Rhodes walking vacation, guided

Planet

We ask our guests to respect the beautiful environment in which we live, by not picking local flowers/plants, sticking to the paths/trails and taking the rubbish with us.

Big part of the trip's agenda is active, thus it involves people power and have a relatively limited impact on the environment (walking, wind sailing).

When visiting Valley of Butterflies, we provide you with information about how not to disturb the butterflies, as over the last few years the population of the “Panaxia” species has been constantly in decline due to several factors, one of the most important being the disturbance by visitors. Visitors should not be denied the enjoyment of viewing the butterflies at rest, but it is prohibited to disturb them in any way (hand clapping, whistling, touching, yelling, etc.).

As this tour involves spending time with the marine world (sailing day trip/snorkeling/swimmin), we are in the perfect position to provide well-educated guidance:
- Upon booking we send you a link to a video to learn more about protecting the Mediterranean Sea.
- We also give you guidelines about how to behave when you dive or swim

As an island with a coastline of approximately 220klm, we have the duty to come up with ways to cut down on single-use plastics, by offering alternative solutions to plastic cutlery or water bottles. Here are some of our ideas:
- When we have the sailing trip, we suggest a refillable water cooler on deck instead of a cooler full of disposable water bottles.
- We have ensured for you who book with us a 10% percent discount on Grayl products, the world known number one company in purification and filtration. This way we create awareness for the plastic reduction and contribute in a general manner for the ecological consciousness of our guests.

When we swim and find plastic bottles or waste, the guides encourage you to pick them up.

We try to eliminate our environmental print caused by our operation:
- We sort our waste and recycle.
- We do not print any of our informational material (brochures, guidelines, etc.) unless we are asked to do so by you. We send you everything using the “online” version.

People

We support the local economy
- We are locally-based, the owners are locals and live here too.
- only recruit local guides and employees.
- We are only cooperating with local external partners (local accommodations, sailing boats, “taverns”/restaurants, etc.).

We take local product-selection criteria very seriously and try to include Rhodes’ less known aspects:
- When we offer lunch/dinner, the menu includes local dishes of traditional cuisine.
- We promote the local products produced in Rhodes. In every trip/tour, we offer to our guests the product (energy bar) with a designation of origin, named “melekouni”.
- During lunch or dinner, we offer locally produced drinks, such as Rhodian wine and “souma”. Rhodes was one of the first Greek islands to engage in the cultivation of grapes. It has been said that Rhodes was the first island in the Aegean to cultivate a vineyard and make wine. It’s no coincidence that today's wines are very good too.

We include in the trip's agenda a visit in a Rhodian-style pottery workshop, in our effort to preserve a traditional yet dying art.
- Rhodes is known for its long tradition in ceramics and pottery since the ancient world. However, nowadays many factories have closed and those that still survive are struggling, as the market for these traditional products wanes. Many, fear that traditional Rhodes-style pottery is a dying art with only a handful of families still producing some hand thrown and hand painted pieces.
- We are in close cooperation with these families and we include in this tour a hand-on pottery at their small family run local pottery workshops. Most of our guests find it so special and interesting to see what only a few Greek families still do and this way we altogether help local ceramics to preserve.

Let’s save Lindos’ Donkeys!
- In Lindos village, one of the most popular and picturesque villages of the island, there is the tradition to go up the hill to the Acropolis of Lindos sitting on a donkey.
- We are not comfortable with the fact that the poor animal struggles up and down 600 steep steps carrying the weight of a human body under the very hot Lindian sun.
- So, we ask our guests not to be part of this kind of cruelty and encourage them to go on foot. Although we don’t believe that people should be prized for being conscious, to make it easier for them, we give them a free parking slot in the only one private parking which is located as close as it gets to the Acropolis of Lindos.