Koufonissi Beaches
Koufonissi has some of the best beaches of the Greek islands. The are sandy and great for families with children, since they are shelving and calm. The island is tiny, so just take a walk and find your own spot. Many thing the lagoon Pori is the most beautiful place. Nudists go to the area after Charokopou. There is also a boat that goes to some smaller islands with excellent beaches outside Koufonissi.
Nightlife
There are a couple of places in Chora, but don't expect any wild nights. Here, you just have a cold drink, enjoy some good music and the surroundings.
Food
The taverns are in Chora, and they all serve good traditional Greek food, plus pizza and pasta for children.
Shopping
There are a few souvenir shops in Chora, as well as an art gallery where you can get handpainted t-shirts and paintings. There are also a few shops with antiques and miscellaneous things, useful and not.
Getting Around
Walking! There are no cars or mopeds for rent, and no local bus, but the island is tiny and almost flat, so getting around by foot is no problem.
Getting There
For obvious reasons, this small island has no airport, so the best thing to do is to go to Naxos, Mykonos or Paros and get a ferryboat from there. Be careful on your last day - to be on the safe side it is a good idea to leave the island the day before the departure, since the ferryboat might be canceled because of bad weather, leaving you stranded.
The history of Koufonissi Island
Koufonissi is separated from the rest of Crete by a narrow strip of sea, but it’s often rough here, so boat trips may be cancelled unless the weather is really fine.
Koufonissi is one of a group of five small desert islands (the others are Makroulo, Stroggylo, Trachila and Marmara), a handful of land in the sea, often collectively called Koufonissia. Along with Gavdos and Chryssi, these are the southernmost pieces of Greek soil, the southernmost frontiers of Europe.
The ancient island of Lefki was an important shipping port thanks to its ideal location for shell- and sponge-fishing, and is thought to have played a major role in the Minoan economy.
Inscribed plaques found at Zakros and Magnesia in Asia Minor record conflicts between the cities of Itanos and Ierapytna (ancient Ierapetra) over the ownership of Lefki. One of these plaques is found in the façade of the monastery church at Toplou. The dispute ended in 132 AD, when Lefki was ceded to Itanos, to which it historically belonged.
In 1976, archaeologist Nikos Papadakis excavated the island for the first time. The whole island is strewn with Hellenistic and Roman ruins. The most impressive find is a theatre, discovered with its stage and hyposcenium, as well as fragments of wall plaster.
The ancient theatre at Koufonissi Coins and pottery have also been found here. Houses have been excavated 200 m from the theatre, indicating that there was a simple settlement here: needles, seashells and fishing equipment show that it was probably a fishing port.
However, the discovery of murex shells shows that porphyry, an extremely valuable purple dye, was also produced here.
At the south end of Lefki Island were found parts of an ancient temple and pieces of marble from some colossal statue which gazed out over the Libyan Sea.
At the west end of the island there are caves and hollows which were used as chapels in the Byzantine period, and in which inscriptions and engravings of saints are preserved.
