This travel story about a little-visited Greek island originally appeared in Encounters magazine.
The sea is bubbling off the pebbly southern shore of Kos, and a small but noisy crowd of people are bathing in a patch of shallow water marked out by stones. What’s going on?
We didn’t expect to find thermal springs at the end of our hike across the island. As we join the crowd and lower ourselves into the strangely warm seawater, laughing as hot currents mingle with cold, one of the bathers tells us that this coast is volcanic, and warm waters spill forth at temperatures of up to 60 degrees.
An idea is planted. Days later, we are boarding a morning ferry for the two-hour crossing to Nisyros, a tiny island to the south which is a sleeping volcano.
As part of the Dodecanese islands, Nisyros has been controlled by the Ottomans, the Italians and the Knights of St John, but its character is undeniably Greek. As our boat pulls into Mandraki, the main town (population 600), we check off the icons of Aegean island life: a domed church, waterfront cafés with wooden chairs and moustachioed patrons, blue-and-white flags, fishing boats, a whitewashed monastery on the hillside behind.
With no airport, Nisyros is not visited by package tourists. We call in at the first hotel we find on the promenade – it’s a family-run place that includes a breakfast of coffee, fruit and yoghurt, and we get a room with a wrought-iron balcony overlooking the water.
On a little beach opposite, we watch a gaggle of white ducks go for a paddle in the sea. The island has little fresh water, and every resident must adapt. When we walk past again an hour later, the sun is stronger and the ducks are taking shade together under a beach umbrella.