sulfur steam, black and white pebble squares, dinner at half past seven
Reserve an eleven night southern Dodecanese trip on three small islands
Eleven nights across Halki, Tilos and Nisyros, two of them walked with a guide who lives on the ground, from $3,632 per person with two people to a room. The three islands sit inside a thirty mile triangle and share almost nothing: one has a single road and no spring, one has 54 kilometers of marked path, and the third is a caldera you walk down into.
Send a booking requestThe Pine Gazette answers every request within one business day.
An eleven night southern Dodecanese trip on this rung is three rooms, three islands and two mornings when somebody who grew up on the ground walks it with you. The other nine days belong to you, with a paper map, a filled bottle and a number that gets answered. The Pine Gazette holds the rooms, the harbor transfers and the two guided days; the company that operates the trip holds the water legs on its own passenger licence and invoices you itself, on its own paperwork.
The order is Halki, then Tilos, then Nisyros: three nights, four nights, four nights. They lie inside a thirty mile triangle and have almost nothing in common. Halki is 28 square kilometers of limestone with one road on it and no water of its own. Tilos has about 750 residents and 54 kilometers of marked footpath, and hunting has been illegal across the whole island since 1993, which is why the first morning sounds the way it does. Nisyros is the top of a volcano that has not finished, and the guided day there goes down inside it.
Getting to Greece is your own arrangement and this office arranges no flight. What matters for the plan is that the eleven nights begin on Rhodes and end on Kos, so the ticket you buy has to land at one and leave from the other, and nobody goes from New Orleans, Louisiana to either without a change. Two to four working days is what a costed set of your own dates takes, because the operator confirms the rooms and the crossing days before it puts a number on paper. Call +1 (504) 832-6194 or write to bookings@thepinegazette.com with the stretch of dates you can travel.
A guide for the days that need one and nobody at all for the rest. Rooms and transfers are still arranged end to end.
No rung is better than another. Each one is a different amount of work for the traveller and a different figure.
- What it costs
- 11 nights, from $3,632 per person.
- What this reserves
- On this rung the office books the eleven nights of rooms, the two guided days, the harbor transfers and the paperwork for the water legs, which the operating company holds under its own passenger licence, and it books no flight, no meal beyond the breakfasts and two fixed dinners, and nothing at all on the six days you are on your own.
- Shape of the booking
- One room on each island held for two people, three nights on Halki, four on Tilos and four on Nisyros, with the bag carried up from two of the three harbors and every crossing held in the operating company's name.
- Who books it
- A person booking this wants the two hard days solved by somebody who knows where the path goes, and the other nine to belong entirely to them.
- Why somebody chooses another rung
- Anyone who wants a guide standing at the door on all eleven mornings belongs on rung one, and anyone happy to work out the boat days and the footpaths alone should read rung five before this page.
- In the figure
- Eleven nights in family run rooms, three on Halki, four on Tilos and four on Nisyros, two people to a room; breakfast every morning, which on Halki means bread, thyme honey and a boiled egg carried to the table rather than a counter you serve yourself from; two full walking days with a guide who lives on the island being walked, one on Tilos and one on Nisyros; the opening of the fossil cave above Megalo Chorio, which is kept locked and is arranged with the island authority by the operating company; the entrance fee for the fenced crater floor on Nisyros; every harbor transfer, on foot where the room is four minutes from the water and by van where it is not; your bag carried up to the room on the two islands where the steps make that a real question; two dinners at a fixed hour, one on Tilos and one on Nisyros, at a table the house lays for everybody at once; a paper map of Tilos and Nisyros with the walking lines drawn on it, the water points marked and the times between villages written in by hand; the water legs between the three islands and the run out to the departure island, all held in the operating company's name on its own passenger licence and billed by it; a phone number on the island answered from seven in the morning to ten at night on the days nobody is guiding you.
- Not in the figure
- The flight, which is your own arrangement and runs roughly $1,050 to $1,780 round trip from the American South in May, June, September and October, and $1,400 to $2,240 in July and August; lunch on all eleven days, $9 to $18 a head at a village table; dinner on the nine evenings that are not fixed, $16 to $34; drinks with meals, $4 to $9 a glass; a scooter or a small car on Tilos for the free days, $26 to $58 a day; the bus and the one taxi on Halki, $3 to $12 a run; the small archaeological collection at Mandraki and the box at the monastery gate, $3 to $6; laundry, which on Halki is done by hand and comes back the next afternoon, $12 to $20 a load; anything you eat or drink on the rim at Nikia, $5 to $15; a room to yourself for the eleven nights, $430 to $610 for the whole stay; what you hand the guide and the driver at the end, $40 to $90 across the trip.
- Who should not book it
- The guided day on Nisyros drops about 980 feet from the rim village to the crater floor and climbs the same back, on loose grit, with no shade on any part of it and ground that stays warm through a boot sole. The Tilos day is close to nine miles with two climbs of 700 and 900 feet and long stretches of old stone paving that will turn an ankle for anyone who looks up while walking. Halki has one road, no natural water, about five hundred residents, and an evening that consists of the harbor and then bed. Anyone who needs a lift to the door, a level surface, or something arranged for them after four in the afternoon should not book this rung.
This is a starting figure, worked out for two people sharing a room. Costing the exact days you name runs two to four working days, since the firm operating the trip has to answer first. No air ticket is ever inside it.
Halki, one road and about five hundred people
You arrive at Emporio, where the houses around the harbor stand three stories high in ochre, rose and oxblood, built in the 1880s on sponge money and patched since with the same. The road across the island runs 8 kilometers and is called Tarpon Springs Boulevard, because the Halkians who went to Florida to dive paid to have it laid. There is no spring here and no stream. Water comes out of a plant on the shore, and after two days you can tell it in the coffee.
Chorio, the old village, is a forty minute climb behind the harbor, roofless now, with a castle of the knights on the rock above it and a chapel inside the walls that is unlocked one day a year. Nothing on Halki is more than an hour on foot from anything else on Halki, and Pondamos is ten minutes from the last house. Three nights is the honest length: two days to walk the island out, one evening to sit at the water and watch the boat come in without having to be on it.
Tilos, and an animal four feet at the shoulder
The port is Livadia and the village you sleep in is Megalo Chorio, under a castle wall you can be standing on thirty five minutes after you leave the door. Above the village the operating company arranges the opening of the cave at Charkadio, which is otherwise kept locked. Out of a red clay layer in that hole came the bones of dwarf elephants, animals about four feet at the shoulder that were still on this hillside roughly forty five thousand years ago, and most of what is known about them came out of that one small opening.
The guided day here is the long one, close to nine miles, from Megalo Chorio across to the west side and the monastery of Agios Panteleimonas, on its rock shelf since 1470, with a spring running in the courtyard and a plane tree over the cistern. There are two climbs, 700 feet and then 900. On the free days there is Mikro Chorio, which emptied in the 1950s when everybody moved down to the port and which still has its lintels and its bread ovens standing, and Eristos, a mile and a half of sand that will have four people on it on a Tuesday in June.
- April
- Ground still soft from the rains, hillsides yellow with sorrel, sea about 62 degrees, and one of the three guesthouses shut until the middle of the month.
- May
- Fourteen hours of light by the last week, air in the high seventies, and the whole Tilos path network walkable at noon without waiting for shade.
- June
- Sea near 72 degrees, the caldera walk moved to eight in the morning, and the local boat adding days to its week.
- July
- Air into the low nineties, the north wind up for three or four days at a stretch, and the crater floor cleared by eleven because of the heat coming off the ground.
- August
- The wind at its most stubborn, a crossing moved by a day when it blows hard, and shade on the Tilos route only in the first hour and the last.
- September
- The month the operator builds around: water at its warmest near 78 degrees, twelve and a half hours of light, and the walking hours back where they belong.
- October
- Rooms closing from the middle of the month, eleven hours of daylight, and the first rain of the season making the marble lane above Emporio slick.
The ground under Nisyros
The island is a caldera about four kilometers across, with the villages on the rim and a floor you walk down onto. Stefanos, the crater in the middle, is roughly 330 meters wide and 27 deep and flat as a threshing floor, ringed with vents that put out steam at the boiling point of water and build yellow crystals around their mouths. The floor is warm through a boot. It smells like a struck match for the first ten minutes and then you stop registering it.
Nikia sits on the rim 400 meters above sea level and about 300 meters above that floor, and its square is round, laid in black and white beach pebbles set on edge in a pattern that took one man the better part of a winter. The guided day drops from Nikia to the crater and climbs back, forty minutes down and an hour up, and it starts at eight in summer for the obvious reason. Mandraki, where you sleep, is packed white and tight under a cliff with a monastery cut into the face of it, ninety odd steps above the last roof. North of the island lies a small white islet where pumice is quarried and loaded onto barges, and on a still morning you can hear the plant working across the water.
What the boat days decide
The link between these three islands is a small local boat, and it does not run every day. The operator builds the eleven nights around the days it does run rather than the days you would prefer, which is the single largest constraint on the whole plan and the reason the nights fall three, four, four instead of evenly. When the north wind blows hard in July and August it can hold that boat in port, and in that case the operator moves the night rather than the shape of the trip: the room shifts, the guided day shifts with it, and the change costs you nothing. The passage itself is held in the operating company's name, under its own licence, and it appears on the invoice that company sends you.
Pine Gazette Bookings LLC works out of 2450 Severn Avenue, Suite 312, Metairie, LA 70001, and the whole of what it does is take the request, put it in front of the operator, and read the paper that comes back before you see it. Nothing that flies, floats, drives or sleeps a traveller belongs to this company, and it takes no payment of any kind at any point. If a distance or a figure on this page is wrong, write to corrections@thepinegazette.com and it will be corrected. To start, send the two weeks you could travel and how many of you there are, and expect a written figure in two to four working days.
Send a booking request
This form takes booking requests 24 hours a day. A person reads it and answers within one business day. Sending it is not a reservation, it costs nothing, and this office will not telephone or text you unless you ask it to.