Paradise beach Agios Nikolaos on Karpathos
Karpathos island - Greece
Agios Nikolaos beach
Karpathos has 160 kilometers of coastline with many different kind of beaches that often are voted as the top beaches in Greece. Some beaches are organised and offer sun beds and parasols for € 7 to €10 per day (July 2021), others are unorganised beaches where you will have to bring your own necessities. We have visited several different beaches by driving our 125cc scooter, which has managed to take us up and down breathtaking serpentine roads. If you are afraid of heights you might be a bit hesitant and the locals sometimes warn us about the roads, the traffic and the strong winds. There was a horrible accident where some tourists drove off the cliff in a curve with their car, so it is important to TAKE IT EASY and have experience if you wish to drive by yourself around the island. We have found the roads in general to be very good and most of the roads leading to the beaches are now paved. We are always careful and enjoy the drive, but we are also used to many hours on a motorbike in Thailand and Sweden, so please take it easy (but don't be afraid to explore on your own). We see many tourists that get stuck wherever their charterbus took them and miss out SO MUCH of this amazing island. So remember: Don't get stuck!
Agios Nikolaos is our favorite beach located below the village of Spoa.
Here you will find a popular taverna called To Votsalo with traditional greek food and good service.
Below the taverna is a sand beach mixed with smaller rocks and a few sunbeds. A little further up is another beach with rocks which invites for playful tower building and finding the perfect stone to bring home as a souvenir. It has a smaller, beautifully decorated beach bar called Xopetro.
Nikos, who is the owner, speaks good English due to many years living in New York. He is happy to tell the story of this place and of a past Karpathos where he as a child used to walk from his school town, Pigadia, for 3.5hrs one way in the weekends, together with other children from Spoa. The villagers would bring their belongings by donkeys and horses and the women would carry goods on their heads, walking for hours on simple paths up the mountains (!) before there were any modern roads and transportation. Nikos told us how the land and buildings were given to the first born daughter of the family, and these days relatives return from the USA in the summer to spend their holidays here. We see big groups of Greek-Americans gather in the afternoon on the beach in front of their summer homes. The teenagers swim out to the rock (xopetro) and this is the cute story told on the table covers;
The coffee, food and service was excellent. We had tortilla wraps with chicken and shared a small bottle of white wine and a perfect frappe which is ice-coffe with medium sugar, mixed in a blender so you get a perfect layer of coffee-scum on top and then sip it from a straw. Excellent 👌🏻. Now the only thing is how to make it at home, but maybe some things taste the best on vacation 😎
As this is being written we are planning to spend our last day back on this beach, so we finish this up with sharing our memories in the gallery below. Enjoy!
Note! As we started to drive towards Ag. Nikolaos we were soon to be defeated by hot, horrible winds coming from Africa (so they say). To not turn into roasted chickens on a scooter, we decided to go towards the other coast where winds are more doable. Leaving Pigadia the temperature showed 47.6 degrees Celsius. It was truly impossible to drive (and we can deal with quite hot weather) and our eyes started to burn and tear up from the winds. Imagine driving in a hot sauna, and the faster you drive, the hotter it gets 😅. We landed in Finiki, which is a small fishing village that you can read about by clicking here.
