Heidi Fuller-Love
I first visited Elafonisi Seashore at the southwestern nook of Crete 30 years in the past. Fleeing a messy dating, I purchased the cheap flight and ended up in Kastelli Kissamos, at the island’s northwestern tip.
I went to this hotel as a result of a Bo Derek lookalike with braided hair, who I met at the lumbering KTEL bus from Chania, stated it was once “glorious and unspoilt.”
It quickly turned into obtrusive why Kastelli was once so “unspoilt”: there was once little or no there, excluding a pebbly seaside dotted with German nudists and a few tavernas.
That night, over moussaka and a carafe of inexpensive wine, I were given speaking to some Scandinavian hippies who informed me about Elafonisi, a “magical” crimson seaside with in reality blue waters and hardly ever any vacationers – “so you’ll do what you favor.”
No buses went to the far off spot, so I took their recommendation and employed a moped from Stelios, who wore sandals carved from automotive tyres and owned the city’s auto restore store.
After bombarding me with the standard questions Greek males ask overseas ladies (“The place are you from?“, “Why aren’t you married with 5 kids?“) and advising me to get a just right native guy “to type you out”, Stelios passed over the keys, including: “You’ll be at Elafonisi in an hour.”
3 hours later, in a while after passing the Seventeenth-century Chrysoskalitissa Monastery, Elafonisi in spite of everything gave the impression at the horizon. Colored through the overwhelmed shells of amoeba-like, single-celled foraminifera, the blush-pink sands shimmered within the scorching solar reverse a dune-studded peninsula lined in honeysuckle-scented pancratium lilies (the similar ones held through Minoan dancers within the Knossos frescoes). There have been no sunbeds, no inns, no canteens promoting overpriced souvlaki, and just a handful of sunbathers. It was once magical.
3 many years on, Elafonisi’s key is smartly and really out. Previous this yr it was once named best possible seaside on the planet on TripAdvisor’s annual Travellers’ Selection Awards.
So has it retained its magic? I returned to determine.
A handy guide a rough take a look at TripAdvisor presented an early caution. Whilst Elafonisi Seashore’s reasonable score is an outstanding 4.4 (out of 5) – therefore the award – there are many naysayers, with many complaining about overcrowding.
“You pass all that manner and there’s no crimson sand, it’s horribly overcrowded, and it’s no longer even conceivable to swim correctly [because] it’s so shallow,” stated one disgruntled reviewer.
“It took us 4 hours to get right here and we stayed best half-hour. The one crimson I noticed within the sand had been the tens of millions of vacationer toes. Forestall your silly filters,” wrote any other. I ready for sadness.
With the exception of the glossy inexperienced facade of the espresso store that had changed Stelios’s storage, Kissamos was once just about as I remembered it.
“We used to visit Elafonisi with the youngsters – it was once heaven. However you gained’t to find Greeks there anymore – it’s develop into a vacationer entice,” stated a waiter in AntaMa, probably the most the city’s tavernas. “€20 or €30 for sunbeds? €5 for a bottle of water? We’ve been priced out.”
This time, I’d opted for a rent automotive as a substitute of a moped, however the highway to Elafonisi – with its sheer drops and blind bends – was once simply as dicey as I remembered, in all probability extra so on account of the heavy site visitors.
A few kilometres or so from the seaside, two guys in hi-vis jackets attempted to direct me into a parking lot. However I’d learn on-line evaluations advising me to forget about them, so I drove on and joined the chaos of vehicles and coaches jockeying for house in a parking lot a lot nearer to the seaside.
By way of now there have been dozens of other people lining the street – the are compatible and ready striding forward; feebler beachgoers staggering and dropping garments within the 38-degree warmth. Others had been returning, red-faced.
“Don’t hassle going – the entire seaside umbrellas had been rented out, so there’s no coloration. It’s insufferable,” a feminine vacationer informed me.
Some other vacationer stated he’d been informed there weren’t any sunbeds to be had, however then he’d noticed a excursion operator reserve dozens of beds for his purchasers who had been about to reach.
“You trip all this solution to get right here, and while you arrive there’s nowhere to sit down, no coloration, and the water’s so shallow you’ll’t even swim correctly – it’s probably the most hyped up and ugly puts I’ve ever been to,” he fumed.
After part an hour of strolling within the warmth, I made it to the seaside. Even if it was once overdue September, the wonderful near-deserted strand the place I as soon as spent a happy week was once filled with crimson our bodies, and the once-limpid seas churned with jet skis.
I didn’t even hassle having a swim – I spent the day at neighbouring Kedrodasos Seashore as a substitute, the place there have been cedar bushes for coloration, and the water was once simply as blue as Elafonisi’s, best with out the crowds.
“TripAdvisor was once the kiss of demise for Elafonisi,” my automotive rent corporate’s proprietor agreed after I returned my automobile.
“It’s like Santorini – other people come right here only for the footage.” And similar to Santorini, they’re destroying the entire attractiveness they got here to look.
The Telegraph UK
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