Karpathos

Karpathos lies between Crete and Rhodes, on no convenient ferry route. A small airport at the southern end serves the island, and most visitors fly in via Rhodes. As a result it has fewer visitors than its neighbours, and in the north a mountain culture has held on more or less intact while the rest of the Dodecanese modernised.

The village of Olympos, which clings to a ridge in the mountainous north, is the reason most travellers come. Women there still wear elaborately embroidered traditional dress in daily life, as they always have. The local dialect keeps archaic forms that some scholars trace to ancient Doric Greek, though the question is still debated. Communal bread ovens are still fired most mornings, and a few wind-powered flour mills above the village still grind grain. The drive from the airport to Olympos takes 2 to 3 hours on a slow mountain road. The older approach by sea, on the small boat from Diafani, makes a more atmospheric arrival.

The eastern coast has the island’s two most photographed beaches. Apella, a horseshoe of pale shingle and clear water under high pine-covered cliffs, is the one most travellers come for. Kyra Panagia, a few coves north, is gentler and quieter, and you can walk to it from the road. The western coast is very different: exposed, windswept and open to the sky, with little shelter. It is the place to go for kitesurfing, and Afiartis Bay near the airport draws international competitions each summer.

More Karpathians live abroad, in Baltimore, Astoria and Sydney, than on the island itself. Each July and August the flights back are full, the village squares fill and the panigiria (all-night village feasts for a saint’s day) run late. Allow five nights, hire a small four-wheel drive and do not split the trip with another island.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    AOK (Karpathos Island National Airport), at the southern tip of the island, is 1 hour 20 minutes from Athens; Sky Express flies the route all year alongside Olympic Air, with seasonal direct flights from Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Rhodes, Chios and Ikaria. By sea, Aegeon Pelagos sails from Piraeus through the Cyclades and Crete to Pigadia and Diafani, and Blue Star Ferries connects through the Dodecanese. A helicopter from Athens with IFLY or Ariston is possible but uncommon, and the airfield takes light private aircraft.

  2. The address

    Karpathos has no hotel of Aman standing, and the honest counsel is to say so. Althea at Amoopi is the considered hotel: adults only, with its founder Maria Loizou-Ioannidis still on site, 600 metres from Little Amoopi Beach. For a larger footprint or real seclusion, clients are better placed in a private villa in Damatria or Ardani, because the hotel stock thins quickly above four stars.

  3. Blue Garden

    In Olympos, the ridge village of the mountainous north, the Blue Garden is the considered table: homemade, traditional food, much of it cooked in a wood-fired oven, with tables set against the village and the sea below. Order the island speciality, handmade pasta with onion and local cheese, which the Blue Garden makes in one of the better versions on Karpathos.

  4. Vrykounda

    Vrykounda, on the north-west headland an hour’s walk from Avlona, was one of the four ancient Doric cities of Karpathos, at its height in the 4th century BC. Part of the fortified precinct still stands to height, with rock-cut chamber tombs along the path, and at the tip of the headland the cave church of Agios Ioannis is built into the rock above the remains of three early Christian basilicas. The approach by sea is from Diafani.

  5. Nikos Boat

    Captain Nikos Orfanos, who has lived almost all his life in Diafani, runs the small-boat trips from the northern port, and his son Manolis now takes much of the schedule. The boat crosses the channel north to Saria, the uninhabited island off the top of Karpathos, stopping to swim at the sea cave of Troulakas and spending the day at Palatia. Sailings depend on the wind, and booking through the family is required.

  6. Apella, by water

    Apella’s pebble beach is 20 kilometres north of Pigadia by road, but the boats from the harbour reach the bay in under an hour and stay 2 to 3 hours before going on to Kato Lakkos or Achata. The cliffs offer no wind shelter. On a meltemi day (the strong summer north wind) the waves show from the lookout above the road, and the boats do not run. The one taverna stands above the southern stairs.

  7. The Afiartis bays

    Three bays at the southern tip, Gun, Chicken and Devil’s, take the wind that makes the island known among sailors. ION Club runs the windsurf centres at Gun and Chicken, 800 metres apart, with Duotone and Fanatic equipment from 15 May to 13 October; for safety, kitesurfing is kept off the same water from 9.30am to 6pm and runs at Agrilaopotamos, a few kilometres south. July and August bring 35 to 40 knots in the afternoons.

  8. Aperi

    Aperi, in green hills at 350 metres, was the capital of Karpathos until 1892 and is still the seat of the Metropolis of Karpathos and Kasos, the island’s Orthodox diocese. Its colourful, carefully restored mansions mostly belong to Karpathians who made fortunes in the United States and kept the family house. It is the island at its most cultivated, and the upper quarter of Pano Aperi holds the older houses of the nobility.

  9. Mount Kali Limni

    From the Lastos plateau in the centre of the island, the path climbs through the Flaskias gorge to Kali Limni, at 1,215 metres the highest summit on Karpathos. The full crossing from Lastos to Lefkos on the west coast takes 5 to 6 hours, through the abandoned hamlet of Lastos and over an upper plain with the island’s only mountain pasture. The descent to Lefkos opens onto the windward sea.

  10. Gergatsoulis honey

    The Gergatsoulis family produces thyme honey on the slopes around Menetes, the main summer harvest on Karpathos, where wild thyme covers the southern hills. Their beekeeping park outside the village is open to visitors in season, and the family will arrange a tasting and send a few jars ahead to a villa. The rarer find is the To Palatiano thyme honey, gathered on the small island of Saria off the northern tip of Karpathos.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Pigadia

    Pigadia is the principal port of Karpathos, administered by the Municipal Port Fund of South Dodecanese, the public body of record for the harbours of the southern Dodecanese. Its docking pier takes the passenger ferries, the car ferries and the motor ships, the excursion boats lie next to them and the fishing fleet keeps the inner harbour. The Port Authority’s own building stands on the waterfront, where the coastal road closes in the evening and becomes a promenade.

  2. Diafani

    Diafani is on the north coast, the island’s second port, which the Port Fund assigns to the local routes and the smaller tourist vessels and which is busiest through the summer. It was the harbour of Olympos before the mountain road existed, and the boats working the northern shore and Saria still leave from here. Ashore are tavernas under the tamarisks and a promenade that makes up most of the village.

  3. Palatia

    Palatia is the bay of Saria, the uninhabited island off the northern tip, where a few shepherds live for some months of the year and nobody else lives at all. The boats out of Diafani come for the day. Above the shore stands an abandoned village of stone houses, east of the church of Agia Sophia lie the apse and chancel (the rounded east end and the altar area) of a large early Christian basilica, and the acropolis of Kastelo holds the hill south of the bay.

  4. Finiki

    Finiki was the main commercial port of Karpathos until about 1900, and long before that the harbour of ancient Arkasa; fishermen founded the village, on a coast where natural bays are rare. What remains is a tiny harbour worked by the smallest fishing boats, the Immacolata monument on the square and the fish tavernas for which Finiki is known across the island.

  5. Kato Lefkos

    Kato Lefkos, on the western coast, has a pier rather than a harbour: a concrete arm built for small fishing boats, not for ferries or yachts, and anything larger than a fishing boat arrives by tender. Excursion boats seldom come. Four beaches lie within 2 kilometres of the village, the tavernas stand directly behind the pier and the nets are spread out along it.