Pserimos - A Greek island without any roads

There are about a hundred Greek islands inhabited all over the year. On the biggest one - Crete - live more than half a million Greeks. On Pserimos, one of the smallest, their number is just around 130 in summer and only 20 in winter time. You reach that island by a small, regular passenger ferry boat lnamed >Maniai<, leaving the nearby Kalymnos island at about 9:30 a.m.: the journey takes just one hour. It goes back to Kalymnos at about 4 p.m.
The small ferry is too big for the quay of Pserimos. So passengers have to jump ashore. On the quay the only two pick-ups of the island wait for cargo to be transported. They never have to go a long way: From the quay there is no real road leading somewhere. There is only a dirt track crossing the village with its few houses and ending at the island's other side, where there is no village at all - just pasture and another quay for a few fishing boats. But most of the cargo has to be deliverd to the beach tavernas, which are onbly 50 to 250 meters away from the port. To get there, the pick-ups use the beach as the main road of the island. The day we arrived on Pserimos a fridge had to be transported to one of the beach tavernas (see photo) - which attracted the attention of most locals and the few tourists who stayed overnight on the island.
There is no real hotel on Pserimos. But travellers may stay in one of about 30 rooms and studios, where they do not pay more than 30 euro per night for a double - except of August, when the prices rise, because all Greece is on holidays. In spite of this fact Pserimos is not an out-.of-the-world and real untouristic island: Every summer day between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. excursion boats from the near island of Kos drop in and tell their passengers to have a one hours break on the beach or in one of the 12 tavernas.
So if you stay a few days on the island you may take these arrivals as a funny attraction and watch people taking part in these organized tours - or you leave the village and its beach before 11 a.m. and walk about 40 minutes on a small path along the coast to another, really remote sandy beach (see photo), where there are normally no people at all around. Coming back to the village after 4 p.m. you will enjoy the quietness of the place and meet satisfied locals, who will not bother you - they earn their money with the short time visitors and easily make friends with the long term stayers.
I stayed on Pserimos only for three nights and then trvaelled on to a more vivid island - but I recommend such a short visit to Pserimos to everyone who is fed up with the big touristic places, who loves good sandy beaches and enjoys a nearly car-free place without real roads.

---

---