Kalymnos
Overview
Kalymnos is the wrong island for a beach holiday. The coastline is mostly cliff, the sand beaches are few and short, and the rhythm of the year is not set by tourism but by sponge-diving in the past and rock-climbing in the present. That makes it the right island for guests who want the working Aegean rather than the curated one.
Until the middle of the twentieth century, almost every family on Kalymnos was tied to the sponge trade. Each spring the fleet sailed for the North African coast and stayed away for months. The men descended in canvas suits and bronze helmets, examples of which can still be seen in the Nautical Museum in Pothia, the harbour town. Many did not come back, or came back paralysed by the bends. The trade collapsed in the 1980s, when a Mediterranean blight wiped out the natural beds and synthetic sponges took the market. The men who remember the work are now in their seventies and eighties.
In the 1990s a German climber, Andreas Kühne, mapped a series of routes on the limestone overhangs above the western sea cliffs, and Kalymnos has since become one of the world's leading sport-climbing destinations. There are roughly four thousand bolted routes spread across the crags north of the village of Massouri. October is the season; autumn is mild, the rock has cooled from August, and the village fills with climbers from Eastern Europe, Spain, and the Anglosphere. The atmosphere is unlike anything else in Greece.
A few notes. At Easter the islanders throw home-made dynamite charges from the hillsides; it is loud, it is traditional, and it is not for the nervous. The deep, fjord-like harbour of Vathy on the eastern coast is reached by a cliffside road and is worth a half-day for the citrus orchards and a slow lunch by the water. Three nights, with a hire car, and shoes you can walk in.
House Notes
Arrival
JKL receives Sky Express from Athens — ATR turboprop, around an hour, currently the only scheduled carrier into the island. Larger jets land at Kos KGS, ninety minutes by car-and-caique via Mastichari. Port agent Eleni Fragkou handles clearance and bunkering for arriving vessels.
The address
There is no luxury house on Kalymnos. The honest counsel is to base aboard a yacht and use the island as a working-day stop — or treat the climbing months as the climbers do, in a serviceable Massouri room walking distance from the crags. The Plaza Hotel at Massouri is the practical climbers' base; it is a 3-star property and presents itself as such.
The crags
The sport climbing began in 1997, when the Italian Andrea di Bari opened 43 routes in the Arhi, Odyssey and Poets sectors above the western cliffs. The island now carries roughly 4,200 bolted routes across 61 crags — grey pocketed limestone with tufas, much of it shaded and sea-cooled. The guidebook author Aris Theodoropoulos, who drew up the development guidelines with the municipality, is the reference for a guided ascent.
Grande Grotta
The vast overhang above Massouri is the headline crag of the island and arguably of Greece — three sectors of grey pocketed limestone with tufas, and a roof-line that draws photographers as much as climbers. Aegialis at 7c and Fun de Chichunne at 8a are the named classics; lower-grade routes also bolt the same wall. Best climbed October through April; the rock holds heat through August.
Harry's Paradise
In Emborios on the north-west coast, the garden taverna founded in 1979 by Haralambos and Alexandra Roditis — now run by their daughter Evdokia — is the considered table on Kalymnos. No printed menu; the kitchen cooks what the garden and the day's catch supply. Open daily for breakfast and lunch; dinner Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday only.
Rina
The fishing village at the head of the Vathy inlet — one street, a scatter of houses, and a small harbour at the end of a long cleft in the rock. The orchards behind the village grow oranges and tangerines, and the valley they fill is the one green place on an island otherwise made of stone. Reachable from Pothia by the cliffside road, around twenty minutes; the prettier arrival is by water.
The Halepas iconostasis
The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour stands on the Pothia waterfront — a 19th-century building whose marble iconostasis was carved by Giannoulis Halepas, the Tinos-born sculptor regarded as the foremost Greek marble worker of his century. Painted icons by the local artists Alachouzos and Magklis sit alongside. Declared a protected monument; entry is free during liturgical hours.
The Vouvalis Mansion
Nikolaos Vouvalis (1859 to 1918) became the wealthiest sponge merchant in the world, with offices in Pothia and at St Mary Axe in the City of London, and was received at the court of Queen Victoria. His mansion at Agia Triada in Pothia, set above an orange grove, was bequeathed to the state by his widow and is open as the Historical Museum of Kalymnos — several rooms left as the family kept them.
Valsamidis at Vlychadia
The Sea World Museum in Vlychadia, on the south coast, was assembled over a working life by the sponge diver Stavros Valsamidis. Around seventeen thousand marine items across three rooms — sponges, embalmed sea turtles and rays, an entire ancient merchant ship of amphorae from the 6th to 2nd centuries BC raised from the bed off Telendos, and finds from the WWI and WWII wrecks the divers worked. A serious private collection.
Thymeli honey
The Kopanezos family at Vathy keep their hives nomadically across Kalymnos and Kos, following the thyme bloom; Drosos and Antonis represent the fourth generation since their great-grandparents Magriplis Nikolaos and Irene began the practice. The thyme-pollen content tests well above the island average. The honey holds multiple Great Taste Awards, including 3-star ratings, and is listed by Gastronomos. Order ahead through the apiary for collection at the villa.
Anchorage Notes
Pothia
Pothia, the capital, rises around a bay at the south of the island — the main port, built in 1850 when the pirate raids eased and the islanders came down to the sea, its Venetian-Italian houses stacked up the hills behind. This is the sponge-divers’ town, its naval museum kept for that trade; a yacht lies at the town quay among the fishing boats and the ferries. There is no marina.
Myrties
Myrties holds the west coast, the island’s second harbour and its sunset side, where the caiques cross the narrow strait to Telendos through the day. The climbing country rises behind it — Kalymnos’s limestone walls draw climbers from across the world — and the resort strip runs the shore. A yacht lies off the channel here, the islet’s flat-topped mountain filling the western view.
Telendos
Telendos is the car-free islet a kilometre off the west coast, opposite Myrties — a single steep flat-topped mountain plunging into the sea, its little settlement at the southern tip. It was part of Kalymnos until the earthquakes of the sixth century split it away, and a sunken ancient town is said to lie in the channel between. A yacht crosses to lie off it for the quiet and the ruins.
Pserimos
Pserimos lies between Kalymnos and Kos, a small island of some eighty souls that Kalymnos administers — a sandy bay and a scatter of tavernas, reached by the daily boat from Pothia. It is the satellite a yacht drops to for a beach day between the two big islands, remote enough to have stayed itself; some of the boats stay the night.