Datça and Pamukkale

Tours that take the strain out of enjoying Europe’s flora and fauna! Based in just a couple of good quality hotels, with direct flights, and these at kind times of day! And most importantly field trips will be kept to a maximum of six or so hours giving you plenty of time to relax before and after. Direct flights are available from some regional airports.

It would be difficult to find a flowerier place in the entire Mediterranean than the Datça Peninsula. What for much of the year is a forbiddingly barren-looking mountainous peninsula erupts into spectacular bloom in April and May. The combination of multi-hued Cistus bushes, bushes of blue Lithodora, neat mounds of flowering Euphorbias, great splashes of pink Convolvulus and the architectural Giant Fennels is mind-boggling. Looking closer there’s so much more. The gorgeous deep pink-lilac Iberis pruitii grows on bare tracks looking someone’s dropped packets of sweets as they’ve walked, and there’s little mounds of the very woolly Convolvulus compactus. Orchids are everywhere, in particular bee orchids, and Datça has many species of them – Ophrys candica, Ophrys minoa, Ophrys episcopalis and Ophrys ferrum-equinum subspecies mandalyana are some of the finest.

Serapias cordigera showers the open pinewoods with deep brick-coloured blooms and here they occur in unusual forms too with flowers often wholly or partly lime-green. These same pinewoods are home to a population of Caracal – we’ll go and look in the evening though chances are very slim, however we’ve a very good chance of seeing Wild Boar, Stone Marten and several owl species – Barn, Tawny, Long-eared and Scop’s Owls are all likely.

The wild and rugged Datça Peninsula is barely 80 kilometres from the modern tourist resorts around Marmaris yet it has managed to remain largely unspoilt and undeveloped into the 21^st century. Much of the peninsula is protected as a national park that was set up more than fifty years ago initially to protect the last Western Anatolian population of Leopard. None have been seen for around fifteen years now however there are still Brown Bears and Wolves here and very many Ibex. We’ll surely see the latter – posing on the limestone ramparts of Boz Dagi. This high rugged mountain has impressive cliffs on which breed various raptors including Bonelli’s Eagles, Peregrine and Lanner Falcon and the northern slopes, almost completely uninhabited are clothed is some of the richest lushest maquis in Turkey. Ruppell’s Warblers and Bonelli’s Warblers are everywhere. We’ll be based just outside the lovely little town of Datça close to this mountain and just 35 kilometres from the Knidos, a remarkable archaeological site at the tip of the peninsula. Cory’s Shearwaters and Audouin’s Gulls are offshore along with Bottle-nosed Dolphins.

Pamukkale needs little introduction, images of the fabulous aquamarine travertine terraces that cascade down the mountainside near Denizli are featured everywhere that talks of Turkey. The ancient Greco-Roman city of Hieropolis was built above the remarkable terraces. Nearby rises Honaz Dağı, an impressive mountain at over 8350 feet (2570m) and which has a very different flora and fauna to the Datça Peninsula. Here we can find clumps of yellow Iris suaveolens and the unusual yellow Moltkia aurea whilst birds include Cretzschmarr’s Buntings, Short-toed Eagles and Woodlark.