Greece
Tilos
Dwarf elephant bones in a clifftop cave, a wind turbine powering most of the island.
Dwarf elephant bones in a clifftop cave, a wind turbine turning above the ridge, and a few hundred people on an island drawing most of its power from sun and wind. Tilos runs the prehistoric and the pioneering side by side, inside a Natura 2000 refuge of more than 160 bird species.
The TILOS project paired wind, solar and battery storage, making the island a Mediterranean pioneer in running mainly on its own renewables. Charkadio Cave yielded the remains of extinct dwarf elephants, shown in the small palaeontology museum at Messaria. Marked paths join Megalo Chorio, the abandoned Mikro Chorio, hill chapels and beaches, and conservation keeps the visitor economy deliberately low-key.
Solo
Marked island paths, fossil history and quiet villages with enough time to notice the landscape between them.
Couple
Small beaches, an evening among Mikro Chorio’s ruins and a gentle circuit shaped by nature and local innovation.
- The turbine on the ridge is the island's pride — a Mediterranean first in island-scale renewables.
- Dwarf elephants the size of ponies once lived here; their bones came out of Charkadio Cave.
- Mikro Chorio was abandoned mid-century, and its stone shells stand open to walkers.
- Birdlife is the quiet spectacle — over 160 species recorded across one small island.
Goat stew with wild capers foraged from the hillsides, cooked slowly by the island's small community.
Fresh fish from the day boat, grilled simply with olive oil and served under a mulberry tree.
Manuel Antonio
Costa Rica
Capuchins patrol the sand beneath dozing sloths where rainforest walks into the ocean.
Tortuguero
Costa Rica
Jungle canals where green sea turtles haul onto black volcanic sand under a moonless sky.
Kadavu
Fiji
Manta rays circle the world's fourth-largest barrier reef, off villages the road barely reaches.
Monuriki
Fiji
The island from Cast Away truly belongs to crested iguanas brought back from the brink.
Nisyros
Greece
Walk into a live volcanic caldera where sulphur vents hiss through cracked earth.
Kastellorizo
Greece
Greece's most remote island — a speck of paint-peeled colour two kilometres from the Turkish coast.
Samothrace
Greece
Waterfalls crash through ancient forests on the Aegean's highest peak, where the Winged Victory was found.
Methoni
Greece
A stone causeway from a Venetian fortress ends at a lone tower standing in the sea.