Travel sickness on the drive to Köprülü Canyon: the honest shape of it
For a long time this post could not be written. You cannot give somebody useful advice about a journey whose length you refuse to state, and until the road was measured the honest answer was a shrug. The road is measured now, so this can be specific about the part that matters. Roughly 70 to 90 minutes of driving is what the route itself asks for, and the collection round in front of it is not timed at all.
The road leaves the flat coastal belt of hotels and citrus groves and turns inland. The ground lifts, farmland turns to pine forest, and the last stretch works through bends and switchbacks with a river appearing and disappearing below you before the valley opens at the rafting base. Most people enjoy that drive enormously. A minority spend it looking at the floor of the vehicle, and this post is for them.
The collection round comes first, and it is not on a clock
Your morning does not begin when the vehicle turns inland. It begins when it reaches the first hotel on its list, and yours might be the first name on that run or the last. The round-trip hotel transfer collects along one strip — Belek, Kadriye and Boğazkent — and how long that takes depends on the order and on how many stops are on the run.
We have never timed it and so we do not publish it, which matters here more than it does anywhere else on this site. If you are somebody who counts the minutes on a winding road, you should know that the winding part is the shorter part, and that the flat collection stretch in front of it is the part nobody can put a figure on.
Before the vehicle arrives
Almost everything that helps is decided at the hotel, not in the vehicle. None of this is exotic and all of it is easier before the doors close.
- Eat something plain rather than nothing at all. An empty stomach is not the safe option people assume it is, and lunch is served much later, at the river.
- If you normally use something for motion sickness, take it the way you normally would — before the journey rather than once it has started. We run rafting trips, not a pharmacy, so we will not recommend a product or a dose to you.
- Bring water. Drinks are not included on this tour, so take what you want with you from the hotel.
- Skip the heavy hotel breakfast and the strong coffee if you already know how your stomach handles bends.
- Tell us at booking that somebody in the party struggles with long transfers, so it is known before the vehicle leaves rather than halfway up the hill.
In the vehicle
The transfer is in an air-conditioned vehicle and it is included in every fare we sell, so nothing here costs you anything except a little forethought.
- Look ahead at the road rather than sideways at the trees. It is the single thing that helps most and it costs nothing.
- Put the phone away. Reading on a switchback road is how a mild wobble becomes a real problem.
- Ask the driver about a window or the air rather than sitting quietly with it. Nobody minds being asked.
- We cannot promise you a particular seat, because seating on the collection round is not something we have ever recorded as a promise. Asking politely on the morning works far better than a page pretending otherwise.
- If you feel it starting, say so early. It is easier to deal with at the beginning than at the top.
The river is a different kind of motion altogether
People who arrive queasy usually stop being queasy the moment the day starts, and there is a reason for that. Whatever moves you in a vehicle — the mismatch between what your eyes see and what your inner ear feels — largely disappears in a raft. You are outside, you are looking at the thing that is moving you, you are cold and busy, and the water is doing the work in full view.
The cold helps more than anything. The Köprü is cold all year, and the first splash over the front of the raft is a reset that no amount of sitting still in a vehicle can give you. It is worth knowing this before you decide the road has ruined your day.
If it is bad enough that you are thinking of skipping it
Then the terms are on your side, and they are worth reading before you cancel out of caution. Nothing is charged when you reserve — no card is taken and no deposit is held — and the fare is handed over in euros on the tour day itself. Cancellation is free up to 24 hours before the start, so a date you decide against costs you a message rather than money.
That turns a hard decision into an easy one. Hold the date, sleep on it, and decide the day before instead of talking yourself out of the €23 river day at the point of booking. And if the mountain road really is the deciding factor, tell us — there are things worth saying in a conversation that we will never print as a general promise on a page.