Unlike neighboring Kos, offbeat Kalymnos – with its unassuming villages and world-class climbing – has its own gentle rhythms.
7 July 2024
The road from Skalia to Emporios crosses the southeastern Aegean island of Kalymnos, climbing its mountains from west to east. The peaks stretch almost all the way from north to south, bathed in a palette of ochres, greys, and splashes of green. Tall oleander shrubs reach into the road, their leaves and red flowers brushing against my car, and goats walk with the placidity of sacred cows past iconostases, those ubiquitous little shrines by the wayside that mark the places where someone’s loved one died in a road accident. Several hairpins later, I arrive at Palionisos, an inlet on the northeast shore of the island. Its beach is lined with tamarisks, the sea dotted with yachts, the pebbles warm underfoot like dying coals.
With a grey beard, ponytail, and tan as permanent as the twinkle in his eye, Stathis Klimis is the teacher everyone wishes they had. Giving physics lessons at a local comprehensive is only one of his many talents, a role I imagine he performs with the same enthusiasm and attention to detail he applies while steering me and my guide, Manolis Kazavoulis, through an underground cave early one evening. Kazavoulis exemplifies the younger generations of Kalymniots who no longer live off the sea. Having emigrated after finishing school, he managed to stay away for a decade before nostalgia, a sense of belonging – or simply common sense – brought him home again.
Klimis leads the way down an iron ladder nailed to the vertical shaft that forms the entrance to the cave. It’s unnerving, but I can tell I’m in safe hands. At the bottom of yet another ladder, we reach the first chamber. From there we walk or lower ourselves by rope down slippery rocks, beneath dripping domes, and through a couple of tight squeezes. Our headlamps provide the only light source. The smooth wet limestone feels alive, though its stalactites are growing only a few thousandths of an inch per year. Klimis points out the dried guano between our feet, the bats either long gone or perhaps observing us silently from the crannies above our heads. A circular route known only to him – this is no signposted show cave – brings us back to the iron ladders, and we emerge, dripping with sweat, into the sunset.
Klimis lets us take only a few deep breaths before driving us to the foot of the hills above the fishing village of Emporios. We climb to Kastri, a Hellenistic-period fort whose gate, walls, and defense towers are still partially standing, and admire the views of much of northwest Kalymnos. Among the collapsed stones, Klimis points out the almost-intact double base of an ancient olive oil presser and relays the history of the place in his relaxed schoolteacher’s voice. Later, in Emporios, over a plate of fylla – rolls of vine leaves stuffed with rice, minced meat, and herbs, called dolmades elsewhere in Greece – he tackles a love song to the splendours of Kalymnos, as the sun disappears behind the western tip of the island and crickets chirp in the warm night.
Not too long ago, Kalymnos was one of the main centres of the lucrative sponge fishing industry – a history that’s well documented in the island’s various small and quirky museums. Once the Aegean was depleted of its sponges, Kalymniot divers searched for harvest grounds further out in the Mediterranean, on missions that lasted for months at a time.
There was little regard for safety or knowledge of the science of diving, so it was a dangerous profession. Extremely high death rates and maiming from the bends, or decompression sickness, were acceptable risks in the face of the financial rewards, which were significant for decades until overfishing and the arrival of the artificial sponge put the industry into decline. It still exists on a smaller scale, but these days most young Kalymniots who succumb to the allure of the sea (and there’s a lot of them) join the merchant navy. Greece has one of the largest merchant fleets in the world.
For years, Kalymnos was unmoved by – if not outright hostile to – the arrival of mass tourism in Greece. It was still doing well out of the sponge industry during the 1960s and early 1970s and, besides, the island lies too far from the mainland for the casual tourist to reach: the ferry was infrequent, the journey too long, and the mountainous terrain a deterrent to building an airstrip (until 2006 – it connects Kalymnos to Athens and a handful of neighbouring islands but is not long enough to handle international flights). In the meantime, flat and eager Kos became a tourist spot. Kalymnos remains undiscovered, and you are still likely to arrive by ferry via its noisier neighbour, dodging its madding crowds and holiday reps.
In 1996, so the legend goes, the sheer limestone cliffs of Kalymnos caught the eye of an Italian tourist who also happened to be a rock climber. He returned the following year to open the first routes, putting Kalymnos on the rock climbing map. The island was highly regarded by those in the know, so its reputation grew steadily and then exploded when The North Face clothing brand launched its first climbing festival there in 2012. Today, with more than 4,000 routes of various levels of difficulty on offer, Kalymnos is considered one of the best destinations for the sport in the world.
Some days later, I’m on the narrow road from Pothia, the main town, heading up towards the Monastery of Agios Savvas, where I make a brief stop to see the silver coffin of the local monk canonised by the Orthodox Church in the 1990s. On a chair in a corner of the room, an elderly nun sweats under her heavy habit as she whispers the prayer of the Sixth Hour. I press on to Vlichadia, an understated coastal village in the south, not far away. I’m not there for the quiet tree-lined beach or the two restaurants, but when I reach the small Sea World Museum, taking pride of place near the waterfront, it appears to be closed.
Just as I’m pondering leaving, I see a figure making a beeline for me from one of the packed restaurants. It is Yannis Valsamidis, son of the late founder of this private museum. He is happy to let me in before he returns to serving his customers, and I’m left to explore the agreeably ramshackle exhibits alone. There is old sponge fishing equipment, sea plants, taxidermied fish, a heap of petrified amphorae from an ancient shipwreck, and the wheel of a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter plane that crashed off Kalymnos during the Second World War.
When Valsamidis returns to let me out and lock up, he speaks proudly of his father’s passion for all things maritime, and the collection that took him more than 40 years to build. I don’t manage to get to Traditional Kalymnian House at Vothyni, beneath the Monastery of Agios Savvas, which has gathered the yellowing photos, festive undergarments, Limoges porcelain, chamber pots, sponges, and dolls of Kalymnos past, but I hear it is a favourite of the historian Mary Beard.
The boat to the little island of Telendos leaves from Myrties, on the west of the island, every half-hour. It’s a short ride, less than a mile off Kalymnos. A community clustered around a single flat-topped mountain that rises vertiginously from the sea, it has no roads – just a few one- and two-storey whitewashed houses, a church, some flagstone walkways, a couple of beaches, and, on the seafront, a handful of tavernas serving perennial Greek dishes. If Kalymnos is Greece at its slowest, this feels a step removed again.
Back in Kalymnos the next day, I have a similar experience in the picturesque creek of Vathi, a village known for its calm crystalline swimming, situated where a valley meets a winding narrow inlet on the eastern side of the island. It’s midday and I can hear the creaking of mooring ropes in the little harbour and my footsteps in the maze of alleyways. Initially, I feel a little sorry for the seemingly forlorn souvenir shops, restaurants, and stalls selling hot apple loukoumades – until a pirate-style boat from Kos stops off and dramatically shifts the tone.
Affronted by this sudden surge, I surrender the village to the vessel’s day trippers and make the short drive to the hills above the valley to look for the church of Panagia Kyra Psili. From where the road ends, I continue on foot along an uneven narrow path, which climbs higher. The whitewashed walls of the church, built partly inside the sheer cliff looming above, come into sight. Translated as “Our Lady of the Heights”, its name recalls Le Corbusier’s Notre-Dame du Haut. Whoever built this 18th-century mountain chapel shared the Swiss architect’s instinctive sense of the relationship between landscape and spirituality.
The door is tied with rope, but a sign invites me to enter, with a request to rope it up again once I leave. I let myself in, bowing not in supplication but to avoid knocking my head on the low ceiling. Perhaps it’s meant to inspire humility, and I do feel a certain meekness as I wander around the rooms and stand at the altar built inside a small whitewashed cave in the rock. Back outside again, the breeze is fresh and the view is of the east side of the island, with Pezoda bay to the north. For a moment the faraway report of a hunter’s shotgun intrudes, then everything is quiet again, and in solitude, I feel suspended halfway between earth and heaven.
Where to stay
Five Star Greece’s Kalymnos MK villa (from about £4,785 per week), hidden from the main road on a hillside near Skalia in the island’s northwest, is an airy one-storey home containing three double bedrooms, exposed stone walls, a pool, and wide verandas roofed with dry reed and scented by the garden’s indigenous herbs. Steps lead down to a private beach that has views of the nearby island of Telendos.
On the road from Skalia to Emporios, a tiny pebbly cove with boats and salty pines is home to Pirates of Kalymnos (cabins from £51), a rustic villa and two beach cabins seemingly made of driftwood and mooring ropes, with reverie-inducing hammocks. The bar-restaurant on the beach is beloved by climbers for home-style cooking, cold Mythos beers, and reggae on the stereo. The closest Kalymnos gets to smart and buzzy is the crisply cuboid, whitewashed Kantouni Beach Boutique Hotel (doubles from £110), where the infinity pool is basically on the beach, in close proximity to the gently lapping Aegean. There are shades of Mykonos-style hedonism in the floating loungers in the pool and the deck for cocktails directly overlooking the sea.
Where to eat
By the little harbour in Melitsahas, Anna’s is a family-run taverna serving sea urchin salad, tiny Kalymnos shrimp, grilled fish, octopus, and other traditional Greek dishes, with tables spilling out onto the waterfront. On Telendos, To Kapsouli is the pick of a crop of geranium-filled seafood tavernas – a place for octopus salads, simple fresh shrimp, and chilled mastiha liqueur as the lights of Melitsahas gleam across the strait. In lively Pothia, with its little lanes of neo-classical mansions, Mamouzelos is one of the island’s more creative seafood restaurants, dishing up sea urchin salads and fouskes, the oyster-like local tunicates, best eaten with a harbour view across the street from the main restaurant.
Right on Vlichadia’s sheltered pebble beach, Paradisio serves hand-crafted cocktails and the freshest catch of the day, including seared scallops, on a waterfront veranda shaded by tamarisk trees. Looking over Emporios, Harry’s Paradise is aptly named: a labour of love for founders Haralambos (“Harry”) and his wife Alexandra, who returned to his hometown in 1969 to create a haven of home-cooked recipes (none of which are written down), served among oleanders and olive trees. There are also sea-view rooms to rent. The crowds hit the terrace at Masouri’s blue-painted Aegean Tavern not just for the stuffed calamari or octopus stifado, but for the knockout views across the water to Telendos.
For the active
Just north of Masouri, a village of climbing shops and cafés, The Kalymnos Experience has become the heart of the area’s climbing scene, and a place where aficionados gather for oat milk smoothies or Greek beers after scaling nearby limestone verticals overlooking the sea. Run by local climbing pioneers Sevasti Chalkiti and Michalis Gerakios, it also organises climbs, hikes, boat trips, and yoga sessions.
