Greece - Day 5 Hiking the Folegandros Beaches

We slept way later than expected – almost 11. We were woken up by house cleaning, knocking to see if we were still there. I had woken up at 6:30 when the sunrise shone in the curtains. It was nice not having a schedule for today. We grabbed some printouts of the hikes, the guidebook and got ready for the day. We had heard that Kartego was a good beach, but not included in any of my planned hikes. Cornelia said we needed a motorbike and we told her that we liked to hike. She said we could take the port bus, hike to Livadi and then take a path down to the beach. The bus sign said the next bus wasn’t until 2:30, but the bus driver said there would be one at 1. After getting some cherries, nectarines, salami & water, it was only 12. We went for Plan B and I pulled out my hike from Chora to Angali Beach .

What a cool hike this was. You take some gorgeous old stone staircases out of Chora, down the hillside and cross the main road. The hike detail is good but you really have to place close attention. There was a part where we had to go over a wire fence and head down the hillside after climbing over some almost impassable bushes. We saw another couple confused at the spot for the wire fence. We found our way over the fence and the followed after us. Our directions told us to head towards the log cabin. Well, we hadn’t seen any wood construction on the island. We made our own way through the hillside and finally got down to the first beach – Fira (or Fyra).  The cabin we were aiming for was actually a masonry building.

FIRA BEACH

Fira Beach was completely deserted and very peaceful. It was a tiny stone beach with beautiful crystal clear waters. We took the beach for ourselves and spread our lunch out on the rocks. We ate and watched the waves crash on the rocks.  A few minutes later we continued to the other side of the small beach where the path to Angali continued. 

ANGALI BEACH

After a short climb from Fira, we found ourselves on a small beach that wasn’t named on our printed hike. It was very clear that whoever owned that land did not want us to camp or take our clothes off their, though.

After some more hiking, we got to Angali. In the busy season this beach is supposed to be packed because it is the easiest to reach by bus. Obviously, most people don’t take the route through goat pastures and over fences, like we did. We stopped for a few minutes here and decided to keep going towards Agios Nikolas Beach. This was a quite steep climb up and down here. The path was blocked at one point, but we climbed over as we had seen quite a few people head this way and no one had come back. We came across our Swiss friend here, again, and pointed him towards the good beach areas. From the top of this peak, their were gorgeous views down to all the bays. When we had almost reached Agios Nikolas, we found the Terrace restaurant. 

I don’t know what the actual name of it was, but that is what we called it. It was perched on the side of the hill overlooking the beach. I don’t think it gets more peaceful than this. We got some water, a coke and fried calamari. (Josh kept craving this all trip.) We spent over an hour here sitting, enjoying, writing, reading and listening to the waves crash below us in the breeze. Rejuvenated, we made our way back to Angali, not feeling like we needed to descend down to the last beach. Agios Nikolas looked like a lovely beach though. It had many trees that provided shade and it wasn’t overly packed.

The directions going back got us quite confused. We were supposed to look for a staircase and we missed it.  We actually had to hop another fence that must have been added since the hike directions were written. We got back on course though and started our straight up climb to get over the mountain.  We made it back to the hotel around 5:30 and felt completely gross. The ocean had been quite cold so we hadn’t gone in. Instead we dropped our packs off and got in the pool. Well, we got up to our knees. We then went and were excited to have our first hot showers of the trip.

DINNER AT CHIC RESTAURANT

At 7:30 we headed out for dinner. We walked around for a while and took pictures. (Can you tell this is our favorite time of day to do it?) We were running low on cash and went to the travel agency to cash traveler’s checks. We think it is kind of weird that they are only open at night. Still no word on the ferry for Sunday, yet. We wandered through the Castro area (there is a lot of history there, but I couldn’t tell you without looking it up). It is very quaint with the old homes, archways, tunnels and alleys. This is what I pictured when I thought of Greece before going.  

Our theory each night was to find the busiest restaurants and go there. Tonight it was Chic. I had my heart set on the Spinach Pie, which I had heard was good, but they were out of it. Instead I got the Penne with Roquefort Sauce (I love that this country loves cheese) and Josh got the Pork with herb and mustard sauce and fries. The fries were awesome. They were thin, crispy and drizzled with olive oil. We started with an olive dip – one side was kalamata and the other a green olive.  The meal was very good (especially the olive dip and Josh’s pork dinner) and the restaurant was packed every night we were in town.

After dinner, we checked to see if Baraki was open – nope. We tried to find El Greco, but we couldn’t. We even asked for directions, but that didn’t seem to help. I couldn’t figure out how we couldn’t find a place in such a small town.  Instead, we picked up some fruit for tomorrow’s lunch and checked on the times for the bakery in the morning.