We saw that the boats were running to the islands this morning, so did a quick scramble to pack a bag with some lunch. These islands were recommended to us by a lady in Volos. “Like the Seychelles” she said, “the pearl of the Aegean”. Indeed, the boat operators website says ‘it challenges the Caribbean’.
The boat trip was brilliant for €8. He took us around some of the smaller islands and we saw one of the endangered Mediterranean Monk Seals. Only 700 of them left, but there’s a whole family of them here.
The islands are quite flat and volcanic, so the rocks are dark. We pulled up to a little tumbledown jetty to disembark. The first thing that greets you is an overflowing bin full of rubbish. In fact, when you look around there is rubbish everywhere! It was a disgrace and made us feel quite sad. So bad, we would happily have gone ‘Wombling’ for an hour if we’d had some bags and a picker-uperer.
There was a beach bar on each of the largest islands. The one we saw was full of filthy cream sunbeds, which look great from a distance, but you wouldn’t want to lie on them once you see them close up – not for €10 a go anyway!
We lasted two hours then got the boat back.
Drove down the coast on a shelf of a road that looked like quite a few rocks had fallen onto it. Had a walk in the spa town of Edipsos. Not many people around other than at the far end of the promenade where the hot springs flow into some man-made rock pools. It was a bit hot for a hot spring today.
We daren’t drive into the other town of interest as there were lots of narrow streets, so we carried on the one and only road down the middle of Évvia.
That wasn’t what we expected either. Very green, apart from where the wild fires had burned. The road went up very high, then down through a gorge, twisting and turning all the way down to Chalcis where the island is joined to the mainland by a bridge. Parked up overlooking a beach again, but this time we’re in a city so won’t be such a quiet night.
