Tag: Responsible Travel

Kythnos, as one of the 21 major islands of the Cyclades, has the privilege of preserving typical Mediterranean nature in all its beauty and wilderness. The two characteristics that make Kythnos one of the greatest places to experience nature in Cyclades is that first, mainstream tourism hasn’t yet discovered the island so everything here is the same as it was decades before, and second, Kythnos is still an island with very few visits by scientists and the great discoveries of flora and fauna are yet to come. Kythnos is 100 square kilometers (39 square miles) in area and has a coastline of about 100 kilometers (62 miles) with more than 70 beaches, many of which are still inaccessible by road. The relief of the island is sharp, with small valleys among rocky outcrops. The coast line is rugged, with numerous small bays and a lot of caves. These sea caves are used as refuges by the monk seals Monachus monachus. At the altitude of 200 meters there is a large plateau. It is covered by aegean phrygana and maquis vegetation (a shrubland biotope found in the Mediterranean region, typically consisting of densely growing evergreen shrubs). Throughout the island we can find traditional stone walls and terracing, the, so called “xerolithies”. These terraces were made from the ancient years in order to hold the soil for cultivation. Nowadays they are refuges for many species of the herpetofauna (reptiles), and habitats for rare flowers from bee-orchids to fritallaries. In the west, there are two shallow inlets with a special geomorphological formation called “tombolo”. The tombolo, which is named Kolona, is joined with the mainland by the islet of Aghios Loukas. This tombolo is one of the few (only about twenty) in Greece. In these two inlets there is a narrow sandy beach