Pserimos (Kapari)

Map of Pserimos

The little island of Pserimos (or Kapari), 80 population-15km² extension, filled with remote beaches, is one of the smallest islands of Aegean and is located between Kalymnos and Kos. Belongs to Dodecanese complex. The northern end of the island called "Akra Vasiliki", while the southernmost "Akra Roussa" and the north "Akra Koraki." It got its name because of the homonymous plant that grows there.

Throughout the season, so many excursion boats arrive that they have had to build a second jetty at little Avlakia port. In midsummer, day-trippers blanket the main sandy beach that curves in front of Avlakia's thirty-odd houses and huge communal olive grove. Three other beaches are within easy reach: the clean sand-and-gravel strand at Vathy is a well-marked, 30minute walk east, starting from behind the Taverna Iy Pserimos. It takes 45 minutes of walking north along the main trans-island track to get to grubbier Marathounda, composed of pebbles. Best of all is Grafiotissa, a 300m-long beach of near-Caribbean quality half an hour's walk west of town.

Kasos

Map of Kasos

Kasos, the southrnmost Dodecanese island with 66km² and 1.100 inhabitants, less than 48km northeast of Crete, is very much off the beaten tourist track. Eever since 1824, when an Egyptian fleet punished Kasos for its active participation in the Greek revolution by slaughtering most of the 11.000 Kassiots, the island has remained barren and depopulated. Sheer gorges slash through lunar terrain relieved only by fenced smallholdings of midget olive trees. Spring grain crops briefly soften usually fallow terraces, and livestock somehow survives on a thin furze of scrub. The remaining population occupies five villages facing Karpathos, leaving most of the island uninhabited and uncultivated , with crumbling old houses poignantly recalling better days.

Halki

The little island of Halki (27km² extension and approximately 500 residents), a waterless limestone speck west of Rhodes, continues to count as a fully fledged member of the Dodecanese, even if its population haw dwindled from three thousand to barely three hundred n the century since its Italian rulers imposed restrictions on sponge-fishing.

While visitation has brought the island back to life, except at the height of summer Halki tends to be very quiet indeed. That said, in the middle of the day in high season, when day-trippers from Rhodes vastly outnumber locals in its broad quayside-cum-

square, Emborio can feel more like a stage set that a genuine town.