Milos beaches: Sarakino

Sarakino beach in Milos is amazing.  It's completely unlike any beach I've ever seen.  I would guess that there's not another beach like it in the world.  Before we went, I saw some websites describing the experience of Sarakino as like walking on the moon.  As I was leaving Sarakino that day, I had a slightly different feeling about it.  It was more like if scientists in the '40's had erroneously reported the existence of a beach on the moon, then Walt Disney had put his wildest imaginings into recreating the lunar beach experience on Milos.  I also had the idea that Disney's artists might have created their lunar beach prototypes with soft-serve vanilla ice cream.  Check out the pictures below to see where I got these impressions.

Here you can see the sort of valley that runs down to the beach at Sarakino.  There are cliff-like walls on the left, vegetation along the bottom and rocky hills to the right (mostly blocked by our heads).  Directly to the left of my forehead you can see the small inlet of water at Sarakino beach.

That picture is taken from where you'll park, so it's a bit of a walk down to the water.  The walk is physically pretty easy, but it takes a bit of trial and error to find the best way down to the beach.

Above you can see my wife, her sister and both her parents working their way down.

And here you can see a close up of one of the lava sculptures (soft-serve vanilla?) on the way down to the beach, and in the background, a glimpse of the beach itself.

This gives a better view of how the water runs from the sea in the upper right, in a narrow channel inland to the lower left.  The full length of this channel is roughly double what you can see here.

This is taken at the end of the channel, looking back toward the sea.  So you can see that swimming isn't really Sarakino's strongest feature.  We didn't go in the water at all.  But it has a big shallow area, which would be good for small children.  And it's well protected from the wind, which means it's swimmable even with heavy winds blowing out of the north, like we had the entire week we were in Milos.  Those winds were a problem at a lot of other northern beaches, but it made for some visually dramatic waves at Sarakino, as you can see below.

Below you can see a little to the East of the above shot, where the waves break against much higher natural sea walls.

And below are a couple of shots from the far opposite (west) end of Sarakino.

These natural sea walls extend a kilometer or more from east to west, with just a short break to form the beach inlet of Sarakino.  On the way back from the west toward the main beach there's this "toilet bowl" formation in the lava.  (I apologize for not conceiving a more complementary nickname, but nothing else seems quite as appropriate.)

The seawater flows from the lower left, under the lava and into the bowl-like formation to the right.  The picture below is a close up view showing the tunnel the water flows through.

Here's are a few pictures along my walk back from the west end of Sarakino.

This gives some sense of perspective as to how expansive Sarakino is.  All those little specks are people exploring the area, and there was still quite a bit of Sarakino behind my back when I took this picture.  (I'm facing east here.)

I have to say, this last one was really surprising-- a door carved into the side of the cliff wall.  I walked in and the tunnel went back maybe 20 feet before turning left.  Then that tunnel connected up with a few others going deeper into the rock.  I couldn't really figure out why the tunnels had been built.  There seemed to be lots of long hallways, but no rooms.  Someone else at the beach seemed to think it was an old mine.  If so, it was a very small scale mine, which suggests it is probably very old.  I don't know.  The mine story makes more sense than any explanation I can think of, but it still seems odd.

That's all I have for Sarakino.  It really is the most amazing of Milos' many great beaches.  Even if you're not going to swim, make sure to set aside at least an hour to explore.

Tripiti and the Festival of Fire

Tripiti is one of the cluster of cities that make up the main residential area of Milos.  Plaka is the main city and capital, and Triovasalos is the third in the cluster.  For the most part, Plaka is the main event, and I'll have another post covering its attractions.  But on the evening of the 31st of August, Tripiti is definitely the place to be in Milos.

There is a religious festival in Tripiti that night, and as far as I can figure out, it's called "Fires of Kyriafgoustou".  It's a pretty typical Greek panigiri (the 'g' is pronounced like a 'y', like in gyro), centered on a particular church, in this case the main church in Tripiti.  There are lots of food stands in the street with beer & wine, live music, and the main event, the fire.  This is basically just a bonfire in the square next to the church.  What makes it interesting is that crowds of children spend all night making daredevil jumps over the bonfire.  Even with that, I'm not quite sure why it was quite so exciting.  When I went on camping trips as a child, I think we would occasionally jump over the fire for fun.  It wasn't nearly as exciting as this fire-jumping in Tripiti.

I think part the difference may be that I'm now an American adult and I have different ideas about what is safe and appropriate behavior for children around bonfires.  I didn't have a problem with this, but in America I think every child in this picture would have been taken from their parents by child protective services.  Not only were there children jumping over bonfires, but this went on until midnight or later, and most of their parents were not obviously parenting.  I'm sure they were around.  They just weren't being very vigilant guardians.

I'm sure the lack of heavy handed parenting was part of the fun for the kids too.  You've got crowds of kids cheering you on.  Tourists are taking pictures.  How can you resist that kind of excitement?

So the parents are partying and the children are playing with fire.  The Greeks do know how to celebrate.  If you're going to be in Milos in late August, I highly recommend working this festival into your schedule.

Here's a picture of the souvlaki stand next to the church, which you may or may not find amusing.

 A couple of final points on Tripiti.  There was an incredibly cute bar near this square.  Aesthetically, it looked like a really cute combination of English country pub and quaint Barcelona bar, built in the middle of a Greek island village.  We didn't go, and I don't even know what it was called, but if you have some time in Tripiti, look out for it.

Also, parking was brutal the night of this festival.  If you can figure a way to get there without parking in Tripiti, do it.

And finally, we ate at a restaurant called Glaronissia in Tripiti that night.  It was very cute, but it was the worst food we had our whole week in Milos.  The two main dishes I tried (one lamb, one goat) were nothing but fat and bone.  Supposedly the third dish in our party was quite good.  Given the generally great restaurants in Milos, I'd suggest you don't waste a meal at Glaronissia.