Kamares, Sifnos

Kamares may be the port of Sifnos but it is also one of the nicest places to stay.

"Can you change your description of Kamares" Apostolos at Aegean Thesaurus Travel said to me one day in his office. "It gives the wrong impression.

When you say 'port' you think of something not like Kamares. You know how most ports are....busy, a bit dirty, and a place to come and go from but not to stay in"

Apostolos is right. Kamares may be the port of Sifnos but it is also one of the nicest places to stay.

Kamares has a long beach, fertile valley, great restaurants and cafes. And the ferries are generally not in long enough to make Kamares seem like a 'port'. Once the ferries leave you are in a quiet (but not too quiet), fishing town that has a taste of tourism but not enough to make you feel like you are in Mykonos or San Tropez.

Kamares is the main port of Sifnos and the transportation hub. From here you can get buses to all the other villages, boats to Vathy, or you can stay here and enjoy one of the nicest beaches and some of the best restaurants on the island. As you get off the boat you can follow the procession into the town. The main street is the harbor road with its restaurants, cafes, shops and hotels on one side of the street, the tables and chairs and the bay on the other. There are a couple supermarkets, a tourist information office, the office of Aegean Thesaurus, the Hotel Stavros and finally on your left a long crescent shaped beach with the tiny village of Agia Marina on the far side.

Kamares is an excellent place for families to stay because everything is so convenient. You can sit in the restaurants and cafes and watch your children play on the beach a few feet away from you. There is an interesting variety of restaurants including a pizza place and an excellent Italian restaurant. There is also fast food in the form of souvlakis and hamburgers available for any children who have not made the transition to the Greek diet.

Cars and Motorbikes are available for rental at the shop of the lovable George Podotas about 100 yards up the mainroad where the road to Agia Marina turns off. You can also rent cars from Stavros at the Hotel Stavros right in the port. The small boat Agios Spyridon is available for charter around the island from Kambourakis Meropi restaurant and you can visit some of the beautiful coves and beaches the roads will never reach.

In the evening the harbor fills up with sailboats and yachts and these sailors usually make their way into Kamares for a night of fun using a remedy of good food and wine to get their land legs back. The restaurants are all excellent and the atmosphere can be festive at night. Many people who come to Kamares have been doing so for years and a night at the Old Captain bar can seem like a highschool reunion at times.

There are two monasteries on the mountains above the village. One is Agios Spyridon and the other is Profitti Ilias. You can drive to within a couple hundred yards if you have rented a jeep, or you can climb up the ravines if you are young and in shape. It will take you about an hour and you will be sore for a couple days afterwards but you will have a wonderful feeling of accomplishment. Bring some cheese, some bread and some wine and don't forget some water too. If you are lucky you will be there during a panagiri when all the islanders make their way up the mountain for a religous service followed by food, wine music and merrymaking that can last until dawn. Anytime you go the view is spectacular.

Sunday is Rivithia day when all the restaurants serve the delicious chickpea stew that is the specialty of the island(see below), but if you don't get there early you may miss out. Another specialty along these lines are the delicious rivithia keftedes which are falafals. Fish is plentiful and can be expensive unless you order the gopes, or the fried squid (kalamarakia) which comes from nearby Monterey bay in California. The fish soup at Captain Andreas restaurant on the beach is delicious.

For some real entertainment you can do what I do and bring a bottle of wine to the wall above the breakwater and watch the night ferries sail into the bay. It's a beautiful sight, one you may feel nostalgic for when you finally go home. It's also fun to see the comings and goings of people since the turnover rate is about a week.

The beach at Kamares is surprisingly shallow and is perfect if you have children because you have to walk a long way before it gets deep enough to cause you worry. The sea is amazingly clean in the port. The beach is about a quarter mile stretch of sand that starts in the town of Kamares and goes to Agia Marina, with a small grove of trees in the middle, and a row of trees along the edge for shade. Though swimming nude is not officially practiced on the beach, people do it anyway in the less populated portions of the beach. Women generally go topless anywhere they want on the beach and nobody cares. (Least of all me and my friends).

The far side of Kamares is called Agia Marina. Some of the best swimming is on the rocks just beyond it and in fact nobody will care if you neglect to put on your bathing suit. There are a few restaurants on this side that you can go to for lunch though you should remember to put your bathing suit back on before you do. There are rooms for rent here as well and it is a little more quiet then the Kamares side, plus it is a lovely walk along the beach from town. There are several churches in Agia Marina that are worth the walk and the Folie Snack bar is a nice place for a frappe and a menu that is a bit more cosmopolitan then the more traditional extablishments.

On the other side of the dock is the area known as Spilia where there is a small dock you can dive off. Spilia is a great place to hang out because you can watch the ferries come in and out. Watch out for the waves when they do! Beyond Spilia is a stony beach and further on you can swim off the rocks and probably spend the day without seeing another person. There are ruins of the loading dock from when there were Iron Ore mines here about a hundred years ago.

Playgrounds on each side of the bay. One in the main square and the other directly across the valley. Nice basketball court behind the school. Nothing like a little one-on-one when it is 98 degrees to get your adrenelin going. Seriously, around dusk you can get involved in some pretty decent pick-up games and you never know who may show up there.

If you enjoy walking there are paths all through the valley that go past farms and animals, fruit trees and old stone walls. The best time to do this is late in the afternoon or early in the morning. You can follow the path up the river bed almost as far as Apollonia. Be sure to wear long pants because there are sticker bushes and with the building of the road many of the paths have fallen into disuse.

Kamares is generally quiet in the day except when the ferry comes in. Then it is like being in a small city for about twenty minutes, particularly on Sunday when the Athenians who have been here for the weekends have to go back to work. Then you are lucky if you can find a place in the cafes for the hour before the boats leave.

When the ship blows its horn everyone rises from their chairs and walks toward the dock knowing they have plenty of time to get there as the ship begins the slow process of backing in and unloading and loading cars. Don't be put off by the noise and chaos on your arrival. Before you know it everone has fanned out around the island and the town is quiet once again. Friday night is the wildest when two ferries from Athens arrive almost simultaneously with all the weekenders.

Flying Dolphins move a little faster and if you want to catch it you better be on the dock when it comes in or you may find yourself looking at this view.

Used with permission from Matt Barrett's Guide to Greece