At last we can take our masks off! Well, when we are out of doors and in uncrowded places at any rate. This comes as a huge relief as Greece bakes under a long heatwave with daytime temperatures sizzling over 40 degrees centigrade. Masks are still to be worn in shops and other enclosed spaces as well as on public transport. The curfew has also been lifted and permitted numbers for restaurant tables have been raised from 6 to 10. If you click on the link above you will find all the latest concessions as well as here.
Symi is still very quiet. June without British tourists makes for an empty island. Some British property owners and regulars to the island have come, regardless of Greece’s on-going ‘amber’ status, as they are fortunate to be able to be flexible about return dates and have been fully vaccinated but British tourists as such are conspicuous by their absence. Even among the other nationalities it is rare to see new faces.
For current information about travel to Greece, go to www.travel.gov.gr which is the official government website. Testing requirements for different countries are still variable but you can be assured that the system on Symi I referred to in my previous blog is working well.
The ferry situation, on the other hand, has never been better. The Blue Star now serves Symi on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday (times and boats vary considerably. The Sebeco is running every day. Dodecanese Seaways comes through 3 or 4 times a week (Sundays are still variable) and the Stavros also comes through 4 times a week, twice in each direction. Greek Travel Pages is a good starting point for finding out what is going where when. Just type in your departure and arrival ports and the date you want to travel and it will give you a list of the options for that day.
Most of the beaches on Symi are now up and running or will be in a few days. Most of the hotels are now open, albeit with few guests. Right now not only do we have an abundance of ferries serving Symi but also a serious over-supply of accommodation of all kinds and a shortage of tourists to enjoy them.
Today’s Featured Image shows part of the spectacular view from the Constantinos View kantina, situated on the roadside on the way to Xisos and Panormitis. Open from midday until late with live music on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.
EDIT It has been brought to my attention that this is an entirely private initiative and has nothing to do with the pharmacies on Symi or the Symi clinic.
If you follow the various Symi forums on Facebook and other social media you may have already seen this announcement that came through yesterday, 6 June 2021.
It is now possible to book an appointment for someone to come to you at your accommodation on Symi to administer a test. The sample is then sent by ferry to Rhodes and you receive the results by email. They can do PCR, rapid test or self test, depending on what you require.
The platform to book this opens today and the website is www.kavada.gr/symi-island. The local contact is through Eleousa Lambrou and her mobile phone number is +30 6945 790035. She can be contacted through WhatsApp.
Please note, this has to be done by appointment and taking into account the ferry schedules and processing times so please don’t leave it to the last minute.
This post is more local news than photos. Once again I have dithered over writing because the situation keeps changing and it is difficult to stay up to date. This blog post is not definitive. By the time you read it things may have changed again.
First of all, PCR tests. I keep being asked about these. At the moment it is not possible to have them done on Symi. This is not because the authorities do not realise the need for this service, as some may think. The authorities on all the small islands are struggling with the same issue. The minimalist nature of medical services in the islands and sheer lack of funding is the problem. Normally tourists are unaware of the fact that the small islands have inadequate medical facilities. This is something we all have to live with all year round and is a constant source of frustration for residents. The list of helpful websites to contact to book testing appointments is here. The facilities have been extending their hours and so far the appointment system seems to be working.
Someone did recently manage to return to the UK with a prepaid antigen test which they brought with them from a UK vendor and self-administered under supervision via a smart device. Whether this is viable by the time you travel or acceptable for the country you return to is unknowable. A very useful link to check is this one on Aegean Air’s website. It is lists all the countries to which they fly and the entry requirements as well as the requirements for internal flights and they update as the information changes. Even if you are not flying with Aegean it is a good starting point for information. Just remember that they too cannot prophecise what the situation will be in a fortnight/month/September.
Secondly, ferries. We have lots of these this year. Symi has never had so many connections. The ANES passenger vessel Sebeco is running at least twice daily through the summer. The layout of the schedule is a bit confusing so read it carefully to make sure you are in the right part of the year and that you are looking at the time it is leaving rather than arriving. Blue Star ferries have just announced a fourth Symi route for the summer. This will be using the Blue Star 2 and comes through on Tuesday at wonderful times for Symiots – We hope it continues to leave Symi at 8 and leave Rhodes at 5 as those times are too good to be true!
The SAOS car ferry Stavros continues to come through Symi going north on Mondays and Thursdays and south on Tuesdays and Fridays. This connects us with Kos, Halki, Tilos and Nissyros. Heavily subsidised by the state, they are running special free passenger travel between certain islands during the shoulder periods so this is a very good deal. Dodecanese Seaways is also operating. Their days are a bit ad hoc and the weekend schedules change weekly at the moment so keep checking. As they are not subsidised, they can only afford to run routes that are profitable and they take charters, particularly on Sundays, which is why their weekend schedules tend to be erratic.
Another bit of ferry news worth noting is that Seajets have announced a new route three times a week connecting Rhodes with Crete via Halki and Karpathos. This will leave Rhodes at midday so you can leave Symi on the early Blue Star or Sebeco and arrive in Rhodes with enough time to make the Seajet Paros to Crete and be in Sitia, Crete by half past six in the evening. At the moment this route is not showing on their official website but their ticket office has already been set up inside the coffee shop in Akandia and this schedule below is circulating on social media.
The news that the EU is still out of bounds for British travellers is a serious blow for Greek tourism. June is traditionally a ‘British month’ for Greece. Here on Symi there have been a lot of cancellations and the only British travellers around are those who are flexible about their return dates or are not likely to be affected by the need to self-isolate for 10 days on their return, whenever that may be.
At time of writing only 25 of the 650 seasonal hotels on Rhodes have actually opened since Greece officially opened to international tourism on 14 May. Many who were intending to open in the course of June are now delaying until July which means more seasonal workers still don’t know if they have jobs or not. Those that are open are running on skeleton staff because they don’t have enough guests to cover their costs. Something to remember is that many holiday companies only pay the hotels long after the season has ended, which causes serious cash flow problems at the best of times.
A limited number of Russians are allowed to travel to Greece each week, as long as they have the correct vaccination information or a negative PCR test. The Greek media are full of the story of a Russian tourist who arrived with a negative PCR test and wound up on a respirator in ICU in northern Greece within a day of arrival. It would seem that his test paper was fraudulent as his family back home in Russia were all ill with Covid-19 so the chances of his test result being accurate are small.
Israelis have been able to travel freely to Greece since April, as long as they are vaccinated, but the current unrest in the region is discouraging people from travelling. There have been strong tourism links between Rhodes and Israel in recent years, particularly package holidays connected with the casino which is now feeling the pinch.
And so it goes on.
The hotels on Symi are slowly opening but once again until they are sure that they have guests there is no rush. There are some hopes of a surge in domestic tourism as the weekend of 20 June is the Greek Orthodox Pentecost long weekend. More restaurants and cafes are opening up gradually. We are seeing a few day-trippers from Rhodes now, coming in on either the Sebeco or the Zeus. 50-100 people tops so not really enough to warrant opening up all the waterfront shops in the hope that they will stop to buy something and they are mostly part of guided groups.
Adriana Shum 