smart shirts and
ties and black shoes and beautiful dresses and high-heeled shoes and handbags,
but we managed to cram it all into three cases – an impressive piece of work by
my Beloved. We also lugged down three
sets of flippers, masks and snorkels for Ania and the kids to use – they alone
took up half a suitcase.
The wedding was set for the Monday evening, so we had the
whole weekend to enjoy the facilities and top up the suntans to look our best,
and enjoy it we did.
Our room was very comfortable and well equipped (even though
the only English language TV channel I could find was BBC World News – of
course!) but the kids were quite happy watching Cartoon Network in
Turkish. As it happened we rarely
switched the TV on – we would get up about 9, dress in swimming gear, shorts
and shirts then head straight for breakfast and the pool. And there we stayed all day, until about 6, then
back for a shower, dress for dinner, after which off to the bar or the
Amphitheatre for the evening’s entertainment.
Then bed. It was terrific.
The kids had a wonderful time. They both enjoy swimming and have been taking
lessons for a while at our local pool (Kuba passed an exam back in July and has
a certificate to prove he is a strong swimmer), but Ally up until recently has
still needed arm-bands. All that has now
changed: we couldn’t keep them out of the pools (even if we had wanted to) so
by the end of it she was doing lengths quite happily, diving in, clambering
out, doing it again, turning somersaults under the water – the lot. It was great so see. And of course the slides were an absolute
must for them. It all gave Ania and I
the perfect opportunity to just relax and enjoy the sun and various pool bar
cocktails – which we did, a lot.
The kids also, after a slow shy start, got to know the girls
from the entertainment team, and joined in a lot of the activities. Every lunchtime, around 2, the team would
line up at each end of the pool and do a carefully choreographed dance routine,
and encouraged people to join in. By the
weekend, Ally and Kuba were up there dancing along with them – and very well
too: they had all the moves. In the
evening there was a kid’s disco at the Amphitheatre and of course they were up
on stage joining in all the dancing there too.
It was great to watch. The girls
fell in love with the pair of them, and at the end of the stay presented Ally
with a signed tee-shirt and Kuba with a picture he had painted of Lightning
McQueen from Cars, suitably inscribed
– wishing them all the best, how much they had enjoyed their company and
looking forward to seeing them next year.
They came to see us off on the coach when we left, and there more hugs
and kisses.
On stage with the Girls in the Apmhitheatre
All in all, we had a quite brilliant time at the hotel, and
would very definitely go there again – maybe for a couple of weeks, and hire a
car to do a bit of exploring, and take some of the local excursions too – there
are island cruises around the area, sea-fishing and snorkelling trips, and a
day trip across to Rhodes amongst many others.
And what of the main reason for the visit – the wedding?
It was great. We were
all bussed into the marina, across the bay at the far end of the resort, and
boarded a pleasure boat all decked out in ribbons and flowers and so on. On the top deck, open to the warm evening
air, the tables were laid out for the meal, and the bar was below in the
lounge. The front deck was essentially
the dancing area, with the music decks on the top with the food
facilities. We sailed out into the bay
and cruised around for about an hour before anchoring just off a small island
for the ceremony. The boat was anchored
facing west, so that the ceremony and subsequent picture sessions had the
perfect backdrop of one of those beautiful sunsets. It was all in Turkish, of course, conducted by
a local official and translator, and went off with barely a hitch and lots of
laughter.
I do.......
....I did!
Happy days......
Kuba and Ally were the only children there, and so were the
centre of attention (after the happy couple of course). They loved it, especially the dancing
afterwards – a couple of hours or more of rave music (not at all to my taste,
but still….) – where they joined in the whole time to the delight of everyone there. And of course they were with their big
brothers and their partners the whole time, which was lovely to see. We have some fantastic pictures of them all
jumping all over the place, and in Kuba’s case break dancing quite impressively
(not sure where he got that from….) so captured some wonderful memories. We pulled back into the marina around 11:30,
and piled into a fleet of cars and buses, then drove at high speed through the
town with horns blaring and lights flashing – a Turkish wedding custom. The destination was a club in town where the
party went on all night – we gave it a miss and went back to the hotel.
But it was pleasure to see Doug and Helen so happy, and I
was immensely proud of all my kids, seeing them all happy and laughing
together. I even managed to get a good
photo of us all, the first of me with my five offspring.
A proud moment for this old man.
It made the week complete.
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