The Greek Islands offer pristine water, spectacular landscape, culture, good gastronomy and way more. Far away holidays abroad.
I had been extremely busy at office and I needed to postpone holidays up untill early October. We directly asked various AIs (chatGPT, Grok) what destinations they would recommend in this season and Greece popped up as a good option. It was in Summer’s long to do list. It is relatively close to my hometown. So good for us to spend a few days before with the family. We had a plan!
The trip was less adventurous than usual. Summer was having serious problems with her feet and wearing proper hiking/coasteering footwear was not an option… Therefore in this post the things we did and also the potential options for future visits or for you reader to enjoy. Gathered from friends and others that recommended us various outdoorsy options and what I could see around. Map with what we considered.
Tear drops are proposals that we got from buddies or AI. Explained at the bottom of the post.
Early October is already off season in Greece. Slightly cool for us HKese. Pack a warm jacket & a wetsuit vest or top if you get cold easily. Finally I didn’t bring the latter and I missed it in the boat trips… The water was around 22C but if cloudy and windy it was cold afterwards outside. Technically the windy season in the Cyclades is in July & August. September and October should be calmer and relatively dry. We were not lucky.
English level was in general pretty decent and communication was not a problem even avoiding the most touristy places. We wanted to avoid crowds. Therefore Santorini, Mikonos and others were out of our plans.
Greece is famous for its cuisine. We enjoyed it a lot. Just beware of heavy use of cheese and oil. In case you are intolerant. One cultural shock was the very common smoking in restaurants… We are not used to. It is highly recommended to book restaurants beforehand. Above all any that it is relatively famous.
Public transportation is an option in the islands. But the frequency of the buses is not great and with little time we decided to rent a car in each island we went to. Narrow roads, local people that like to park anywhere, gravel paths to navigate… A bit stressing sometimes. Highly recommended to get full insurance cover and a full 4×4 if you want to go really extreme or you are not a confident driver. Scooters, ATVs, even buggies are an option too. The accident rate on those is significantly higher.
If you love cats, Greek islands are definitely paradise for you. Summer’s.
Paros
Our first destination. We flew there from Athens on the 1st of October. Land at 11am and rent the car. We went to Tripiti Cave and coasteering back to Beach 2 must be really nice. Just the short swim to cross the arch was nice. 5-6m cliff jump to the outer part of the arch is doable. A pity that the GoPro didn’t record it properly 😅
In the evening we went to Naousa. Picturesque, white-washed, trendiest (and therefore crowded) part of the island. We also night checked the mini sea fort.
The next day we went to Paros Park. Paralia Monastiri beach car park.
Really nice peninsula on the North. Tons of small hiking paths around. Really good looking coasteering under. Tons of tafoni & pancakes under the lighthouse.
Then we went to the East side. I could see on the map a cave marked. I left Summer on a beach and fast hiked to it (red line on the map, starting at 1:22 in the video). Cute. Definitely the coasteering of this part of the island must be really nice.
Evening at Rema Floga restaurant. Open kitchen. A bit expensive but a recommendable experience.
Amorgos
On the 3rd October we took the 10:00-13:10 ferry to Katapola. Rent the car and drive to Aelia Studios, where we would spend two nights. On our way I saw “Nikouria“. It looked a really nice island to swim to and coasteer around. Very long may be to do the whole thing. But you could do it partly, hard bush hike to the top and enjoy the impressive cliff areas. Definitely it was not an option for us considering Summer’s condition.
The first half day instead we went to the very North. To Paralia Mikri Vlichada. Easy hike down to an isolated beach with caves. Donkeys atop.
For dinner Kōstarás, traditional restaurant. Tasty and relatively cheap at €45 for a big dinner for two.
We spent the second day on the West.
Nice beaches
Shipwreck bay.
I coasteered a bit around Paralia Ammoudi (1:15). Impressive cave included. After we went to Mouros beach.
Last day rush visit to Chora.
and the windmills.
We were quite slow with the Greek Prime Minister by chance visiting there for the first time ever with his full entourage.
I would happily have spent quite some more days in this island. Rough mountains with tons of paths. There is a nice looking one that I could have trail run from Katapola to Aigiali passing through Chora. Tons of good looking coasteering options too on the map.
Very long ferry to Milos. Ferries are doing big routes circling all the islands. So this time we did Amorgos – Koufonisia – Naxos – Mykonos – Naxos – Paros – Sifnos – Adamantas (main city in Milos) in 5h45m. Everything just to enjoy a couple of hours more in Amorgos 😅 We could have picked up the more direct 3h45m ferry at 13:00 instead.
Milos
October 7th. Impressive rock bridges, and caves carved of sandstone. Starting from the bay slightly more West of Paralia Papafragkas.
Perfect for an open water swim with shoes on just in case to get safely into the caves and arches.
Not much to coasteer on. Sharp cliffs and 💩y rock quality.
Afterwards we went to Sarakiniko. One of the most touristy spots of the island.
Apart from checking all the white rocks around we also went to the carved tunnels.
I could not confirm their origin. I read contradictory options, from initially pirate caves, to posterior mines and/or used by Germans in the WW2 to hide equipment.
On October 8th we drove to the East of Milos. After quite some tricky gravel and dirt roads with big potholes (4×4 would have been great here, but we managed it with our medium sized manual sedan…) we arrived at Paralia Thiorichio.
Sulfur mine and cute beach with crystalline water.
Then we went to Tsigrado (1:27). Beach steep stairs down.
There is a bigger beach on the West side with very picturesque background.
Best restaurant we tried in the island: O! Hamos! Tavern. Conveniently close to the place we were staying: Anamnisi Studio.
October 9th. Speedboat day. Through a lot of sea arches and caves. Blue water. With no sun a bit too cold to enjoy the swims although the water was warm. Very impressive sandstone structures. Spectacular when the sun finally appeared.
We went through tons of caves. One of the most impressive is Sykia Cave (1:57)
First stop for swimming (2:20) for Summer was in Kalogries
although we went a up a little bit further North to see that side of the coastline too. From there down to Kleftiko.
You can visit all this area in other ways. The trickiest would be driving and hiking to main spots. Tons of dirt and gravel roads in the West. There are also catamarans and big sailing boats available to share with other travelers (10-20 or more). You can find different itineraries just by checking various shops next to the ferry port in Adamantas (one as an example). Summer wanted to see as many spots as possible and for that our own smaller boat was a better option. We would highly recommend the skipper we hired from Milos Sea Tours Boat Rentals: Vassilis. He was able to bring us to every single interesting corner. Ending with some thermal waters (3:15). Iurgi happy getting some warmth 😅
October 10th. Kimolos. We took the ferry with our own car to drive on it. Nice mini coasteering check with pretty black rocks and crystalline water on the North. Several nice beaches and tiny villages around.
In the afternoon from Polonia again, shared boat (Milos Poseidon- Fishing Tours) to Poliegos . Sandstone structures all over. A couple of blue water spots to swim into.
On 11th we went to visit the donkey farm, last visit to Sarakiniko and we took the afternoon ferry back to Athens. We had barely half day there available on the 12th. So we just left our luggage in a locker nearby and we visited the Acropolis, flea market of Monastiraki, Ancient Agora, and a little more. Taxi to the airport and fly back to Hong Kong through Turkey.
Other options we considered
Briefly a few of them starting North to South and West to East.
Meteora is a really interesting spot for climbing and hiking, with very picturesque landscapes. But it is in the far North. It would have taken us too long to go there and we discarded it therefore.
Navagio and all the Ionian islands in the West of Greece. It was too far too + there were significant fires when we were in Greece…
Peloponnese peninsula offers various hiking routes and coastline villages and beaches. Not as spectacular as the Cyclades islands. Actually more similar to Basque Country.
Idra is a very cute island with no cars.
Sifnos was mentioned by quite a few. Researching a bit it look like a good place to enjoy food and quieter
but compared with Amorgos was lacking the more extreme contrast of landscapes.
Naxos is the bigger version of Paros. Not as stylish, but with higher mountains with villages around. Next to it you have Kato Koufonisi which looks like the tiny version of Amorgos.
Mykonos is what most people think of when Greece is mentioned.
The super posh version (expensive and crowded) of the Greek experience. Santorini must be in the top too with more dramatic geological landscape.
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