While summer holidaying on the beautiful island of Karpathos, we decided to break away from the usual routine and take a boat trip to Kasos. Planning a Karpathos to kasos day trip was pure nostalgia for us, as we had fallen in love with this quiet, untouched island years ago. This small, traditional island is just a stone’s throw away, and for us, this trip was pure nostalgia. We had visited Kasos seven years prior during another Karpathos summer beach holiday, and we instantly fell in love with its quiet, untouched charm.
📍Where Exactly are Karpathos and Kasos?
To give you some geographical context, Karpathos and Kasos are part of the Dodecanese island complex, located in the far southeastern corner of the Aegean Sea. They sit in the open, deep waters roughly midway between the famous holiday giants of Crete and Rhodes. Kasos holds the unique title of being the southernmost island of the Dodecanese, separated from its larger neighbor, Karpathos, by a mere 3-to-4 nautical miles of sea at their closest points. Because they are quite remote and tucked away from the Greek mainland, they have beautifully escaped the grip of mass tourism.
To be fair, we didn’t do much back then. We didn’t hire a scooter, so we stayed exclusively around the harbour area. We spent the day sipping drinks at the waterfront boulevard and wandering around the town—which is so wonderfully compact that you can see it all in less than 30 minutes. Eventually, we walked over to Emporios Beach, a quick 10-minute stroll from the port. We just swam on the beach, lounged on the sand, and had a long, lazy lunch at the local taverna until it was time to catch the boat back to Karpathos.
🛵 Things to Do in Kasos: Touring the Island on Two Wheels
This time around, we decided to step up our game. We rented a scooter right at the port and set off to tour the island. Kasos is quite small, meaning you can easily see most of it within about two hours. While the island boasts a number of breathtakingly beautiful beaches, many are highly remote. Reaching them by land requires driving down steep, winding, unpaved roads—something we weren’t quite up for on a scooter! Fortunately, these hidden gems are easily accessible by excursion boats. You see this a lot in Greece: small boats dropping anchor near a secluded shore. The sheer pleasure of enjoying an idyllic paradise with hardly anyone else around is a rare luxury these days.
Our island tour eventually guided us back to our old stomping ground, Emporios Beach. However, the moment we arrived, we noticed that time had marched on. What used to be a laid-back, sleepy spot with just one taverna and a few beach goers was now noticeably busier, with several new tavernas lining the shore. The nostalgia of the old days quickly ebbed away, so we decided to shift gears and head to the only other easily accessible, organised beach we saw on the island: Amoua Beach. It’s approximately a 10-minute ride from Fri.
By contrast, nothing much had changed back in the main harbour area of Fri. It looked exactly the same as it did seven years ago. It remains blissfully laid-back, quiet, and uncrowded. Just the way we like it. Most of the less known Greek islands untouched from mass tourism are able to remain the same. Luckily!
Here are some of the pictures I took of idyllic Fri and the waterfront area:
🏝️ Things to Do in Kasos: Finding Serenity at Amoua Beach
Unlike Emporios Beach, which is a comfortable walk from the port, reaching Amoua Beach absolutely requires your own wheels. It turned out to be the best decision of our trip. Amoua instantly gave us that magical, untouched feeling we had fallen in love with years ago.
The resident Ammoua Beach Bar is lovely, and we managed to secure a prime table right on the terrace overlooking the water. It is a quiet oasis where you can connect with nature, listen to smooth lounge music playing softly in the background, sit comfortably, and enjoy great drinks and food. It truly offers the best of both worlds—wild, rugged nature paired with organised facilities, without being overrun by crowds. Finding spots like this is becoming incredibly difficult these days, and it made us deeply grateful to have travelled so much and seen many places back when they were still well-kept secrets.
If you are holidaying in Karpathos, we highly recommend taking a day trip to Kasos to experience this slice of authentic Greece!
🚢 Planning Your Karpathos to Kasos Day Trip: Logistics & Tips
Planning a day trip to Kasos is straightforward if you know what to look for:
- The Boat Crossing: Kasos sits just about 18 nautical miles (around 34 kilometres) from Karpathos. Depending on the vessel you take—ranging from local daily excursion boats like the Kasos Princess to larger commercial ferries like Blue Star Ferries—the journey takes roughly 1 hour and 15 minutes.
- Buying Tickets: You can easily buy your boat tickets in advance online or pick them up directly at one of the local ferry ticket offices located in the town centre of Pigadia (Karpathos Town), which is exactly what we did.
- Renting a Scooter: Once your boat docks in the capital town of Fri, you will find a few local rental shops situated right around the harbour area. They rent out scooters and ATVs/quads quickly and effortlessly.
📜A Quick Glance into Kasos’ Rich History
Kasos is far more than just a sleepy fishing island; it holds a fiercely proud place in Greek history and officially bears the title of “Heroic Island of Kasos.”
Its nautical legacy stretches back thousands of years; Homer even mentioned Kasos in the Iliad for contributing ships to the Trojan War. By the 18th and 19th centuries, the island had transformed into a formidable maritime powerhouse with a massive trading fleet.
During the Greek War of Independence in 1821, the Kasiot sailors used their fleet to fiercely resist Ottoman rule. Tragically, this defiance led to a devastating retaliation. In June 1824, a massive Ottoman-Egyptian armada raided the island, destroying the fleet and killing or enslaving the vast majority of the population—a somber event remembered today as the Holocaust of Kasos. Following later periods of Italian and German occupation, Kasos was finally reunited with Greece in 1948. Today, you can still feel this proud heritage in the grand captain’s mansions and monuments dotted around the harbour.
Check out my post about Karpathos summer beaches here: Returning Home to the Greek Islands: A Slow Travel Guide to Southern Karpathos
Happy Travels!
With love from Jo
Travel Period: July 2025
Kasos (Dodecanese Islands), Greece