A note on who wrote this
Most "things to do in Alanya" pages are written to sell you everything on them. This one is written by an operator with exactly one product: the quad and buggy safari in the hills.
So when this page tells you about the castle or the beach, it is telling you, not selling you. Where a sibling company of ours does run something, it is named as such rather than dressed up as a neutral recommendation.
The peninsula and the old town
Alanya's rock divides the town's two main beaches, and the castle sits on top of it. At its foot, on the harbour, stands the Red Tower — Kızıl Kule — which is the shape you will recognise from every postcard of the place.
Damlataş Cave is on the western side, beside Cleopatra Beach. We are not going to quote opening hours or ticket prices at you, because we have not checked them and a web page that guesses those is a web page that wastes your morning.
The water
Two long beaches either side of the peninsula, and boat trips out of the harbour. That is the obvious half of an Alanya holiday and it needs no help from us.
Boat trips along this coast are run by a sibling company of ours, which is the only reason they are named on this page at all.
Rafting, further inland, is run by another. Those two are the extent of what we can vouch for; nothing else here is ours.
The hills — the half most people miss
Behind the hotel strip, the ground rises into the western end of the Taurus range: forest tracks, dry river beds and open country that no coach tour takes you through. This is where our safari goes, and it is the reason the site exists.
It is also the only item on this page we can tell you the price of, the length of and the rules for without checking anything: €28 per quad driver, €35 per buggy driver, half for anyone riding along, 1.5–2 hours, transfer included.
If you only have one free day
Do the water or do the hills, not both — Alanya's coast road is not built for cramming two half-day trips into one afternoon.
The safari runs twice a day, at 08:00 and 13:00, which is what makes it fit either side of something else. Take the morning session and your afternoon is intact; take the afternoon and your morning is.