Ferda and I first saw a stand up paddle board when we took a canoe out in Newport Bay on the day before Christmas in 2015. Just a few months after that, our friend Olaf brought a couple SUP to Çıralı. We paddled on them for the first time. Since then I had sort of forgotten about SUPs. As we pedaled through central Europe this summer, we starting seeing more and more SUPs, first on the Krka in Slovenia and later on lakes in Italy and Germany.
Why don’t we see more of these in Antalya, we wondered? Well, sure enough, after we returned from Europe, I went to Konyaaltı Beach one morning, and I counted more than 15 SUPs on the water. Turns out plenty of entrepreneurs are trying their luck renting SUPs at Konyaaltı this summer. We found Ayşe. Like everyone else it seems, she only gave out her equipment as part of a tour. That might have changed by now. We went with her for a couple hours in August. It was a fun morning.
Many of these photos are pretty bad, but what do you expect from a GoPro knockoff with drops of water on the scratched case?
Ferda and I both fell in the water shortly after trying to stand up on one board together.
Thanks for the tour, Ayşe. Hopefully we’ll do it again when the weather warms up.
Yup, renting a SUP is definitely the way to go – most friends I know who bought them loved them – for about a season, and they now collect dust in storage. Good for balance and core muscles however!