Karpathos: a week in a dream!

On the journey from the airport to the hotel we immediately realised how much this beautiful island could offer: breathtaking scenery, small bays with crystal-clear water and cliffs of red earth plunging into the sea, very few houses, very few people, very few cars….a paradise!! Exactly what we were looking for!! In about half an hour we arrived at our hotel: the Hotel Votsalakia in Amoopi.

We can only warmly recommend it: it's a recently built 3-star, with spacious rooms all with a little terrace, with a lovely patio for breakfast, and, no less importantly, practically a stone's throw from all the beaches of Amoopi (there are 3)!! We chose the half-board option, also because the agency had recommended Votsalakia precisely for its excellent cuisine, and indeed we were very happy in that respect because, unlike other hotels where the menu was fixed, here we had the chance to choose the main course of our dinner (there were also two starters and a dessert, but those were fixed), choosing from four different dishes every evening! And everything rigorously served at the table by your personal waiter!! But let's get back to our diary..

As soon as we put down our bags, we dashed off to discover Amoopi, also because…our stomachs were complaining and we were curious to try Greek cuisine!! We relied on our instinct and headed to the Taverna "Calypso", next to our hotel's restaurant, very inviting with its blue and white checkered tablecloths under a pergola of flowering bougainvillea: never was a choice more apt!! We stuffed ourselves with a "Gyros Plate" (grilled pork meat laid on a bed of tomatoes, salad, tzatziki sauce and a type of fried bread as well as the ever-present onion!!) and a "Grilled Chicken Salad" (like the previous one but with chicken meat). At this point, well done to a turn, between a full belly and a sleepless night, yours truly laid down her arms and indulged in a little restorative nap.

My valiant companion, on the other hand, didn't give up and went to explore the beaches of Amoopi, three in all, two of pebbles and one of sand, and lots of brightly coloured little boats moored here and there in the various bays… After about an hour (maybe he was bored on his own!) he came to pick me up bodily and carried me to the beach (the sandy one): there was the usual "little wind" and it was truly lovely…but the call of the sea was so strong that we didn't resist even a minute on the shore and went straight into the water!! The sea was an indescribable blue, never seen such a beautiful sea before, clean, calm, full of little fish swimming around us just a few steps from the shore, and all around the landscape was marvellous…we wouldn't have wanted to leave again!! And indeed we stayed lazing about in the most complete relaxation until nearly 8, until curiosity about what awaited u

s for dinner became overwhelming and we went back! Quick shower and down to the restaurant: here we met our waiter (but why do I never remember names??) and we wolfed down in order: 1- tzatziki sauce, made with yoghurt, garlic and cucumbers, to eat with bread + 2- a very typical Greek salad, with tomatoes, onion (by the bucketload!), cucumbers (cut into 4 cm thick slices!) and tasty feta (the typical fresh goat's cheese, very good) + 3 – for me, pastitsio (a sort of baked pasta) and for my Love a fried fish, sardine-like, very good + 4- to round it all off, a refreshing slice of watermelon!! Dinner over, more than satisfied by the lavish meal, we jumped on our roaring 100 cc scooter hired a couple of hours earlier from "2 Brothers" (whose owner was pointed out to us as: "the man with the beard"…and indeed he was!!) for the sum of 15 € a day, and set off for Pigadia, the capital of the isl

and and about 6 km from Amoopi. The road to get there is:? all hairpin bends, rigorously without guardrails? without street lamps? but above all…most importantly…EXTREMELY WINDY!! The gusts were sometimes so strong that my knight struggled to keep his steed on course!! However, when, right after the last bend, the view of the harbour and the bay on which Pigadia rests, all lit up by the lights of the night, opened up before us, we forgot all the effort to get there and were enchanted by that marvellous view…(I speak in the plural because this scene repeated itself almost every evening of our stay!) Pigadia is a small, very characteristic centre arranged around a small bay: along its little streets follow numerous small shops (mostly of typical products, such as honey, spices, olives and oil) but also numerous cafés and restaurants that overlook the little harbour.

While we were indeed strolling, we heard ourselves called by one of these restaurants and, to our great amazement, we found ourselves in front of a couple of friends and fellow townspeople of ours (hello hello Anna & Dimitri!) with whom we first drank a "very good" Greek coffee (never order it! It lasts a week and a half and the little cup is filled with grounds!!) and then refreshed our palates with the very typical ouzo, the famous anise liqueur that true Greeks drink in large quantities as an aperitif and which has a full 40°!! (For tourists with a liver not used to it like mine, my advice is to drink it diluted with the water they bring you with it!!) And then, to end the evening, the waitress of the place (whose name I unfortunately don't remember, but which was right above the amphitheatre at the end of the walk along the port of Pigadia!) offered us a little glass with a dark-colou

red liqueur that, we later asked, was called "Hursus Red". I'd say the day couldn't have ended in a better way….

After an abundant breakfast consisting of: yoghurt with honey and muesli + 2 rusks with butter and jam + 1 sandwich with ham and cheese + coffee + fruit juice (a breakfast that repeated itself every day!!) as per the plan drawn up shortly before leaving, we headed to Apella, considered the most beautiful beach in Europe!! The road to get there is almost all asphalted, except the last stretch, that is, the one leading to the actual beach, which is a dirt track with half-metre-deep potholes (on a scooter…a real delight!!) but doable.

And then, in any case, the view you catch from the road makes you think only of the moment when you can finally set foot on that splendid bay of very white, rounded pebbles (make sure you remember to bring your plastic flip-flops!!) and with a lovely colourful caique moored at the shore as a backdrop…a marvel!!! When we arrived it was already about 11 and there were lots of people, but we still managed to grab a parasol and 2 sunbeds for the paltry sum of 5 €!! Here too we lasted little on the shore (just the time to take about fifty photos!!) and jumped straight into the water… But, as everyone knows, the sea makes you hungry and we are weak in that sense…so, around 2 we headed to the taverna "Apella", which dominates the bay from above.

Here, as our friends had warned us the evening before, there is only one waiter and all the roughly 20 tables of the place were full (in Greece they spend little on table service, this is something we noticed in all the places…!!), so we didn't want to make things worse and patiently waited to be served: we ordered …I had a "Tuna Salad" (a sort of tuna sauce), a classic Greek salad + I had a "Souvlaki" (read skewer) of pork and the usual yoghurt with honey and walnuts while my Love stuffed himself with a "Souvlaki chop", practically a slice of pork… We spent the afternoon at Apella...more swims, more photos and then back to base. Dinner and then the usual transfer to Pigadia where, at the Café Centro, Igor finally tasted the Mythos beer…

At 7:45, after, alas, a meagre breakfast (we woke up at the last minute!!), we set off by coach for the only excursion we decided to buy from Kompas. We headed to the port of Pigadia and from there, by caique (from which we could see all the splendid beaches of the eastern part of the island) after about an hour and a half of sailing, we arrived at Diafani, the northernmost port of Karpathos. From there, with another coach (driven by a very shrewd moustachioed woman!) after about 25 minutes of hairpin bends without guardrails, we arrived at Olympos.

This marvellous little village, set into the mountain on one side and sheer above the sea on the other, really fascinated us…I think we will never forget its narrow, winding streets where cars will never pass but only donkeys, and its thousand white steps… The whole village, moreover, was celebrating the "Dormition of Mary" and all the women were wearing the traditional costume: white for the unmarried ones, who also wore necklaces made of gold coins (which represent a sort of "dowry" of the wearer since the more coins there are, the better a match the girl in question is!) and black for the married women with coloured trim on the hems, and for all of them the typical headscarf, which I too had tied on by the typical Greek trader (read slyboots!) who, mocking my dripping sweat and showering me with compliments, managed to extract a full 5 € from me! All the doors of the houses were open s

o that everyone, tourists and villagers, could celebrate together…beautiful! Around 11:30 we headed, for lunch (yes, I know, it was a bit early, but the place was small and we feared it would fill up!!), on the advice of the Kompas assistants, to the only working windmill still in the village, which has now been turned into the taverna, precisely, "The Milos". All the dishes served to customers are cooked in large casseroles in the wood oven at the entrance of the place, so it really feels like being among friends! It is also family-run: the mother-grandmother is in charge of the oven while the children and grandchildren serve at the tables (not all of them though: many arrived dressed for the feast after the end of Mass!).

The tables were all full, of tourists and villagers and relatives of the villagers who had come for the feast, and so only after a long wait did I finally manage to savour the renowned "Makarunes", the flagship of the taverna, which consist of pasta -a sort of strozzapreti- very well cooked and seasoned with onion browned in butter and grated feta, and my Love finally tasted the "Moussaka", the famous bake of aubergines, ragù and vegetables.

In the early afternoon, then, we visited the church: a profusion of dark wood and golden icons, in pure Orthodox style! Around 2, then, we went to drink a tasty frappé (which for Greeks consists of: Nescafé, milk and sugar, shaken!) in the bar "Da Sofia", right at the entrance of the village, run by a small smiling lady, very kind and very picturesque: she had a black scarf on her head from which very long strands of grey hair stuck out! At 2:30 we returned to Diafani, where we had a full two and a half hours of freedom: we spent them partly taking photos around (Diafani is a real jewel of Karpathian architecture, all white and blue and with a church that looks like marzipan!) and, before going back, we also had a nice swim in the sea! At 5 sharp the captain of the caique started the engines and took us back to Pigadia and from there to the hotel.

Dinner then Pigadia: an evening spent at the "Sergiani Cafè", again on the shore of the port of Pigadia, where I enjoyed an excellent waffle with yoghurt, honey and walnuts and my Igor drank a granita (we still haven't worked out what flavour it was, though!!)

Today, with a scooter of "well" 150 cc, since ours had abandoned us early in the morning (the change of power did not however change the daily rate!!) we decided to tackle the western part of the island.

We passed through Menetes, Arkasa, Finiki (all roads in excellent condition) and then, in the late morning, after stopping for a moment on the beach of Sikelao, we decided to put down roots on the beach of Proni: there were very high waves and we were completely alone!! All the beaches of the western part are less frequented, perhaps precisely because the sea here is much rougher and moreover, a few metres from the shore, it is already very deep!! We stayed enjoying that spectacle for a good while, until, that is, two other tourists arrived and we decided to go to lunch to let them enjoy a bit of that peace in complete solitude too…The only negative note, in these wild paradises (I mean the beaches of the western part) is the dirt and rubbish found here and there… We then returned towards Finiki where, again by chance, we ran into our friends from the first evening again and went to lunch

with them and 2 other friends of theirs at the taverna "Dimitrio's" which dominates the bay from above and where, for 13 € each, we ate excellent freshly caught fish: all the restaurant owners of Finiki, in fact, have their little boat, moored in the little harbour of this beautiful village, with which every day they go out to sea to fish the fish they will then cook for their customers!! At the end of lunch, after making friends with the likeable lads who own the place, who offered us watermelon and a lighter each with the name of the restaurant (as well as giving the t-shirt of the place with "Dimitrio's" written on it to our friend who is actually called Dimitri!) we said goodbye and parted: our next destination was Lefkos, which we only saw from above, though, because we took the wrong road and stopped at Potali (thinking it was Lefkos!).

Here, first of all, we refreshed ourselves with an excellent frappé in the characteristic beach bar (very "Hawaiian style", with its straw parasols!) and then we dashed to the water's edge: the sea was very rough and the big waves really tempted us…so we decided to tackle them!! The waves were very strong and did with us what they wanted and when we got out we were covered in bruises from falling on the pebbles!! But how lovely, I'd do it again right now!! After having a shower (strangely there was one here, unlike all the other beaches), we relaxed for a moment and, back on our big scooter, we continued our tour heading for Mesochori, a village perched on a slope with narrow, steep little streets that reminded us of Olympos. The stop didn't last long though because it was already 6 and the forty or so km awaiting us for the return to the hotel needed their time.

We therefore retraced the wonderful coastal road in the opposite direction, enjoying breathtaking views of the bays below, with the mountains plunging sheer into the sea, where the white foam of the big waves contrasted with the cobalt blue, precisely, of the sea… The western part of the island is much greener than the eastern one, were it not that a fire, about 3 years ago, destroyed a good part of the woods and you can still smell the ash and see the trees blackened by the fire…what desolation!! We then returned to the hotel, dinner and then early to bed, as the day had been intense…

This morning our plan was to discover Kira Panagia, the famous beach with the little church with the red dome. What can I say except…magnificent!! We arrived relatively early (around 10:30) and managed to grab the parasol with the sunbeds (which in the end we didn't even pay for!) right at the water's edge; we had a thousand swims in the ever-splendid sea, of which we took a thousand photos…then we lay down to dry off a bit in the sun and decided to take more photos of and from the little church. Around lunchtime we headed towards Ahata, where there was only one taverna on the beach in which we stuffed ourselves with "Saganaki" prawns (cooked with tomato and feta) and "Karpathos" sardines (that is, marinated in salt and seasoned with oil and vinegar).

The beach is truly beautiful, perhaps a bit more intimate than the others because it's smaller: the only negative note is perhaps the road to get there, which consists of about 4 km of dirt track with very deep potholes! Anyway, the game was worth the candle also because, unusual for Karpathian beaches, the beach of Ahata has a shower (if you can call it that…!) and toilets (let's not go there, anyway…!). Later we decided to make a jump to Aperi, but, just for a change, we took the wrong road and so we saw Volada and Othos and only on the way back and from a distance also Aperi, all clinging to the mountains!! We then returned to base and, after the lavish dinner, we headed off for a bit of shopping for relatives and friends in Pigadia…

This morning we decided to head west again, and more precisely to Arkasa, to the beach of Agios Nicholaos: an expanse of golden sand with a sea full of big waves, like a postcard. Here too we arrived relatively early and so we could choose the best parasol. After writing the postcards (we weren't at all sure they would arrive, but in the end everyone got theirs!!) and having a nice swim, we returned to the picturesque Finiki, where we enjoyed excellent grilled fish (30 € for two) at the taverna "Finiki view" in the company of two likeable little ginger kittens… In the afternoon we dedicated ourselves to exploring a couple of beaches we hadn't seen yet on the west coast: the first was Karamachia Beach, while the other, which is a little after Arkasa and is the westernmost point of the island, is called Agios Theodoros, from where you could see the little island of Kassos very clearly.

We then returned to the hotel, thinking we had to meet the Kompas assistants for the instructions for the return: they had already been by instead and had left us a note with the instructions at reception! We then finished the afternoon on one of the beaches of Amoopi, relaxing a bit after the many km travelled during the day. Then dinner at the hotel and after dinner to Pigadia for the last purchases…

Or rather the last day in this splendid reality…

Since we had no scooter, returned early in the morning to the "man with the beard", we decided to spend our day on our home beach, that is, the sandy beach of Amoopi. For lunch, on the other hand, we went to the taverna "Esperida", where we ate divinely under a pergola of grape bunches!! In the afternoon, then, we returned to the beach below our home, but because of the strong wind we had to run off straight away: I'll put in a good word for this strong wind though, because, although at times (often!!) it can seem really annoying, in reality it is the true secret to surviving in Karpathos!! And yes because, when you're on the beach and it's 36 degrees, thanks to the wind, it feels like it's at least 10 less and you can lie there for hours and hours without suffering (and I suffer terribly from the heat!) while at night, only if there's wind can you sleep because at least the wind drives a

way the mosquitoes (which here are really very annoying!!) On the only night there was no wind, we couldn't shut an eye, so…blessed be the Meltemi!!! Anyway, back to us, we spent the last evening strolling along the seafront and to finish off we went to drink the last frappé of our holiday at the café "Avra", on the beach.

20.08.2006 At 9:05 in the morning the coach for the airport arrived and….at 4 in the afternoon we were home… A little piece of advice we want to give you is to go to Karpathos right away, if you want to enjoy a bit of "postcard" Greece because, when its inhabitants realise the potential of their marvellous land (something which, in our opinion, they still don't realise!), they will exploit it and you, who haven't been there yet, will have missed something magical… Happy travels!! Mery & Igor