Island Life - An Aegean Boat Trip

Ship ahoy! With Mastichari harbour a couple of minutes walk from our apartment, we'd have been daft not to book a day trip aboard the beautiful traditional wooden barque, Byron, named of course after the Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know poet, still revered throughout Greece. 

Don't be fooled by these photos, we had to share Byron with lots of other people.

Kalmynos is the fourth largest of the Dodecanese islands and one of the wealthiest islands in all of Greece. Visible from Mastichari (you'll see it in the sunset photos in my last post), it can be reached by ferry or speedboat from the harbour, which run daily up until midnight.

Known as the Sponge Divers' Island, sea sponges have been the main source of income of Kalymnians for thousands of years. The sponge is found at a wide variety of depths, ranging from a few centimetres to the depths of the abyss at 8500 metres. Originally gathered by free diving (ie., without equipment), the diving is done nowadays by frogmen where diving has become second nature to them. As generation followed generation, they became divers and thus, both physically and mentally they became utterly familiar with the skill of diving. 

Have you seen the isle where the fig tree blossoms,
where the gnarled olive tree spreads its silvery leaves?
Have you beheld the daughter of the Sun and the Sea,
The mother of the sponge? She who conceives young
lions, breeds giants and the Kings of the Main?
It’s Kalymnos you have seen, one of the Twelve islands.

Skevos Zervos

Kalymnos was conquered and colonised by the Phoenicians in the 2nd Century BCE and in

later years was occupied by the Persians, the Genoese, the Knights of St John and the Ottoman Turks. In 1912 the Italians took control until nearly the end of the Second World War.Kalymnos was finally liberated on 31st March 1947 and, along with the rest of the Dodecanese islands, was incorporated into the Greek State in 1948.

Kalmynos is renowned for its rock climbing and from April to June and from September to October climbers of all abilities visit the island to climb the 3,000 routes. 

 

 After mooring we visited a warehouse opposite the harbour where we learnt about the variety of sponges available and treated ourselves to a couple. The darker ones, which we bought, are unbleached and should last around 5 years.

Looking back at the photos I'd taken later that day we were almost crying with laughter at the expression on that German woman's face, she clearly didn't find sponges as fascinating as us.

We hopped on the toy train and had a whistlestop tour of Pothia, the island's capital, marvelling at the town's unique architecture.

We sailed onwards, through dazzlingly blue water and were spellbound by the dolphins who frolicked alongside us. A common sight on our early morning walks along the beaches of Goa but a rare sight closer to home. 

We dropped anchor off the tiny uninhabited Dodecanese island of Plati and swam for forty minutes in the refreshingly cool water.

We continued to Pserimos, a Dodecanese island where outside the Summer months, the goats outnumber the residents. 

Here we had a hour to chill with an ice cold beer before throwing ourselves in the Aegean.

All too soon it was time to reboard and head back to Mastichari, accompanied by a cheesy musical soundtrack. We tried our best not to sing along to Gangnam Style, The Macarena and YMCA but surrounded by Germans & Italians giving it their all, thought we'd better do our bit for Team UK, who were very much in the minority aboard the Byron (and around Mastichari). 

We booked our boat trip with one of the travel agencies in the village (HERE), the trips run daily with options for smaller (or private) boats. If you want to visit Kalymnos HERE's the ferry timetable.

Thanks for reading!