Two Manavgats: the town on the river and the district around it
Ask where Manavgat is and you will get two true answers. The first Manavgat is a working Turkish town on the river of the same name, a short way inland from the beaches — a place with the character of a market town rather than a resort, where everyday local life carries on while the holiday happens on the shore. The second Manavgat is the district: an administrative name covering the river, the coastline either side of its mouth, and the highlands behind.
That double meaning explains a common surprise: guests who booked 'in Side' discover their address says Manavgat, and guests who booked 'in Manavgat' find themselves on a beach. Both are right — the resorts and the town share one geography, tied together by one river.
The river: one line that explains the whole map
The Manavgat river is the axis the district hangs off. It comes down out of the Taurus highlands, is held back at the Oymapınar dam, drops past its waterfall, crosses the town that shares its name and reaches the Mediterranean a little east of Side. Nearly every name a visitor hears — Green Canyon, Green Lake, the waterfall, the town itself — sits somewhere on that single line between the mountains and the sea.
That is also why the excursion menu looks the way it does: the days we run are, in effect, different ways of travelling up that line. If you like the whole picture before choosing, our activity map shows how the coast, the rivers and the canyons fit together.
The Manavgat Waterfall — and an honest note about visiting it
The waterfall lies on the river between the mountains and the town, close enough to the coast to be a stop on the way somewhere rather than a journey of its own. It is the district's best-known single sight, and it appears on many excursion programmes — including, sometimes, ours.
We write that 'sometimes' deliberately. On the full-day jeep safari the waterfall stop on the return is programme-dependent, not guaranteed, and where it happens the entrance fee is paid on site. If seeing the falls matters to you, the more reliable route is the night jeep safari, whose evening route includes the waterfall, pairing the jeep drive with dinner on board and a catamaran cruise — five hours, EUR 35 per person, for guests aged 12 and over, running early June to mid-November.
The highlands: Oymapınar dam, Green Lake and Green Canyon
Follow the river upstream and you reach the reason most of the inland excursions exist. The Oymapınar dam holds the river back, and behind the wall the water floods a narrow gorge in the highlands of the district. The flooded gorge is what everyone calls Green Canyon; the long reservoir it belongs to is Green Lake. None of it can be seen from the coast.
The full-day jeep safari works the rim of that water: a panoramic viewpoint over Green Lake, a photo stop at the dam, a viewpoint above Green Canyon and lunch at a lakeside restaurant, included in the price of EUR 20 per adult. After lunch there is an optional one-hour boat trip on the lake at EUR 5 per person, paid on the day, which brings the day to EUR 25 per adult. On the way up, the route passes an old Roman bridge where the asphalt ends, orchards, Roman aqueducts and the village of Oymapınar with a swim stop and freshly made Turkish pancakes. For the destination itself — the lake, the viewpoints and the boat — its own page explains how the jeep day visits Green Canyon in detail.
The Köprülü direction: a second canyon on a second river
The area's other famous canyon does not belong to the Manavgat river at all. Köprülü Canyon lies further inland, on its own river, and it is a running canyon rather than a flooded one — which is why the rafting happens there and not on Green Lake. It operates from the village of Beşkonak, where the Roman-era Oluk bridge still stands over the water.
Guests staying in the town do not need to travel to the coast to reach it: Manavgat has its own nine-hour rafting and jeep day from Manavgat hotels, at EUR 40 per adult and EUR 24 per child, with infants aged 0-3 free. The day combines an off-road jeep safari through the Taurus mountains with approximately 12 km of white-water rafting, all safety gear and lunch. On the rafting combos, children aged 4-11 pay the child rate and everyone aged 12 and over counts as an adult.
The resort belt: Side, Kumköy, Evrenseki and Çolaklı
The district's shoreline is an almost continuous belt of resorts either side of the river mouth. Side is the peninsula with the Roman town standing inside it; Kumköy and Evrenseki are the resort strips along the same shore; Çolaklı continues the line further along the coast. For excursions the belt behaves less like separate places and more like one long pickup zone facing the same mountains.
Our departures reflect that. The full-day jeep safari collects from Side and the surrounding resort areas, and Kumköy, Evrenseki and Manavgat each have a nine-hour rafting and jeep combo of their own. For resorts beyond those named departure points — Çolaklı among them — pickup is arranged on request — agree it with us before you book.
Where our days belong in this geography
Seen from the town, the excursion menu divides cleanly along the geography this page has just walked through. The workhorse is the full-day jeep safari into the hills above the town, and each of the other days owns a different part of the map.
If you are staying in the town itself and want the practical excursion detail rather than the geography, see how a jeep safari day works when you start from Manavgat.
- Full-day jeep safari — 8 hours, EUR 20 per adult, EUR 10 per child aged 4-12, infants 0-3 free. Foothills, orchards, Oymapınar village, the dam, Green Lake and Green Canyon viewpoints, lunch included; optional lake boat at EUR 5 per person.
- Manavgat rafting and jeep combo — the Köprülü direction: a nine-hour day that pairs off-road Taurus driving with white water on the second river, leaving from Manavgat hotels.
- Night jeep safari — the evening slice of the same map: the waterfall in the evening and Green Lake, early June to mid-November.
Practical notes for the whole district
Booking works the same way on every day we run: the reservation is free, nothing is paid online and no card is taken. Guests pay in euros on the day of the tour, and cancellation is free up to 24 hours before departure. Hotel pickup and drop-off are included, the meeting point is the main entrance gate of your hotel, and the exact time is confirmed after booking because it varies from hotel to hotel.
Two things about the jeeps themselves. Guests never drive: every 4x4 is in the hands of a professional driver, which is what lets the convoy take tracks that are genuinely bumpy in places — mention back or neck problems before boarding. And on the full-day jeep safari the season changes the vehicle: summer departures run open-top and include the water fights between jeeps; winter runs use covered jeeps with no water games.