I have a terrible habit of forgetting useful things.

By far the most beneficial skill I’ve learned and then forgotten is how to swim.

I came to Rhodes with my girlfriend for our anniversary, with zero designs on learning anything.

A few swims, a few cocktails, and some easy reading to lower my cortisol and improve my rosacea (or catch “Rhodesacea” should I stay in the sun for too long).

I did all that, but I also taught myself how to swim again in one of the calmest, clearest bays in the Mediterranean, and even managed some amateur underwater photography in what must be one of the best spots for snorkelling in Greece.

Haraki, Rhodes

Haraki (also spelled “Charaki”) is a quiet fishing village about halfway down the southern coast of Rhodes, perhaps 50 minutes from the airport and 20 minutes north of Lindos.

A long, dusty lane continues for about half a mile from the main road before petering out onto a quiet crescent of a promenade.

There are no back roads, no cars, and no hawkers.

It’s a peaceful place, with a permanent population of perhaps 200 people at most, overlooked by the crumbling ruins of Feraklos Castle.

Well away from boozy Brits and nightclubs, but not without cocktail bars, great seafood restaurants, and friendly tavernas, it makes for a superb romantic European break.

A concierge at a fashion hotel in Rhodes’ old town told me that Haraki is where the locals come for their day trips—always a great sign.

Its best feature is, by some stretch, the sheltered bay where I learned how to swim again.

Why Haraki Bay is perfect for snorkelling

It took several brave thrashings about, and more than a few gulps of saltwater, before my confidence was high enough to get in the sea and enjoy myself.

But this part of the Eastern Mediterranean just off the coast of Turkey is incredibly salty, which makes you very buoyant and provides great assistance if you’re not a confident swimmer.

The trick is to keep calm, engage your core, and keep it as parallel to the waterline as possible.

The dissolved salt keeps you afloat, and there are no giant waves breaking over your head.

At first, I never strayed further than my own depth, and whenever I grew tired, I rolled onto my back and popped my hips up, which is a great beginner tip for swimming in open water.

Once I’d learned how to reliably roll onto my back, my confidence grew, and I headed further and further out.

My technique is still awful—an inefficient hybrid of breaststroke and front crawl—but it’s enough to swim a few hundred metres over to the best rock pools.

And the trick of rolling onto your back is perfect if a boat zooms by in the distance and sends its wake towards you.

My girlfriend is an ecologist, and she astutely points out that while there are certainly more biodiverse and magnificent snorkelling spots in the world, they are invariably much harder to reach—or prohibitively protected.

Haraki Bay, by contrast, is the perfect combination of accessible and interesting:

• The marine life is diverse and pretty
• It’s not protected like a coral reef
• The pebbly beach keeps the waters clear
• It’s not full of swimmers, floats, and pedalos all day
• Rhodes is relatively cheap and easy to get to
• There are fresh water showers on the beach
• The bay is shallow
• The hyper-saline sea is buoyant

All of this is why Haraki Bay is perfect if you’re new to swimming, new to snorkelling, or nervous in the sea.

What you will see while snorkelling in Greece

You won’t find the full cast of Finding Nemo when snorkelling in Greece, but there are still plenty of colourful characters drifting beneath the gentle swell of the Mediterranean.

The moment you put your face in the water, the colours sharpen and the bay reveals its cast of characters.

You’ll see:

• Sea urchins
• Lionfish
• A harmless sea snake or two
• Crazy little schools of neon-blue fish
• Larger, jet-black fish moving in slow formation

Lionfish aren’t native to the Mediterranean. They’ve slowly migrated north from the Arabian Sea through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

Being ambush predators, they lurk in the shadows between rocks.

Their fantastically gaudy spines make them easy to spot and easy to avoid.

Their sting is venomous, so it’s wise to keep your distance from them.

The sea urchins are of the long-spined variety. Against the sandy bottoms and often hanging out in groups, they’re easy to see and surprisingly mobile.

Once we found rocks that the marine life loved, we tended to swim back to them on separate days—our “technique,” if you will.

But there was no guarantee the urchins would still be there.

Shallow water is the best for spotting fish

Not only is it the safest spot, but the shallow water is where we see the most fish.

Presumably the shallow water helps protect them from larger predators and provides food, meaning all you have to do is paddle out to spot them.

The sunlight reaches the seabed, making every fish, rock, and plant easy to pick out.

There’s no need to dive or chase anything—we just float with our heads submerged, breathing out slowly while we look around.

The fish seem far less shy when we’re motionless above them.

The trick is to catch them at an angle where the sunlight hits their broad side; seen like this, they’re impossible to miss.

My snorkelling gear, if you can call it that

We didn’t invest much money in swimming or snorkelling gear.

Mainly because we’re here on our 10th anniversary, and most of our budget is set aside for fancy meals and other activities across the island.

But having visited Rhodes before and seen how perfect the sea might be for underwater photography (even if the trip was somewhat spoiled by a massive wildfire), we figured it would be a shame not to capture it.

So we brought a cheap, off-brand “WOLFANG” underwater action camera from Amazon that could capture 1080p photos (about 2 MP, which stands for megapixels) and record video at 60 frames per second.

It cost around £60 and came with an underwater case.

I fashioned a long lanyard out of garden cord (it needs to be long so you can hold the camera out in front of you).

It’s difficult to see the camera screen underwater through goggles (but the lens is unaffected), so taking photos is mostly “shoot and hope for the best.”

But that’s not a massive issue.

The camera connects to our phones, and it’s very fun to sit with a beer after a dip and sort through the best photos, deciding which ones are keepers.

Goggles and snorkels are available from the few shops along the promenade, so there’s no need to buy those in advance.

A pair of cheap pool shoes make walking on the hot, pebbly beach much easier—and if you’re not a confident swimmer, they add extra buoyancy.

If you are a strong swimmer, you can pack flippers like my girlfriend to swim further and dive deeper.

Morning and evenings are the best times to snorkel

Even though the location is perfect for it, you can’t swim all the time.

It’s often fun to simply bask in the heat and read a little, looking out across the bay towards the exotic lands of Egypt, Cyprus, and Lebanon.

The bay has moods throughout the day, and watching them change is half the pleasure of being here.

In the early morning, the sea is as quiet as a millpond and takes on a pale steely-blue colour.

Only the tiniest breakers lap the shore, and one or two swimmers invariably take advantage of this calm for their morning dip.

With no traffic or roads to cross, you can wake up, walk out of your apartment barefoot, and get straight into the sea before your morning coffee.

Overnight, all the sand particles settle, making the sea crystal clear. My girlfriend got some of our best photos on her early swims.

By late morning, boats arrive from other towns on the island. They ferry passengers to Haraki Bay so they can gawk at how lovely it is before heading off again.

Other boats whizz by in the middle distance, and all this activity agitates the water, increasing the number of breakers like an elevated pulse.

By midday, the overhead sun saturates all the colours, turning the sea a vivid shade of sapphire and painting the coastline a rich, sandy yellow.

Day-trippers arrive, families play water games, woggles bounce, and cutlery clinks as tavernas prepare for lunch.

By 4pm, the heat becomes too much, and the bay empties. Everyone naps. The afternoon lull is perfect for a beer and more reading in the shade.

By early evening, the earth’s shadow rises on the horizon, and the low sun paints everything a calm pinky-purple.

It makes everything in the shallows glow, and it’s a great time to snorkel again.

In the cooler temperatures, you can stay out for much longer, often until the sun has disappeared below the horizon.

You can hire a boat

Haraki is quiet, but not a ghost town.

Walk to the far end of the promenade, and you can hire a boat from Happy Boats Haraki without needing a licence.

We rented one for the day as a romantic treat and a chance to explore beyond the bay.

Our favourite spot was a group of islets off Stegna, north of Haraki. The shallows between them teem with fish.

It’s a great place to anchor up and slip into the water, drifting between the rocks like you’ve stumbled into a private aquarium.

Or you can head in the other direction, towards Lindos. It’s a fun place to visit, but there is far too much boat traffic due to the popular St. Paul’s Bay to make a great spot for underwater photography.

The 7-kilometre swim to Agia Agathi

Agia Agathi is an outrageously beautiful beach just next door to Haraki.

A rocky cliff separates the two.

Unlike Haraki’s pebbles, Agathi beach is white sand.

After a week of building up my confidence, my girlfriend and I decided to swim around the cliff to Agia Agathi and back—a seven‑kilometre loop I would never have dreamed of attempting when I arrived.

It was exhausting, but I managed it fine.

And every dreary English January since, when the leaden sky is two inches above our heads, we’re tempted to book another visit to Haraki, because it made snorkelling in Greece effortless.