Koufonisia
Overview
Koufonisia is two islands, and one of them is empty. Pano Koufonisi, barely four square kilometres, is the smallest inhabited island in the Cyclades and keeps one of the largest fishing fleets in Greece for its size; Kato Koufonisi lies a few hundred metres across the channel with a chapel, a beach and nobody on it.
The island is walked, not driven. From the Chora the coast runs east in a low limestone shelf that the sea has eaten hollow — a chain of caves, arches and rock pools that people swim between, ending after an hour or so at the long sand of Pori. The best known of them, a collapsed cave open to the sky, is reached by climbing down into it, and is the closest thing the Cyclades have to a swimming pool cut by accident.
The fishing is not decoration. The fleet goes out at night and the catch is on the waterfront before noon, which is why the kitchens on an island this small are better than they have any right to be.
Beyond Kato Koufonisi lies Keros, uninhabited and closed — the island where the marble figurines of the Cycladic Bronze Age were found in their hundreds, deliberately broken and buried, in what remains the least explained deposit in Aegean archaeology. There is no airport. The ferry comes from Naxos, and the little Skopelitis works the Small Cyclades between Naxos and Amorgos in most weather. Two or three nights; the island is small, and it means to be.
House Notes
The karnagio
Eight hundred metres from the port, at Loutro, the karnagio was founded in 1965 and bought in 1987 by the brothers Michalis and Giannis Prasinos, who work it still while the yards elsewhere in Greece have been closing. Caiques are hauled onto wooden stilts by hand, without trailer or trolley, in front of a windmill and the small church of Agios Nikolaos.
Aeris, above Pori
Aeris Suites holds six villas on seven acres above Pori, 1.5 km from the centre of the Chora — four of 85 square metres, each with a semi-private infinity pool on a terrace of about 120; one of 160 across two levels, with its own pool and jacuzzi. The outlook runs over the sand to the Xylompatis caves and the open Aegean.
Kapetan Nikolas and Melissa
Kapetan Nikolas is named for the captain who filled it with fish from his own caique. His son Panagiotis walks guests through the day’s catch; Panagiotis’s daughter Rinio cooks the pots. Melissa, in the Chora, began as the island’s grocery and its only bakery under Antonis Mavros — his son Stamatis still makes his mother’s cheese, spinach, potato and pumpkin pies, and the braised goat.
The sea taxis
Four sea taxis work from the port — Marigo, Chrysopygi, Prasinos Roussetos and Taxiarchis — carrying between 50 and 150 passengers. Beyond the hourly beach shuttle they cross to Kato Koufonisi five times a day, the first at ten in the morning. They also run day cruises out to Keros and the islet of Glaronissi, and take private charters; Schinoussa is an hour away, Iraklia an hour and a half, Amorgos two to three.
Kato Koufonisi
The chapel by the jetty is the Panagia, raised in secret in 1651 under Ottoman rule beside the ruins of a Byzantine church. Two hundred metres on, Venetsanos — built in 1992 by the brothers Giannis and George Venetsanis with their wives Sophia and Chryssa — grills the fish that comes over by boat each morning and cooks the goat from Keros, in old ruined houses and courtyards roofed with beams and reeds.
Kalofeggo
On the sand at Pori, at the far end of the island and looking across at Keros, Kalofeggo has been run by Alexandros Miaoulis since 2006. The ground came to his father, the civil engineer Nikolaos Miaoulis, in the 1960s, in payment for building work. Smoked aubergine with tahini; feta fried in a cereal crust; minced lamb with grilled briam and yoghurt.
The coves
Three beaches on the east shore, in the order the coastal track meets them coming out of the Chora. Charakopou, which everyone calls Finikas — wide, fine sand, and the one the families take. Fanos next, sandy, with the beach bar. Then Platia Pounta, known as Italida after the woman who owned the house behind it, the Italian lady; golden sand, five minutes on foot from Fanos, with the small cove of Italidaki at one end.
The Devil’s Eye
Mati tou Diavolou, the Devil’s Eye — a hole inside a sea cave through which the waves gush in, on the coast between Platia Pounta and Pori. It is reached along the coastal trail on foot or by bicycle, or from the port by small boat. It is a separate formation from the roofless pool further along the same shore.
Mikres Cyclades
Mikres Cyclades stands on a whitewashed alley in the Chora of Ano Koufonisi — the considered dinner on an island otherwise given over to fish tavernas. George Pantopoulos heads the kitchen: Greek and Mediterranean cooking, ingredients sourced on the island, meat, seafood and vegetable plates in equal measure. The door opens at five in the evening and runs to one.
The Roman baths
The Chora is properly Agios Georgios, and it sits on a Roman settlement: in and around the houses on the southwestern coast, the ruins of Roman baths are still visible. The village carries about 90% of the island’s rooms and tables, the church of Agios Georgios — the patron saint — at its centre, and a helipad on its edge.
Anchorage Notes
The harbour
Koufonisia’s harbour lies at the foot of the Chora, and it is not administered from the island. The Municipal Port Fund of Naxos holds the land and sea zone of Koufonisi among the port zones in its charge — the same public body that keeps Naxos town, Donousa, Iraklia and Schinoussa. A yacht lies here among the ferries, the sea taxis and the fishing boats: the harbour of a village doing the work of the harbour of an island.
Parianos
Parianos is the island’s second port zone, named in its own right by the Port Fund of Naxos alongside the harbour at the Chora. A hamlet of a few old houses, some newer holiday homes, rooms to let and a single taverna stands amphitheatrically above its small harbour on the southwestern side, and the fishing boats that lie off the sandy beach below are most of what happens there.
Kato Koufonisi
Kato Koufonisi lies across the strait, and the passenger caique from Pano Koufonisi sets down at two points on it: the small port, and Nero, the largest beach, on the eastern coast. Detis is the nearest beach to that port and is walked to from it; Lakki and Pezoulia hold the southern shore, Fykio the northern, and each is reached on foot from whichever landing the boat has made.
Pori
Pori is the island’s farthest beach and, from the water, its simplest: a long stretch of white sand at the top of the coast with two café-bar-eateries on it. The municipality gives three ways there — the main road, the coastal trail, or by boat — and the boat is the shortest of the three. It is an afternoon anchorage, taken for the sand and given back at dusk.