A Boat Trip

Dawn breaks over Kea and the port of Korissia is fragrant with salt and coffee. A caïque’s engine warms up, the ropes are untied from the bollard, and suddenly the shore begins to drift away. From here on, Tzia will reveal itself to you in a way no road ever could.

A land best seen from the wave

Kea is the closest island of the Cyclades to Attica, yet its coastline hides a wildness you’d hardly guess from a map. Steep rocks, ravines that plunge abruptly into the sea, small oak woods that reach almost to the water’s edge. Sitting at the bow, you feel the breeze carrying the scent of oregano and thyme from the hillsides.

The caïque follows a route the locals know by heart, weaving between headlands that change name and colour depending on the hour of the day.

The twin bay of Kolona

Just outside Ioulida, the island’s capital, one of Kea’s most distinctive settings opens up: two bays meeting at a narrow isthmus of sand, with the islet holding the archaeological site of Vryokastro rising above. The caïque stops where the water shifts from deep blue to clear turquoise, and diving in feels almost inevitable.

Swimming between the two bays, you get the sense of treading on thousands of years of history — some of the earliest traces of human presence in the Cyclades were found here.

Hidden coves far from any road

The charm of a boat trip around Kea lies precisely where the paved road ends. Beaches with no access by land, pebble coves with turquoise-green waters, shores where your only company is the seagulls. The boat glides slowly along the western side, where the vegetation thickens and the landscape looks more like an Ionian forest than a Cycladic rock.

The silence here carries a different weight. It isn’t simply the absence of noise; it’s the sound of water slapping against the hull, fishermen’s voices carrying from afar, the creak of the ropes.

The wreck sleeping on the seabed

The waters around Kea also conceal one of the most significant shipwrecks in the Mediterranean: the Britannic, sister ship of the Titanic, which sank off the island in 1916. Without needing to dive, your guide explains from the deck the story of this colossus that now rests in the deep waters of the area, turning the trip into a small journey through time.

A little further on, the eye turns toward land: Panagia Kastriani, standing firm on a rock, and further still the white houses of Ioulida, built like an amphitheatre, invisible from the sea until you draw close enough.

On Tzia, sailors say, the sea keeps its secrets tighter than the land does.Traditional saying of local fishermen

The return with a taste of salt

As the caïque turns back toward the harbour, the sun sinks lower and the colours of the water shift once again — from turquoise to gold, from gold to deep violet. Somewhere in that moment you realise Kea needs no grand gestures to win you over; a single boat trip is enough to understand why this green island, so close to Athens yet so different from it, deserves to be discovered the slowest, most sensory way: from the sea toward the shore.