– sulphur mines, fiery red rocks and moonscapes –
This is my final post on Milos – the best for last! The island is so, so beautiful in a very raw way. The winds whip around it relentlessly for days at a time and the sun bears down hard all day. It’s no surprise that the island is parched and dusty and can’t support much life. Anything that can manage to grow here is squat, withered and hardy – plant or animal.
The island’s origins are volcanic and it’s been mined since Neolithic times. We could only see some open cut mines from a distance, with most of today’s mining taking place in parts of the island which aren’t accessible to the public. But there are remnants of old mining activity everywhere. It’s not unusual to see great chunks removed from eroded hills, exposing rock of the most glorious hues. And dotted throughout the island are small caves carved into rock faces, where the locals would live and work removing rock and splitting or grinding it into mineral products for transport off the island.
Sulphur was one of the island’s main exports. One of the island’s prettiest beaches, Paleochori, is located around the coast from a now-extinct sulphur mine. The rock face behind the beach is loaded with all kinds of minerals, including sulphur, which makes for some beautiful colour striations. There’s also a restaurant here which cooks its meat and seafood in a hot spring – unfortunately we were there a few hours before lunchtime so we didn’t get a chance to try out the food!
While we were there Niran took a dip. The beach is pebbly rather than sandy, which makes for sore tootsies! Apparently, the shore line dips down more quickly than in Australia and Niran reckoned the water was warm and somehow more buoyant. It turned out to be the widest stretch of beach that we saw during our time in Greece.
After spending some time at the beach, we decided to drive around the coast to the abandoned sulphur mine. It’s on an old dirt track, which isn’t very well sign-posted – perhaps to discourage visitors, though there seemed to be a lot of people in the know on the day we were there. Most of them had come to swim at the nearby beach rather than visit the mine.
When we saw the state of the road we decided to stop and tackle the rest of it by foot. With hindsight, we shouldn’t have lost heart. Had we taken the plunge down the steep, winding dirt road at least it would have saved us the hot and thirsty walk back up later!
But every cloud has a silver lining (or so you like to think…). We caught sight on these workers’ caves on the way down:
An ancient old mine:
And then caught this view on the other side of the hill:
And of course, we had the time to admire some panoramic views of the old mine itself:
OK!… you’re saying to yourself…when is she going to stop banging on about all this geological stuff and show me something else! Well, I will…for just a moment…before I get back to some more geological stuff. See how considerate I am!
Here’s a panorama for your temporary delectation (which I wasn’t able to fit in anywhere else!). Milos is the caldera of an extinct volcano, so what you see in the distance is not another island, but Milos itself as it’s shaped like a big “U” – most of that side is inaccessible and parts are still being mined, but that makes it ever so more tempting to visit!
Now back to that geological stuff…oh, I guess I never stopped!!!
In terms of dramatic landscapes perhaps some of the most beautiful were actually near the house where we stayed. The road up to the house (located in Areti), was fairly precarious but passed through some gorgeous landscape. That’s our house there on top of the hill:
And this is what we drove through every day to get there. The colours at sunset were surreal.
In the bottom corner you can probably just make out our local beach, Platiena. It was fairly popular, and especially beautiful around sunset.
We’re not great beach-goers but Niran promised himself that he would have a dip there at least once before we left – this was early one morning before all the crowds arrived:
Another popular “beach” was Pachena. I use the term advisedly because it really was no more than a patch of sand! But it’s amazing what lengths some people will go to. There was a huge warning sign on the cliff above this beach warning about the risk of falling. Anyone who’s been to Greece will know that warnings are rare – there isn’t really a concept of public health and safety here – it’s your responsibility to use your common sense. So you can imagine that when you see a sign like this – they REALLY mean it! Doesn’t stop everyone wanting to get down there though! It took this girl about 10 minutes to go down – mostly on her bum and screeching all along the way. He tried to help her down for a while but I think he’d lost patience by this stage:
Close to here was also Sarakiniko Beach. I know I’ve posted on this one before, but it’s truly amazing and after my first post we returned one morning to see if we could get some nice sunrise shots. We were a little too late, but I don’t think it would have matched up to the sunset anyway – the only plus at this time of day was the lack of crowds.
By the end of the day, the light has a completely different impact on the landscape:
And as I’ve mentioned before, it becomes like a moonscape:
Which leaves me on the perfect subject to finish this post. The sunsets. Everyone needs to come to Milos to experience some of the world’s most beautiful sunsets. These photos only hint at the real thing…most of them taken from our holiday house….nothing more to say..
See all my other posts on Milos Island here
