Dim Cave

About this place

Eighteen degrees, summer and winter, without fail. That is the real case for Dim Cave on an August afternoon when the beach in Alanya is pushing forty: you drive fifteen minutes up from the coast to 232 metres on the flank of Cebireis mountain, step into a lit walkway in the belly of the hill, and a cool, damp breath of air meets you like an opened fridge door. Cavers surveyed the cave in 1986; it opened to visitors in September 1998 as Turkey's first privately run show cave, and the same company, Mağ-Tur, still operates it. The route is fully paved, 360 metres of the cave's 410-metre total, through chambers ten to fifteen metres wide and high, dressed in stalactites, stalagmites, columns and stone curtains that hang like the hem of a frozen dress. The coloured lighting is occasionally more than the rock needs, but the formations are real and still growing, with water dripping from the ceiling and building at its own patient pace. At the far end, seventeen metres below the level of the entrance, you reach a small lake of roughly 200 square metres and two metres depth, still as a mirror. Getting there means a flight of steps down and back up, and the floor is wet in places, so trainers are essential and a pushchair is useless; a carrier for small children is the answer. Inside, you will spend thirty to forty-five minutes, no more, and that does not make the cave a lesser stop; it makes it the ideal first act of a day in the Dim valley. The cafe terrace by the entrance looks down over the coast and Alanya castle, and a few minutes further by car are the famous restaurant platforms built over the ice-cold Dim river, where visitors spend the afternoon with their feet in the water. Cave in the morning, lunch on the river: that is the order. Getting there from central Alanya is straightforward: follow the coastal D400 east to Kestel, then turn inland up the Dim valley road. It is about 11 to 12 kilometres, roughly 25 minutes by car, with parking at the gate. No public bus climbs to the cave itself, so the alternatives to a hire car are a taxi or one of the many half-day tours that pair the cave with the Dim river, sold at every hotel desk. The cave opens every day of the year, but the last entry is thirty minutes before closing.