Life's A Beach - Our Week In Kos

Kalimera! We're back from a week spent on the Greek island of Kos, situated in the Dodecanese peninsula.

In Mycenaean times so many people lived on Kos that it was rich enough to send 30 ships to the Trojan War. Hippocrates (460 - 377 BC), the Greek physician known as the founder of medicine, was born and lived on the island. Under the protection of Ptolemy II of Egypt, also born on Kos, the island secured the protection of Egypt and became a prosperous trading centre, but fell under Roman domination in 130 BC and was administered by the nearby island of Rhodes from the 1st century AD. Kos's history includes the conquest and occupation by the Knights, the Ottomans and the Italians and nowadays, the population of 33,300 (an eighth of the size of that of Walsall) is heavily dependent on tourism.

I'd chosen the village of Kamari as our base. Situated at the westernmost tip of Kefalos Bay, it gets the thumbs up from the Lonely Planet for being both picturesque and low-key and several reviews on Trip Advisor described it as being boring with nothing to do and no nightclubs...which after two months of back-to-back music festivals sounded pretty much perfect to us. We stayed at Stena, a block of 15 apartments, just 50m from the sea, clearly visible from our balcony. The gardens were packed with olive, lemon and pomegranate trees, shaded with climbing roses & grapevines and with row upon row of tomatoes, aubergines and peppers lovingly tended by the owners, who lived on site and in the hospitable manner of all Greeks, greeted us daily with a cheerful kalimera and often popped over with gifts of local wine and honey cakes. 

The daytime temperature was 30°C which dropped to 24°C after sunset. Shunning the rows of sunbeds and water sports on the tourist beach at the end of the bay, we spent our first few days lazing on the narrow strip of white sand that makes up the town beach, alongside the locals who'd pop down for a pre-siesta swim or to fish for their dinner. Used to the bath-like temperatures of the Arabian Sea, at first the Southeastern Aegean was a bit of a shock to the system but we soon grew used to it. The water was so clear we could see schools of fish swimming around our ankles, taking a liking to my turquoise toe nails.  

Greece wouldn't be Greece without cats.

The harbour at the end of the bay was a favourite place for a gentle stroll after a late lunch of Greek salad and Mythos beer. Once the main port on Kos, an earthquake in 400 BC led to Kos Town at the other end of the island becoming the capital.

One of our perennial favourite things to see, rows of olive oil containers re-purposed as planters....

...the rustier the better.

The daily walk to the beach took five minutes, an easy stroll down a gently sloping mountain path.

Watching the sunset....those are the limestone cliffs of the island of Kalymnos you can see on the horizon,  famous for its sponges.

At the other end of the bay, at Agios Stefanos beach, we stumbled across some ancient ruins with no signposts to explain their significance.

I couldn't help but feel a flutter of excitement standing on the same mosaic flooring once trodden by the Ancient Greeks thousands of years ago.

Directly opposite was the absurdly photogenic island of Kastri with the blue capped basilica of Agios Stefanos taking centre stage and magically lit up at night.  

The resort of Kefalos Bay, the 12 km stretch of white sandy beach, is named after the ancient mountain village of Kefalos, perched high on the cliff, a twenty minute walk away from the seafront.

As with all traditional Greek villages everything closes for siesta.

But there's plenty of photo opportunities.

Mornings start early, with a breakfast of sweet, locally grown grapes and nectarines topped with thick Greek yogurt, devoured on the balcony. Even at 7am the sun shines so brightly that sunglasses are a necessity.

After a siesta, our evenings started with a glass of rum and cola with a wedge of lemon, freshly picked from a tree in Stena's garden, whilst watching the mountain peak turning a delicate shade of pink in the sunset.

Evenings are generally casual in Greece but, never ones to follow the crowd, we prefer not to go out at night in our beachwear.

 And my vintage Ossie Clark dress got the outing it deserved.

Dinner, like lunch and breakfast, was always Greek, always fresh and always delicious. Our rules are that the taverna we eat in must play Greek music, doesn't show televised sport and never has photos of the food on the menu.

Jon tucks into lamb souvlaki, his one and only meat dish all week. Most tavernas don't have meat or fish free mains as vegetarianism is a rarity in Greece, but the veggie hors d'oeuvres are delicious and we tend to order three and share them. Some of our favourites were gigantes plaki (butter beans in a tomato and garlic sauce), tzatziki ( yogurt and cucumber dip), saganaki (fried cheese), Melitzanes papoutsakia (aubergine baked with tomato and feta), revithokeftedes (chickpea fritters) and Briam (an oven roasted vegetable casserole).

After a few days of basking in the sun and swimming in the sea, the craziness of the festival season became but a dim and distant memory.

Whilst beach life is pretty wonderful we didn't travel to Greece just to lie in the sun, the rest of Kos needed to be explored.... more to follow.

Linking to Patti and the gang for Visible Monday and The Style Crone, Judith's, Hat Attack #63