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Andros

Hiking week in the Aegean

By Northern Adventures

Introduction

(sat Oct 6th - Fri Oct 12th, 2018)

Not on the must-to-do list of Aegean island hoppers, the island of Andros seems to be one of the less appealing Greek islands, at least on the first sight: not far from Athens (just two hours of a bumpy ferry ride) and prone to strong winds, it's definitely not like Santorini, Mykonos or Zakynthos, where crowds from across the globe gather to explore picturesque villages and enjoy clear sea waters with stretches of beaches of the finest sand.

Yet, there is something special about this hidden gem - its slow pace of life, no tourist herds, quite a rugged and beautiful landscape, and numerous possibilities of hiking, including both day-trips and longer wandering routes.

The island, northernmost and second-largest of the Cyclades, has a long and proud seafaring tradition and, conversely, nowadays is a hiker’s paradise. It's a mountainous area, blessed with verdant slopes full of citrus and olive trees, waterfalls, and numerous high quality water springs. Its wild mountains are cleaved by fecund valleys with bubbling streams and ancient stone mills. Andros footpaths, many of them stepped and cobbled, lead the traveller through majestic landscapes, among wildflowers and archaeological remnants.

With Lukáš and Filip, the usual autumn hiking crew, we carefully crafted our Greek adventure by combining hiking during sunny (and windy) days with cosy evenings in local restaurants and pubs, enjoying hearty and fresh local cuisine combined with well-deserved wine 🍷 or beer 🍺, and followed by a few shots of the (in)famous ouzo 🥃.

Our trekking route was the following: Frousei -> Batsi -> Menites -> Ormos Korthiou -> Andros (Chora) -> Batsi -> Gavrio.

Let's see how it went.

The Journey

On trips like this, I strongly prefer to get to the final destination in a single day - and we managed to do so, combining a direct flight from Prague to Athens (Aegean Airlines) with a ferry ride from Athen's Rafina port to Gavrio.

There was one rather odd moment during the ferry ride when one of the fellow travellers was unwisely flying a drone, and with the ferry having its speed and strong winds blowing, he got in real troubles when trying to land his aerial vehicle, finally smashing the drone against the ship's bow door and sadly witnessing its burial at sea.

Going really lightweight, without a tent and sleeping bags, we stayed in a hotel in Gavrio, which was the pattern we followed during the whole week: hiking during the day, choosing a reasonable place to stay overnight, and finding a cosy place for the evening meal (and a few drinks :-) ).

Day 1: From Gavrio (Frousei) to Batsi

In the morning, we needed to arrange a taxi ride from Gavrio to the starting point of the Andros Route, the small Frousei/Agia Irini church (on the road from Gavrio to Frousei). I bet we paid slightly more than the normal local price, but why not make a tired ageing local taxi driver happy? ;-)

We descended to the Frousei ravine, where a small and surprisingly clear creek was flowing along stone ruins of former mills and other buildings, everything in beautiful sunny autumn weather and perfectly sheltered from blowing winds.

It was a lovely walk, with diverse scenery, beautiful views and charming chapels, wooded ravines, ancient olive trees, stone constructions, small bridges and numerous ruined houses.

There were moments we were really tempted to take a short swim in one of the beautiful waterholes, nevertheless it was October and not that hot any more, and we also had a time-consuming climb to Ano Gavrio settlement still ahead of us.

It was around 600m vertical meters to tackle to reach the hilltop settlement of Ammolochos, and despite some sweating effort it wasn't really difficult.

The real challenge, though, appeared swiftly when we finally reached the mountain pass above the settlement - the constantly blowing gale-force northern wind forced us to put on our wind jackets and other clothing we firstly considered rather inappropriate for early autumn in the Mediterranean.

The views from the ridge were beautiful despite strong winds, and soon we began to descend to a small chapel located in the mountain pass.

From here, the descent continued towards the settlements of Ano Gavrio and Agios Petros, which we both passed by traversing to the seaside village of Batsi, thus actually combining Day 1 and 2 of the Andros routes.

The journey to the picturesque settlement of Batsi took us two hours or so, and it was a lovely endeavour in beautiful setting; slowly loosing previously gained altitude, we enjoyed views of the coastal landscape all the way down to the coast.

Also, on the southern slopes of the mountainous interior, northern winds ceased to blow, and what remained was just pleasant hiking in the sunny autumn weather.

We stayed overnight in the conveniently-located Karanasos hotel, and to our surprise, we found out that the hotel is run by one of the pioneers and founders of the Andros routes, friendly Dimitris who literally seemed to know each and every stone of the island.

Has to be said that Batsi is really, really beautiful - small sandy beach, nice harbour, beautiful white houses overseen by a church above them, and a few (a bit pricey and touristic) restaurants serving local cuisine (Stamatis taverna is the place to go).

Day 2: From Batsi to Menites

The second day started with a long and strenuous ascent, yet in the beautiful sunny weather and with almost no wind here on the south side of the island it was a lovely warming exercise.

We chose the coastal variant of the route, having left the mountainous interior for the return journey - instead of that, we kept gained altitude following the footpath towards the small settlement of Ano Aprovato.

In Ano Aprovato, there is a beautifully-located restaurant called The Aegean Balcony (Tο Μπαλκόνι του Αιγαίου) - opened only during weekends after season, we were lucky it was Sunday, and after 90 minutes spent in the restaurant we slowly continued hiking towards Menites with our stomachs being completely filled.

We didn't descent to Palaiopoli village famous for its archaeological remnants, and kept the altitude hiking towards Pitrofos, where we enjoyed a short sunny break at one of its beautiful churches.

From Pitrofos, we needed to reach Menites, which offered the only bookable (Booking.com) accommodation in the area - interestingly enough, we were the only guests staying in this lovely mansion, together with a French priest (who, not surprisingly, knew almost not a single word of English).

We spent a lovely and memorable evening in the local restaurant called Piges Karydies (apparently the only place opened nearby after season) - being the only guests, we were served hearty and local Greek cuisine, where local really means local.

In the restaurant, there were: a female cook and her female friend (or a waiter?), a sometimes angry and sometimes lazy dog, and our hiking crew... all in all, a perfect place for a night out for solitude-seeking hikers!

Day 3: From Menites to Ormos Korthiou

There are numerous possibilities of how to reach Ormos Korthiou coastal settlement from Menites, and we finally chose the longest one - frankly, I kind of lured my friends into this day-long trap, which also involved a 5-km long asphalt section ;-).

Having descended to a valley below Menites, we started gaining altitude hiking towards the spectacularly located Panachrantou Monastery, which lies on the northern side of Mount Gerakones, hooked like a fortress in the rocky landscape that surrounds it.

The views were beautiful almost all the way up to the monastery, yet a few hundreds vertical meters combined with strong northern wind meant a fair challenge right from the beginning of the long hiking day.

We made a short stop at the fortress-like spiritual place, and then continued hiking across the small settlement of Orino towards another village of Zaganiaris, walking through rural autumn landscape with beautiful views back to the valley we were leaving.

From the remote and sleepy Zagarianis and already in the afternoon, a long and tiring asphalt-based torture led us all the way above the scattered houses of Piso Meria settlement, with occasional fine views of the southern coast of the island.

The landscape changed a bit: drier terrain and almost no greenery, and we were both tired and happy when we finally reached the marked walking track again, just above the small Agios Mamas chapel.

The last 8 kilometres to Ormos Korthiou were beautiful, though we really felt the previous more than 20 kilometres in our legs.

The route traversed varying rural landscape with wonderful views, well crafted stone walls, stone paved paths and picturesque small settlements, yet it was a relief when we finally reached our final destination, the beautiful coastal village of Ormos Korthiou where we stayed overnight (having really enjoyed our visit in the local Το Πενάκι του Γιαλού restaurant & bar).

Day 4: From Ormos Korthiou to Andros (Chora)

The fourth day was supposed to be one of the shorter ones, and though we combined two Andros day walks (Routes 3 and 5) and despite windy weather, it was still easier wandering than yesterday's (or tomorrow's) rambling.

It took us about two hours and 500 vertical meters to reach the picturesque hamlet of Kochylos, from which we carried out a rather boring asphalt traverse to Exo Vouni hillside village.

We had a short lunch break in Exo Vouni, finding a convenient wind-protecting shelter in a local bus stop, and then continued hiking to a mountain pass above the Vrachnos settlement.

From here, we enjoyed fine views of both Vrachnos and Andros (Chora) villages, slowly descending in the northern direction towards these settlements.

In changing weather and with a few raindrops, we finally descended to Andros (this Andros/Chora settlement is of the same name as the island itself), which we later found out to be the most charming village of the island.

The evening in Chora was lovely - with enough time before the usual evening splurge, we explored the town strolling to its historical quarter located on a prominent promontory, and also appreciated the general lack of usual tourist crowds.

In fact, in the traditional Ta Skalakia restaurant, there were about ten 50+ couples (just couples, no kids) - and us. Hopefully we were not much noisy - or, better said, the other guests seemed to be strangely quiet :-).

Day 5: From Andros (Chora) Back to Batsi

Back to the road. Day 5 was about to be a proper hiking challenge, with more than 1000 vertical meters to be gained, and with strong blowing winds, drizzling rain and dense fog.

We started early and tried our best to keep constant pace. Continuous ascent with strong northern wind was not really comfortable for sweating walkers, yet after some reasonable effort we finally reached the hillside village of Apikia where we had a short break in its picturesque centre near the church.

From Apikia, the ascent continued towards the remote mountainous agricultural village of Vourkoti, where we enjoyed some mysterious low-clouds moods with noticeable drop of temperature.

Here, we also had a short lunch break at the beautiful old stone bridge, just below the centre of the village.

The foggy low-visibility weather ruled all the way up to the highest point of our wandering, Kouvara mountain at 994 metres in the Petalo mountain range.

From here, we descended swiftly towards the remote Prophet Elias church, appreciating red-colour waymarking on this barren-land route.

Another descent to a green valley with Arni settlement followed, and we even got some sunshine when hiking around Kato Katakoilos village.

Just above Kata Katakoilos, we opted for a detour aiming to avoid descent to the settlement, which finally proved to be much longer journey and thus rather unwise choice.

With the evening light beautifully illuminating surrounding rural landscape, the detour was still more bearable than the windy and foggy walking we experienced couple of hours ago.

The last kilometres on the trail meant swift descent back to Batsi, after which a well-deserved shower and proper meal and beer odyssey followed.

Day 6 & 7: Around Batsi and Back to Gavrio

Day 6 was designed to be lazy, and we succeeded in this unambitious plan visiting the beautiful and pristine Chrysi Ammos beach (The Golden Sand), enjoying some sunbathing and short swims in the perceptible autumn-cold Aegean waters.

Also, as a positive side effect of this short day-trip, we discovered the local O Giannoulis tavern, a place where "local", "traditional" and "homemade" all stand for their true meanings.

Day 7 was comprised of a half-day hike back to Gavrio, and the afternoon ferry return journey to Rafina / Athens.

Food

Usually, we were pretty hungry in the evenings after day-long walks.

And we ate a lot. Really a lot.

Seafood, grilled meat, starters, tzatziki, beer, wine, ouzo... the Greeks know how to make hungry wanderers happy.

Afterword

Honestly, I have kind of mixed feelings about this trip.

Surely it was nice, and we really enjoyed our hiking exploration of the Andros island. Yet, to be completely open, there was wind. THE WIND. Northern gale-force winds were constantly blowing, and there were moments when this natural phenomenon became really unpleasant. It turned out that Andros is one of the Cyclades islands where strong winds are virtually guaranteed in autumn. Maybe spring would have been better, who knows...

But that's just the wind. Besides that, everything was as it should be: no crowds, very varied hiking routes, beautiful landscapes, both rural and mountainous.

And then there is the Greek way of life. Slow-paced, enjoyable, focused on small and short moments of daily happiness. Food, coffee, sun, scent of the sea.

Andros island remains rural, despite attractive coastal villages and fine sandy beaches that surely attract herds of tourists during the season. After season (or before), things become quiet, facilities close, and mountain and valley paths are left for lonely wanderers. The blue Greece, blue as the Aegean sea... what island will be our destination next time?

Footnotes

All images are exclusive property and may not be copied, downloaded, reproduced, transmitted, manipulated or used in any way without permission of the author.

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FootNotes

All images are exclusive property and may not be copied, downloaded, reproduced, transmitted, manipulated or used in any way without permission of the author.

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