Lake Bafa

Bafa was the innermost arm of the Aegean until the Meander river silted the gulf shut, leaving a brackish lake about twenty kilometres inland from the present coast. The Besparmak range rises straight from its northern shore in bare grey granite, the ancient Latmos, with prehistoric rock paintings in shelters high on its slopes. At Kapikiri, a village built among the ruins of Herakleia under Latmos, walls and a temple stand at the waterline and a small fortified island sits offshore. Olive terraces, fish traps and cattle share the shore road. Pelicans, cormorants and flamingos use the water, and both the level and the salinity have shifted a good deal in recent decades.

What you actually see

• Herakleia's ruins - walls and a temple at the waterline in Kapikiri.
• The Besparmak granite - bare boulder ridges above the northern shore.
• The rock paintings - prehistoric figures in shelters on the slopes.
• Bird life - pelicans, cormorants and flamingos on the shallows.

When to go

Spring and late autumn are the seasons: the ridge is green, the birds are numerous and the light is workable. Summer is hot, hazy and mosquito-heavy along the shore. The rock paintings are only sensibly reached with a local guide from Kapikiri, arranged the day before rather than on the morning you want to walk.

Honest expectations

This is not a swimming lake: brackish, shallow at the edges and murky in places. The road into Kapikiri is rough, and the village mixes ruins, houses and pensions in a way that can look untidy. There is almost no interpretation, few signs and no visitor centre. Summer heat on the granite is severe with no shade at all.

Nearby

Milas, the Menderes delta and the ruins at Didyma and Priene.