Day 6: Koufonissi Pori Beach

This post is part of a series called Mini Cyclades 2018

I woke up early despite setting no alarm, feeling relaxed and ready for another great day.

My initial plan had been to take a boat trip across to Kato Koufonissi today and to visit Pori beach tomorrow. But, for no particular reason that I can remember, I decided to swap things around. Perhaps I was excited to see if Pori beach could really be better the main town beach I’d enjoyed so much yesterday.

First things first though: breakfast!

As my accommodation was on a room-only basis, that meant venturing out in search of food, and of course, coffee. I threw on shorts and a t-shirt and made the short walk across the bay to the main town streets in search of a friendly looking cafe. I struck gold just opposite the church, finding Sophia’s Cafe, which has a lovely terrace at the back where you can look out over the harbour area. Breakfast was a little more expensive than Naxos but good enough to justify the cost. I could have happily sat there for hours, drinking coffee and watching the comings and goings at the port.

Conscious that I wanted to get to Pori beach before it got too hot, however, I settled up and was back in my room before 9 am. After lotioning up and packing my rucksack, I was ready for the walk across the island in pursuit of my sandy paradise. Google estimated the walk at 35 minutes, which my stupidly competitive nature decided was a target that must be beaten at all costs!

The route is quite hilly, and no doubt I surprised the few people I passed, steaming along with a wholly unnecessary and totally inappropriate level of speed and determination. It certainly paid off though, as I made it to the beach in well under half an hour! Take that, Google algorithms!!

My reward for arriving so early: the beach was almost deserted. Only a few other tourists had arrived (mostly by car, cheaters!) and the beach is very long, although quite narrow in places, so I had my pick of locations to pitch my towel. Having walked (okay, marched) up quite a sweat, priority one was getting in the sea ASAP. I dropped my bag and towel down at the first opportunity, grabbed my goggles and jogged straight in until it was deep enough to dive down under the surface and swim out as far as my lungs would take me.

This may just be the best beach in all of Greece.

The horseshoe-shaped bay means there are next to no waves here, and the water gets to around 3 metres deep and seems to stay there. It’s as close to an outdoor pool as I’ve ever found.

Now, the slightly embarrassing part of this post… I was so carried away swimming and sunbathing the day away, I completely forgot to take ANY photos. It’s shameful, but perhaps for the best – if you want to know what it looks like, you’ll have to see it for yourself!

I did come a bit unstuck getting back to my apartment though. I’d been sunbathing so much that I was beginning to feel the effects of overexposure – there is next to no shade on the beach unless you bring your own umbrella, which I had not. As a result, I decided that walking back would be a silly idea, so I had the choice of taking the water taxi back to the main town or waiting for the little bus that runs between the beach and town during the day. After using most of my cash on lunch though, I couldn’t actually afford the water taxi anyway, so I was stuck waiting for the bus to return. It was supposed to be an hourly service but turns out that it runs less frequently in the early afternoon, so I stood in the sea with my hat on (keeping cool, not looking cool) for what seemed like forever, watching the road behind the beach for any sign of a bus. Eventually, it turned up though, and I was glad to be sat inside and heading back to my room again.

I stayed out of the sun for the next few hours, sat in my room drinking lots of water. Not wanting to waste any time, I updated my blog notes and uploaded yesterday’s data from my camera and drone. Feeling a bit hungry, I popped down to O Lefteris for an ice-cream and read my Kindle under some shade.

I decided to get the drone out, realising it would be a great time to catch the late afternoon sun. I wasn’t sure where the best place would be to film from, so I started off towards the south-east of the island again. The low sun made filming a bit awkward, but I got some good footage of the town beach and surrounding areas. I then moved across to the harbour and got some even better shots as you can see below: