4 Days Koycegiz City & Cooking Tour: Lake Koycegiz and a Village Cooking Class (Private Tour)

Highlights of the Koycegiz City and Cooking Tour

Four days in Koycegiz give you time to slow down beside one of southwest Turkey's most unusual lakes and to taste the everyday cooking of the surrounding countryside. Set in the Mentese area of Mugla Province, the town looks out over a lake that was once a sea inlet, later closed off by river silt and now fed by streams and springs. The programme starts and finishes at Dalaman Airport and combines a guided lake day, a hands-on cooking lesson and plenty of unscheduled hours in between.

Your first guided outing explains the lake from source to sea. You will hear about the Namnam and Kargicak streams, the many springs that rise in the basin and the Yuvarlakcay, a river so important that it supports one of Turkey's largest trout farms. The guide shows how these waters built reedy deltas and how the lake empties into the Mediterranean along the Dalyan Strait, a narrow, shallow channel that snakes for roughly ten kilometres. The warm, mineral-rich springs on the shore, used for generations for their reputed healing effect, complete the story.

The next day turns to the kitchen. At a local restaurant in a Koycegiz village you cook alongside a local host, learning traditional Turkish dishes step by step, and then sit down to eat the lunch you prepared before heading into the town centre for free time and shopping. Three nights of hotel accommodation, three breakfasts, one lunch, airport transfers, an English-speaking guide, an air-conditioned vehicle and the listed entrance fees are included; flights, insurance, visa, drinks and tips are not.