The resort town Olympos is located on the coast 70 kilometers south-west of Antalya. A bit to the south of Kemer resort there is a descent to the ruins of ancient Olympos, which is another 11 kilometers off the highway. The ancient Olympos is located on a picturesque site surrounded by mountains, near the mouth of a small river Goksu. The mountain gorge is all covered with massive pine trees. The highway is far away, so the air is very pure here.
The remnants of the city walls and buildings survived along the bank of the river and in the mountains. They are rather interesting, but 2-3 hours would be quite enough to see all of them. You can spend much more time on the wonderful beach of Olympos, which stretched along the foot of the mountains for 3 kilometers. The beach is covered with fine pebbles, and the turquoise water is very clean and warm in the period from June through October. By the way, turtles lay eggs on the beach of Olympos in June.
However, Olympos hasn’t become a full-pledged youth resort only because of its ancient ruins. Several decades ago someone has got an idea to build a hostel (camp) of wooden houses. Some of the houses were built not on the ground but on the trees. On the photo you can see a house with a pleasant for ear name «penthouse». In Olympos even a man with limited financial opportunities could afford to rent it.
The idea proved very popular, and today there are about two dozens of similar tree-house campings in Olympos. Even though such campings could offer only the minimum set of amenities, they made it possible for tourists to get closer to nature. Though, only the houses on trees have neither a lavatory nor a shower, and the houses on the ground have not only these amenities but even an air conditioner.
These absence of common amenities, and Spartan life conditions at the camps have formed the tourist contingent of Olympos. They are young people, as a rule, young couples, who don’t think that the main thing on vacations is to constantly stay at the hotel to drink beer and eat food as much as possible by all inclusive system. They are very positive and open-hearted, fond of sports and various adventure tours, night get-togethers and general dancing around the fire, or chat-ins at nearby pleasant chill-outs.
Here are the biggest and most popular hostels in Olympos – Kadir’s Tree Houses, Turkmen Tree Houses and Bayram’s Tree Houses. Most of the guests of these and some other hostels are those who are fond of mountaineering. There are over 300 alpinist paths of various difficulty in the mountains of Olympos. Apart from rock climbing you can also ride a bicycle, paddle a kayak, go in for trekking, and simply maintain a healthy life style.
Apart from the healthy daytime life style, there is also an extremely active night life here. In this regard, you could mention the Kadir’s. Every night it hosts parties where all the population of the camp is present (at high season it is about 300 people). These parties are very different from those held at the clubs of Ibiza, Bodrum or Kemer.
However, even though you can see neither powerful laser light show installations, nor mixed sound equipment nor foam jets here, the Kadir’s parties are just incomparable. There is a two-storey bar in the center of the camp (Hangar Bar upstairs and Bull Bar down-stairs). A fire is made not far from the Bull Bar. There is enough space for dancing around the fire, and beside it you can have a rest at some chill-out.
Considering that all wooden bungalows have been made as if a single camp, where everyone is a neighbour, and as during the day all of them have time to associate and get acquainted, night parties (they last until the morning) have exceptionally positive, warm and even sexual atmosphere.
