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Spring Postcards from Symi

Some informal photos taken on Symi in late March and early April 2024.

Wild poppies in a garden in Pedi.
Wild cyclamens growing out of the rockface behind the bus stop in Yialos.
Fishing boats lined up on the beach at Apostoli’s in Pedi. The blue cloth is to protect the hull against the sun. These boats are all wooden and the sun dries out the planking, opening up the seams. In a month or so they will all be in the water and there will be sunbeds along here.
The view from the other side. Every day their respective owners come down to sand, grind, spackle, paint and patch. The boats are hauled out and launched using greased ‘ways’ and the only change since Homeric times is that a small bucket shovel and chain winch have replaced man power and brute force.
As you can see, the wreck of La Dolce Vita is still there. Greece has been blanketed in dust from Africa for over a week now and visibility is poor.
The sailing season has not really started yet. As the month progresses we will probably see more yachts arrive that have been over-wintering in Turkey.
With temperatures nudging 30 degrees centigrade everyone is looking for a patch of shade.
Including the donkeys in the Pedi valley.
Guardian of the six-packs.
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Symi Gold

Well, it has certainly been quite a summer here on Symi, ‘post Covid’. Not that it is really ‘post Covid’ – the platform for the next round of shots has opened for the over 60s and we will be reporting at the clinic on Wednesday for ours. What I really mean is that for the first time in years Symi has been open for business – and really busy – since April. This wasn’t just hitting 2019 levels but more like being back in the good old days before the economic crisis and the banking collapse. May and June were positively humming and people who have not been to Symi at that time for years made a point of being here. Fear that doors may close again as quickly as they opened may have been a driving force. Also frustrated travel-lust finally had free rein.

For the first time in three years we heard Australian accents in Yialos as Diaspora Greeks made the long journey from Oz to visit their ancestral homes in July and August. It is also ‘business as usual’ with our Turkish neighbours as far as yachting is concerned and many of the big shiny boats in Yialos and Pedi this summer have had either Turkish or tax-haven US Delaware registrations. (Delaware has particularly favourable yacht registration laws so many of the ‘US’ boats you see have never been further than 30 nautical miles from Bodrum!)

October looks to be a bit quieter. We are not seeing the ‘digital nomad’ phenomenon of 2020 and 2021, where people who were working on line anyway decided they might as well combine it with a few weeks in Greece as it didn’t matter where they were working from. This autumn most of the people I have spoken to have definitely been on holiday rather than riding out a lockdown at home in more congenial surroundings.

Steak on the hoof – one of a half dozen or so bullocks in the Pedi valley.
A boutique cruise ship lying off shore.
Equinoctial high tide in Pedi last week.

2022 has also seen the best ferry connections ever as the Blue Star has been through on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday during the peak weeks, the Sebeco has been providing a continuous daily shuttle from 7.45 a.m. to 6.50 p.m, the Sea Dreams King Saron has been shuttling between Symi, Rhodes and Marmaris, the SAOS Stavros has been chugging along, the Panagia Skiadeni has been in daily and we have had the Dodecanese Seaways catamarans over weekends. And if you feel exhausted reading that, that’s how we have all felt as tourists have arrived and departed at all hours of the day and cleaners have battled with fast changeovers between guests. The buffer imposed by Covid protocols has all but fallen away and incoming guests are coming off the boats before the outgoing ones have waved their farewells. If you ask anyone in the tourist accommodation business what their plans are for the winter, ‘sleep for a week’ is likely to be the reply!

The leaves are falling, the squills are poking their way through the hard-baked earth and there is an autumnal feel to the air. The angle of the sun is low and the shadows lengthening. We had a strange interlude of thundershowers on 24 and 25 August but no signs of rain since then. Temperatures are around 18 degrees at night and 24 at midday with a chill in the wind. Apparently it will be a bit warmer next week as the wind shifts to the south.

Who knows what October will bring?

No Rain on the Horizon

The last time Symi had any significant rain was on 5 March. I am writing this on 14 April and there is still no rain on the horizon. The spring vegetation is already dying back and the ground cracking in many places. Temperatures have been abnormally warm. Great for the Turkish tourists who came over to celebrate Eid and the end of Ramadan but not so great for a region that has experienced the warmest driest winter since records began. There have already been significant wildfires in parts of Greece and farmers in Crete and Southern Rhodes have cut back on their planting of summer crops due to concerns about the lack of water for irrigation.

There are very few tourists actually staying on the island at the moment and the main seasonal hotels will only be opening around the Greek Easter long weekend, at the beginning of May. Rhodes, however, has been busy since the end of March so Yialos has already seen steady day-time trade in the form of tour groups and day-trippers, arriving on the King Saron and the Sebeco. This has given some of the restaurants and cafes in the harbour the impetus to open up, at least for midday trade. The tourist shops likewise. The recent Eid holiday combined with the new express visa system for Turkish tourists wishing to visit selected border islands for 7 days brought some trade but nothing like the prosperous Eid holidays before the pandemic, when the holiday fell during the tourist months of August and July and the Turkish lira was still relatively strong. In those days the megayachts filled the harbour and Pedi and there were big smiles on the faces of many businessmen in Yialos.

Turkish yachts in Yialos on Thursday last week.
The beach at Apostoli’s in Pedi is still a cheerful lineup of wooden caiques.
Not much happening on the jetty in Pedi at the moment as the taxi boats are out of the water, having their bottoms painted.
The beach at Katsaras is still mostly piles of sand and gravel. The staff have started painting the chairs and tables for the taverna and refurbishing the wooden sunbeds. The tamarisk trees have had their annual decapitation. As you can see, the forecourt of the Pedi Beach Hotel on the right, is still devoid of outside furniture as the hotel doesn’t open until 4 May.
The rockface opposite the Asymi Residences hotel in Pedi is a hanging garden of hardy indigenous plants. It might not look like much but there is a feral cat family living in that crevice in the centre of the lower photograph. I only found out because I saw a large ginger cat disappear in there one afternoon. There must be quite a large space in there as the white tip of his tail disappeared completely into the void.
Brave poppies in a carpark in Pedi. The little pocket in which they are growing has probably retained more moisture as it is protected by the concrete.

Symi Skies

March is rolling past with windy showers and ever-longer sunny intervals. Day time highs are around 15-18 degrees centigrade and the prevailing northerly winds give great visibility, as you can see from the photographs.

One big advantage of Greek Easter being late this year is that the Carnival celebrations and Clean Monday picnics took place in balmy sunshine and gentle breezes rather than gales and downpours. There are still regular shipping bans – today brings another one – but the strong winds are 7s and 8s rather than 9s and 10s and pass quickly. The disruptions affect mostly the smaller local boats that aren’t allowed out in BF 6 and over and the Stavros which needs to be able to safely drop the vehicle ramp in the exposed small island ports that it serves. The Blue Star is running pretty much on time.

The first tourist charter flights into Rhodes started early this year. As it isn’t exactly beach weather and there isn’t much for tourists to do in March, the King Saron has been bringing over occasional groups of tourists, sea conditions permitting. A few tourist shops have started to open up when the boat is in and Symi was visited by a boutique cruise ship on Tuesday. The bus is still operating a reduced winter schedule.

25 March is Independence Day as well as the Annunciation so this is the second consecutive long weekend. Monday will be celebrated with parades, church services and family time.

Symi Snapshots

Symi snapshots taken over a few sunny days in March 2024.

The first phase of the new hotel in Pedi is nearing completion. As you can see, it has been designed to look like a group of Symi neo-classical houses.
Flamingos livening up a balcony above the Bella Napoli pizzeria in Yialos.
Behind the scenes of a well-known fish taverna in Yialos.
The little red figures disappearing into the distance are a visiting football team from Ialysos on Rhodes, over for the day to play against the Symi team.
This old bruiser of a tom cat was admiring himself in the puddle but, as cats do, he decided not to face the camera.
His friend, however, was more obliging.
Happiness is a warm Vespa in a sunny spot.
Meanwhile, in the Pedi Valley…
Goats and asphodels.
Wild garlic and goat defences.
I wonder who planted these freesias and how long they have managed to survive in an untended planter of an abandoned building. The tree was probably seeded by birds.
Some of Symi’s most interesting and unusual buildings are at risk of crumbling away to nothing due to lack of funding to restore them.

Symi Greens

Spring has come early to Symi this year. The valley is luminous with daisies, wild cyclamens, cistus, asphodels, sorrel, almond blossom and lupins.

Spring has come early to Symi this year. The valley is luminous with daisies, wild cyclamens, cistus, asphodels, sorrel, almond blossom and lupins. As you can see, the dandelions and moss are taking over the Kali Strata.

A strong south-easterly weather front passed through on Monday, causing Dodecanese Seaways and Stavros boats to cancel their Monday routes. Dodecanese Seaways is running today, Wednesday, instead. The Stavros came through Symi on Tuesday but with an abridged route. It looks like more of the same on Friday. South-easterly storms are problematic because they trigger a heavy swell in Rhodes harbour, affecting docking, and many of the small island ports served by Dodecanese Seaways and the Stavros are not safe in any kind of bad weather. Torrential rain on Monday also temporarily closed Rhodes airport as the runway was flooded and visibility reduced to zero.

Today is the one year anniversary of the horrific train crash near Tempe in northern Greece, in which 57 people were killed. The victims included many young people returning home for the Carnival holidays. There is a countrywide civil service and transport strike today as part of the commemoration and to highlight the poor conditions in which state employees have been working for years. The air traffic controllers strike which was scheduled for today was deemed illegal by the Civil Aviation Authority so that has been cancelled but other disruptions are going ahead.

On a more cheerful note, next Thursday, 7 March is Tsiknopemti (Smokey Thursday) as well as Dodecanese Day, the day on which the Dodecanese islands were incorporated into the modern Greek state. As the former is celebrated with copious quantities of grilled meat and the latter by a public holiday with parades and folk dancing in Yialos, everyone is hoping for good weather and a great party.

An Island of Cats

Symi is very quiet at the moment. Some days it seems as though it is an island of cats, chickens and sheep rather than people, particularly on a ‘Blue Star’ day when it feels as though the whole population of Symi has gone shopping on Rhodes. The winter bus service is severely curtailed. Only 3 trips in the morning – at 8, 11 and 1 from Yialos – and then 6 in the evening. No where to go and not much to do outside the nest.

February is slipping past and spring is overtaking a winter that didn’t really happen this year. Oh, we have had rain and wind and ferry cancellations and flight disruptions but by and large we have had a very mild winter. Temperatures have seldom dipped below 12 degrees centigrade on Symi and on sunny days it can be as warm as 26 degrees centigrade. There are concerns in Crete and on the mainland as the mountain areas have not had enough snow to feed the streams and rivers, a problem that is affecting many European countries as snowfall diminishes and glaciers recede in the Alpine regions.

Symi is very quiet at the moment. Some days it seems as though it is an island of cats, chickens and sheep rather than people, particularly on a ‘Blue Star‘ day when it feels as though the whole population of Symi has gone shopping on Rhodes. The winter bus service is severely curtailed. Only 3 trips in the morning – at 8, 11 and 1 from Yialos – and then 6 in the evening. No where to go and not much to do outside the nest.

The main human activity is on the building sites. The new hotel in the southern corner of Pedi is nearing completion. Work is continuing on the new sewage processing plant at the bend in the road above the new port, as well as the new road from the port which will join the main one at that junction. It was announced in the Greek press yesterday that the continuation of the commercial port from Petalo towards the new port has been approved and is out to tender. Apparently this will also include a new slipway so that the slip by the customs shed by the bridge can be closed off. The overall plan is to further reduce heavy traffic around the head of the harbour.

Greek Easter is very late this year, on the first weekend in May. As western/Catholic Easter is very early, at the end of March, April is likely to be quieter than usual. There are the usual fraught speculations regarding ferry schedules and who is opening when and is it worth opening up when there are unlikely to be enough customers to cover costs and so on. As it is, far fewer places than usual stayed open this winter. The big push to digitise the Greek economy and clamp down on tax evasion has had the knock on effect of killing the old ad hoc winter ‘let’s open on Friday night and see who turns up’ trade as everyone has to operate ‘by the book’ these days and that is just far too expensive in tiny places like Symi.

On that subject, you will see far more POS devices when you visit Greece this year. Every kind of business, including freelancers and the self employed, now have to be able to accept all kinds of card payments. There is an understandable reluctance on this, despite heavy state pressure, as service charges on card transactions are so high. The POS device has to be connected to the till which has to be connected to Taxisnet, the Greek tax portal, in real time. We also have to accept IRIS payments which are through an app on your phone. To add to the fun, there is a government app you can download to your phone so if you think you have been issued with a dodgy receipt or that someone is evading their taxes, you can report them to the tax office and there are actually prizes for doing this.

Wandering in the Wet

A winter wander round Pedi, Symi, in January

The Epiphany on 6 January is a big celebration in Greece. Booths like this, decorated with cypress and palm fronds and crosses of threaded oranges are placed by the water in many places. After a morning church service the priest and congregation gather at the booth. The priest throws a Cross in the water, symbolising the Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. The local young men then leap into the water to retrieve the Cross. Whoever finds it will be blessed for the year ahead. 

Symi is very quiet. The Twelve Days of Christmas are over and the children are back at school. Their older siblings have departed to universities and colleges in Rhodes, Kos, Athens and Thessalonica. Some of the locals are away, either on holiday or to attend to business and medical things. We don’t have daily ferries at this time of the year so getting things done often necessitates several nights off the island. The Best Western Plaza, which often resembles a Symi colony in the winter, is closed for refurbishment so alternative options are being explored. There are not many hotels open in Rhodes through the winter months and those that are seldom have the kind of restaurant facilities that the Plaza offers.

The Mediterranean does not have much by way of tides. The water levels rise and fall with barometric fluctuations. This time last year a big high pressure system hovered over the Eastern Med for weeks, causing abnormally low water levels. This year we have the opposite situation as successive lows and storm surges are pushing the sea up over the shore. The road around the harbour in Yialos is submerged in many places. Here in Pedi you can see from the photographs that the little jetties are submerged.

La Dolce Vita, the foreign charter boat that gained notoriety as a people-trafficking vessel in the early days of the refugee crisis about a decade ago, sank at her berth alongside the jetty in Pedi at the beginning of November 2023. Initially yellow floats were set up around her as there was a pollution control vessel in Yialos at the time. A week or so later these were recovered but nothing was actually done about raising the boat. In the meantime, with every storm she has settled further under the edge of the jetty and more doors and bulkheads are washing ashore as she breaks up. Quite what the plan is, if any, no one seems to know. Aside from the obvious pollution issues the boat is also a hazard for other ships and small boats using the jetty. As you can see, the angle of the mast cuts right across – a complication for the supply ships that come in every month to bring building materials and need room to swing their cranes.  We shall see…

Have a good weekend.

Symi Surprises

Today’s featured image may have you puzzled but yes, it is indeed on Symi, just underground! Symi’s caves are very fragile and dangerous to access so their locations are not publicised. If you want to see more extraordinary photographs of Symi’s ‘underworld’ go to Barry Hankey’s blog.

Time to stack the sunbeds
and take down the umbrellas.
Broccoli in time for Christmas.
Young Guinea fowl in the Pedi Valley.
Symi Pastorale

We haven’t had anymore rain and the forecast looks dry as far as the Panormitis Festival on 8 November. Tiny things are continuing to germinate and delicate miniscule narcissi and other small flowers are poking through. Mind where you step in the Pedi valley!

And in other news… There was a shipping strike in Greece on Tuesday which has deranged the Blue Star schedule for the entire week. Tomorrow is Ochi Day, a big public holiday in Greece with marching bands and fly overs. As it falls on a Friday this year Symi is likely to be quite busy with Rhodians coming over for the weekend.

The beaches are wrapping up now. The water taxis have finished, the excursion boats have put up their ‘thank you for a great season – see you next year’ notices. Many restaurants and tavernas are either already closed or will close after the long weekend. (Only a limited number of venues stay open in the winter, to cater to the needs of the locals.) Likewise many of the seasonal hotels have wished everyone a good winter and started plastic-wrapping the outside lights. Down in Pedi both hotels are now closed until the spring. Next week the focus will switch to Panormitis as the monastery gears up for the big festival of St Michael on 8 November. The market stalls and food outlets start to set up next week and the car ferries will bring a cavalcade of vans and trucks from Rhodes.

The Sebeco finishes its service for the year on Monday 31 October so there is no longer a daily shuttle between Rhodes and Symi. After that we will be dependent on the Blue Star three times a week, the Stavros whenever Symi occurs on its circuit (variable and much influenced by local weather conditions in various small island ports) and Dodecanese Seaways (mainly weekends).