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Kalymnos

This island is a great place for a holiday. An island that is really Greek, but quickly feels like home. The holiday season starts in late April/early May, peaks around mid August and ends in October. Late October is the quietest time. You'll always find somewhere to stay, and even in August the resorts aren't uncomfortably crowded. The availability of flights is less certain. It's wise to book ahead. Package holidays are sold at reasonable prices in many European countries - especially the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Holland, Germany, Belgium and France.

Kalymnos is one of the most interesting Islands of Dodecanese. The Island is also called "Nisi ton Agalmaton" (Island of Statues), because it has many statues, which were made, by the sculpture Mihali Kokkinou and his daughter Irinis Kokkinou-Lalopoulou. Its coasts have beautiful beaches, some pebbled and some sandy. The cave of Nymphon and of Kefala, in the south, and the cave of Dascaleio in the north, were places of worship in ancient times, and are among the attractions of island today. The most important product of the fertile valleys of the island is citrus fruit, which are also exported. In the waters of its sea, 700 m. from Kalymnos, there is the small barren island of Telendos, a quiet characteristic place of fishermen and of sponge divers.

The most beautiful beaches are on the west coast of the island and are Panormos, Kantouni, Linaria and Plati Gialo.Other beaches on the west coast are Mirties, Masouri, the gulf of Arginonta and Emborios.On the east coast of the island there are beaches in Ormo Akri and at the harbor of Bathi.

Sponge fishing has been carried out in Greece since time immemorial. The use of sponges was described by Aristotle and mentioned in both Homer"s Iliad and the Odyssey. For centuries now the Greek sponge trade has focused around the Dodecanese, with one indisputable epicenter - the island of Kalymnos. Finding sponges, diving to harvest them from the ocean bed and selling them throughout the world is a commerce in which Kalymnos has excelled. Little wonders that sponges have been called "The Kalymnian gold". But sponge diving represents much more than this. It is a skill, a challenge, a saga of loss and gain, of appalling tragedy and fierce pride that remain to this day a poignant and inextricable part of the very soul of this rugged island.

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