One of the things we were told to do by many people who had been to the Greek Islands before was hire a boat and tour the island. So that’s what we did.
The owner of our villa also did skippered tours around the island. As we had never hired a boat, we wanted to learn the dos and don’ts before we went out on our own. Our skipper, Giannis, had a beautiful boat and took us on a full tour of the island.
On our circumnavigation of the island we first travelled west, seeing the island from a different perspective was cool. We passed a monastery on Agios Ioannis Beach which was beautiful. Our first stop was the Papanikolis Cave, a cave in which you can stear the boat in, drop your anchor and have a swim. We arrived at the cave early as Giannis had said that the cave is a highlight for many visitors and can easily get busy. Within half an hour of us being there a huge boat full of tourists arrived, so we then made a quick exit and moved on to the next stop on our tour and left the noisy ‘tourists’ to enjoy the cave. The cave was amazing; it was about 200ft long and ended in a tiny beach. It was deep enough to swim and we had a great time jumping off the boat; there was so much life under the water too, lots of little fish swimming around.
Our next stop was a cove, the water around the island was a beautiful blue but entering the cove the water was turquoise. It was perfect! The water was about 4 metres deep and it was good fun jumping in again and trying to swim down as deep as we can. There was another little cave that was much smaller than the one we had just been to. This cave was so small that a wave could quite easily fill it, you had to be careful when you were in there. It’s couldn’t get much more idyllic that this clear blue skies and turquoise water; a boat to jump of the back of and 4 of my favourite people in the world.
After a dip in the turquoise waters we headed round to the east of the island to another small bay. This bay was different as the bay was sand rather than shingle. The water was also much deeper so my brother and sister had a whale of a time doing tricks off the back of the boat. We even persuaded our parents to jump of a couple of times.
We were only out on the boat for a few hours but by the time we returned to Vathy it was only midday. We were tired and ready to relax by the pool for the rest of the day, which is what we did.
I loved the day with the skippered boat. It was a great way to explore the island, and Giannis had an amazing knowledge of the island. He was also very patient and happy to show us the ropes of how to steer the boat. The next plan get rent our own boat and go exploring ourselves!
Peaches & Pencils 