SYMI: A singular Greek island
On a day trip to a little-known island, Yvonne Fontyn finds some steep hills and some frolick some seas
SYMI is one of the Dodecanese, a mostly arid, volcanic group of islands between Greece and Turkey, of which Rhodes is probably the best known.
Mountainous Symi has very little water and, in the dry season, all that is consumed on the island has to be shipped in. Bar tourism, the island has no industry of its own, except collecting and selling sponges. Summer temperatures routinely go over 40°C.
I didn’t know all this when I agreed to go on a day trip to Symi while I was staying on Rhodes.
My travel companion was attending a conference for psychologists in Rhodes city and she invited me along. All the organiser wanted for the ferry and lunch was $70 (about R1 000) — in retrospect a scary amount but when in Rhodes … Anyway, when you travel overseas these days, whether you are spending euros or yen, you stop doing the arithmetic and just pay.
On a fine morning, I boarded the ferry at 8am with a group of psychologists from all over the world. Freudians, Jungians, Gestaltists and Rogerians were all thrown together. The conversation was interesting.
We pulled out of Rhodes with its gorgeous medieval castle and city walls, and pretty soon the scenery became a lot more mundane as we passed the Dodecanese — one uninhabited volcanic island after another. The group is made up of 162 islands, with only 26 of them inhabited.
The boat was packed, mostly with Greek tourists — it was school holidays in Greece. Sitting downstairs, inside, meant one didn’t see much. Sitting upstairs on the deck meant sharing with a lot of enthusiastic smokers. The psychologists were eagerly talking shop and I contented myself catching the breeze while peering over the side.
As we approached Symi, oohs and aahs broke out. I soon saw why. Cute,