Insight Guides The Greek Islands by Insight Guides

Author:Insight Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Greece
Publisher: Apa Publications
Published: 2018-04-29T16:00:00+00:00

Hozoviótissa Monastery clings to an Amorgós cliffside.

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Anáfi

In legend, Apollo conjured up Anáfi to shelter Jason and the Argonauts when the seas grew rough and they risked losing the Golden Fleece; an Apollo shrine was built here in thanksgiving. Divine intervention has never again been reliable. Earthquakes originating on its volatile neighbour Santoríni w [map] usually affected Anáfi with tidal waves and a rain of volcanic debris. Anáfi’s appearance has probably not altered much since its conception: it still looks like a rough boulder heaved up out of the sea and kept in place only by divine benevolence.

However, a different god is involved now: Zoödóhou Pigís Monastery e [map] (daily 11am–1pm & 4–6pm) was erected over the old Apollo temple in the island’s southeast corner, and incorporates plenty of marble masonry fragments from its predecessor. Above the monastery, with festivities 11 days after Easter and on 7–8 September, perches the smaller Monastery of Kalamiótissa, atop a 450-metre (1,480ft) -high limestone monolith – claimed to be larger than Gibraltar – that is Anáfi’s most distinctive feature. A swooping but well-engineered path takes you there in under an hour; some people stay overnight at the top to catch the sunrise.

About 270 people live on the island today, surviving mainly by fishing and subsistence farming. Since the 1980s, though, the economy has been boosted slightly by summer tourists, attracted by Anáfi’s peace and quiet, and superb south-facing beaches. The island is no longer a traveller’s dead end; there are main-line ferries from Piraeus, which for the foreseeable future will continue once or twice weekly to certain Dodecanese, then back again.

The south-facing harbour, Agios Nikólaos, has few facilities, but the main town, Hóra r [map] (or Anáfi Town), a short bus ride or half-hour walk up, offers a wider choice and finer setting. It’s a windy place, sharing anti-earthquake vaulted roofs with Santoríni.

The closest of the beaches is palm-tree-adorned Klisídi, walkable east from Agios Nikólaos, with reliable food and lodging. From near there, the old path (and a newer road, inland) heads further east to superb Roúkounas beach, with dunes, the Katelímatsa coves, Katsoúni and Monastíri beach – all clothing-optional except the last, owing to its proximity to Zoödóhou Pigís. Inland from Roúkounas looms Kastélli, site of both ancient Anaphe and a Venetian castle.

The Back Islands or Minor Cyclades

The so-called “Back Islands” between Náxos and Amorgós were far more inhabited in antiquity. Now Donoússa, Irakliá, Skhinoússa and Koufonísi have populations of 100 to 200 each, but appreciable summer tourism, especially Athenians. Mains power only arrived during the mid-1980s, and fresh water is scarce on all these islets. They’re hardly secret (or cheap) destinations now, with ample facilities including bank ATMs on each one. Getting to them is fairly easy: the somewhat buckety, splashy but reliable small caique Express Skopelitis (nicknamed the skylopníktis or “dog-drowner” by the unkind) plies an almost daily schedule among them, leaving Amorgós at dawn and returning from Náxos around 3pm. Several times a week faster, more comfortable Blue Star ferries or smaller catamarans call from Piraeus as well.

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