Batsi, Andros Greece

Andros Holidays Guide.

Andros is a beautiful, rarely visited and generally quite peacefull Cyclades Island - easily reached from the mainland, a holiday on Andros is well worth considering.

The Greek Holiday Island of Andros is located in the Cyclades group and there is no commercial airport on the island. In recent times Andros has gone off the map for many package holiday companies i.e. it's hard to find a complete two week holiday to the island - this does mean you have to do it yourself to a large extent. The obvious way to fly into Athens (and perhaps do a days sightseeing?) and then take the 120 minute or so ferry ride from Rafina over to Gavrio (there is a regular bus service from Athens airport down to the port of Rafina costing just a few Euros). Because Andros is on the main ferry routes another option might be to take a cheap holiday booked on a nearbye island (for instance Mykonos) and then go off for a little island visiting or hopping for a few days. Many people going on holiday to the Greek Island of Andros probably stay in Batsi which has plenty of tourist accommodation on offer although this may well be harder to find in August as the Greeks come over on holiday from nearby Athens. We found this Greek Island really nice to visit for our holiday with lovely scenery for sightseeing and touring, loads of wildlife, the usual (if not better than usual) friendliness from the islanders, and also one of the cheapest Greek Islands we have been to from the point of daily costs i.e. food and wine. In our view up to now the ultimate Greek Island for wildlife/scenery/old buildings/churches and particularly the paths and tracks available for walking (my wife especially loves walking along walled paths/moni-paths) had to be Paxos but the large but quiet Greek Island of Andros has to be a close second.

The Beaches are excellent - please see our Andros Beaches topic for photos and information on these.

Buses: The bus service on Andros is cheap and reliable but not that frequent - as an example there are 07:05 and 10:20 services to Andros Town (buy the tickets on the bus) which takes about 45 minutes and the last bus back is at 15:00 - there are later buses back on Friday and Sunday evenings however at 19:30. These times were for May which is quite early in the holiday season so probably more buses will be put on in June/July/August.
Taxis: You can find a taxi rank on Batsi at the seafront by the square and the tax-drivers can often be found sitting around in the taverna opposite most of the time during quiet periods.
Car and Scooter Hire: A small car such as a Daewoo costs about 45 Euros a day (for a 5 day hire) including full insurance (this has a 250 Euro payment due on top if any accident/damage is your fault). Batsi only seemed to have one car hire place and we thought their rates were rather expensive - also for a one day only hire they additionally had a per kilometre charge. One of the taverna owners suggested we go over to Gavrio where there are several car hire companies - thus competition - and this proved worthwhile even after paying the 10 Euro taxi trip. We hired from Tassos - and they were quite happy to let us leave the car in Batsi at the end of the hire which was good. There are two quite big scooter hire firms in Batsi(located just by the bridge). There are apparently only 4 or 5 petrol stations on this Greek Island, known ones by us are: one just as you enter Chora on the main road, one at Gaviro on the road towards Batsi and one on the Batsi by-pass road. (Please note buses times as well as prices quoted above are very liable to change and are mentioned for a general guidance only).

Roads and Tracks (driving around Andros): A lot of the roads connecting the villages are tarmac - apart from the main Batsi to Chora road these roads are often quite narrow, very hilly and full of hairpin bends. The smaller roads are prone to huge potholes in places - quite often on the invisible side of a hairpin bend so you have trouble avoiding them. Goats and sheep are everywhere and seem to take great pleasure in sauntering across the road just as you are driving past - there again they are the locals and you are the visitor and what is the hurry anyway?. As per normal the farmers in their pick-up trucks have the usual small Greek island habit of driving in the middle of the road and -maybe- only moving over at the last minute seemingly surprised that anyone else is around. The tracks really vary in their condition - one of the problems with a car as opposed to a jeep hire is the small cars have very little ground clearance. Certainly some of the Andros beaches which are accessible by track in the north and south of the island are not any good in a car because of the deep ruts. Also bear in mind how hilly Andros is so that the tracks often drop/climb very very steeply and can be very sandy or scree/rocky due to rock-fall. Note the road from between Remata and Arni which branches off to Vourkoti is shown as a track on maps but is now tarmac.

Tracks and Paths for walking: Walking and hiking is very hard, the island is seriously hilly with quite often 500 to 800 metre climbs involved during some of the walks. The moni path system is extensive although some have collapsed and also can be very overgrown with thorns and thistles - having a trekking pole is quite useful. Nevertheless there is a very good holiday walking opportunity on the island, you just have to sometimes take the information on the maps with a pinch of salt. There are a couple of maps available for Andros Greece plus several books which you can buy in Batsi. Road Edition no.101 ISBN 960-8481-10-4 and also Andros Touring and Hiking Guide (available on the island).

Scenery - Sightseeing and Touring on Andros: The scenery on this Greek Island is outstanding - the island is full of old sometimes ruined buildings, old water mills and so on; the moni path walls have been built in an unusual way, i.e. conventional rock stacking but they also use huge slabs of flat perpendicular rock in between. The amount of churches dotted around is unbelievable - some of them are very old, possibly there is one church for each islander? The wildlife (do you count sheep and goats??) can be seen everywhere - from buzzards, eagles, kestrels to smaller birds, millions of lizards which scatter off just in front of you as you walk up a path; snakes are around dozing on the paths and rocks in the sun but they are quite small (the largest we saw was about 18 inches) and anyway they clear off quickly when they hear you coming. Then there are huge bees, butterflies and moths as well as the usual wildlife found near streams, springs and wet boggy areas. In some of the island's villages there are quite long levada runs - these are always so fascinating to walk along as well as being great for a quick splash/cool down when the weather is hot. Along the paths you are often accompanied by what must be totally miles of small rubber pipes which are used to transport the water intercepted from the springs high up in the hills back down to the villages and farms.

Andros - Batsi: Whilst on holiday on Andros we stayed at Batsi which is a nice quiet little seaside place - many of the tavernas were only just opening or had not even done so (early June). Typical meal of starter and main meal plus a litre jug of really nice house wine cost around 30 to 35 Euros per person. This is a pretty little town and it is well worth having a wander around the small alleys - don't miss the levada's and springs which you can find by walking up an alley which leaves from the corner of the square.

The town has it's own quite long sandy beach plus another smaller beach on the edge of the town - other Andros beaches on the way to Gavrio are quite an easy walk along the road and are also mostly sandy. There are several supermarkets, several local bakers/cake shops, a fruit and vegetable shop and also several gift shops but the town is really very small and not commercialised at all. The only time it seemed to get remotely busy was on the weekends - this is when the folk from Athens come over on the ferries - but presumably in August the town may well be terribly busy.

Ormos Bay
Moni Sotoris
Moni Aghia Irini
Moni Aghios Nikolas			On the right are photos of Aladino Bridge
Churches Towers Dovecots
Springs

As you travel around the Greek Island of Andros - which is one of Greece's larger islands - you go through various valleys.

As is seemingly always the case on Andros everything is all very scenic - these pictures above were taken around the Ateni Valley.

You may also be interested in looking at our Andros Walks or our Andros Beaches and/or our Andros Batsi Circular Walks topics.

External Links:
Andros by Greeka
Andros Greece Travel Guide from Greek Island Postcards