I was on my way to the wild and beautiful little island of Folegandros in the Southern Cyclades of Greece to visit a new boutique resort, Gundari, when I overheard a funny conversation between two flight attendants.
“These people in Santorini are much more sophisticated than those in Mykonos last week,” one whispered to the other over their trolley.
Personally, I would choose Folegandros over the other islands, with its impressive mountain peaks and deep gorges rising from the crystal clear Aegean Sea and surrounded by other treasures such as Milos, Sifnos and Sikinos.
To reach Gundari (Phoenician for “rocky place”) you had to fly from London to Santorini, then take a 20-minute taxi ride and then a 50-minute private transfer to Folegandros aboard one of Gundari’s two flashy speedboats (ferries are also available).
Folegandros is 30 square kilometers in size and has 300 inhabitants all year round (in summer even 700 inhabitants). It attracts 50,000 visitors per year, compared to the two million visitors on Santorini. It is a dream island for Greece.
It is a peaceful and authentic island with a spectacular cliff-top town (Chora), 65 churches and walking trails through meadows full of wild thyme and fennel, where sheep, goats and donkeys graze.
And then there are the beaches, the hidden coves, some sandy, some pebbly, some like Karavostasi, the island’s sleepy harbour, where the ferry, fishing boats and yachts come and go. They are only accessible by car, others only by boat.
While the island hasn’t gone entirely unnoticed, with Margot Robbie, Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni visiting last summer and Tom Hanks dropping by from his villa on nearby Antiparos, the effort involved in getting there is its saving grace. That and the fact that the island’s law bans commercial sun loungers on all beaches, in a bid to prevent Ibiza- and Mykonos-style beach clubs from popping up.
Gundari’s Australian-Uruguayan owner, the charming, sociable Ricardo Larriera, first visited the island six years ago, after a fireside chat in Sydney’s Blue Mountains with his Australian-Greek friend Terry Seremetis, who had recently made contact with his relatives from Folegandros.
There he saw a small hotel for sale on the beach of Karavostasi and asked Larriera if he would like to take on a project.
Six years later, Larriera Gundari opened, a 25-suite resort (plus two villas) on an old, abandoned 80-hectare clifftop farm a 10-minute drive from Chora. The beachfront hotel will open in 2025 as a waterfront restaurant and bar.
Gundari had only been open a few days when I arrived. The road to the resort was still a bumpy track, and there were diggers in the parking lot and electricians running around. But all that was forgotten as I settled into my sanctuary-like “cave suite,” built into the hillside and looking straight out to sea. After a twilight dip in my private infinity-edge pool, I devoured room-service Greek salad, tossed with creamy feta mousse, the sweetest tomatoes and the plumpest capers. I fell asleep, thankfully.
Larriera has a clear vision for Gundari and has brought in Athens-based architects and designers Block722 to help bring it to life. The resort is perched low on the cliff and is built from locally excavated natural stone. The main building houses the restaurant, bar and terrace, behind which lies a beautiful communal pool with swim-up bar.
Directly below is a spa with three treatment rooms, offering regenerative facials and massages using indigenous Folegandros herbs from the Italian brand Comfort Zone.
The suites, all south-facing and bioclimatically designed with quality insulation and positioned to be sheltered from the archipelago’s famous Maltemi winds, fan out in an upper and lower tier. Each suite is simple, spacious and light, with floor-to-ceiling windows, beds dressed in crisp white linen, rustic oak desks and comfortable sofas in shades of stone and sand. There are large shower rooms and fragrant Olive Era toiletries. Some suites also have outdoor showers.
Larriera is a music fanatic, so each suite has a Pioneer turntable and a stack of records. I also noticed Pitt & Giblin speakers in the bar, a Tasmanian brand that only music nerds know about.
“I’m not trying to turn Folegandros into Mykonos,” Larriera told me one morning during a drive around the island, explaining his sincere desire to do things right. “If I wanted to do that, I would have gone to Mykonos.”
Over 600 native plant seedlings were collected from the site before work began, nurtured and replanted. There is a wastewater treatment plant, solar panels on every roof and a water desalination unit coming later this year. This stretch of coastline is an important nesting site for the endangered Eleonor’s Falcon, but nesting numbers are declining due to hotter summers. The hotel has partnered with a conservationist to create shaded areas for them to nest and shelters from which guests can watch them.
Local organic farmer Dimitri Sideris, who raises goats and supplies several local restaurants with incredible cheese, is creating an on-site farm at Gundari. Gundari’s food is helmed by legendary chef Lefteris Lazarou, whose restaurant Varoulka was the first in the country to receive a Michelin star in 2002.
Lazarou brings his creative, seasonal (mainly) fish concept to the main restaurant Orizon, where he combines simplicity (crispy slices of the most delicious spinach pie on the breakfast menu, for example) with more elaborate dishes such as sea bass carpaccio with citrus and cucumber ice cream and cod fillet with smoked pancetta cream, algae dauphinois potato and squid ink.
Everything is beautifully presented, even family favourites like beef burgers and club sandwiches. The resort’s cocktail list is curated by award-winning bar Line Athens and uses ingredients like rosemary, thyme and tomato.
And there’s more to come. By the pool, a tiny 19th-century farmhouse is being converted into a miniature wine bar. It overlooks the farm and has an outdoor table for farm-to-table dining. In 2026, Gundari will open 14 more rooms, another restaurant and a larger spa beneath the cave suites.
There are numerous ways to explore the island, such as hiking the many trails, using Gundari’s own shuttle service between the resort, Chora and Karavostasi, or renting one of the six Fiat 500e Cabrios, a hybrid Jeep Renegade, an electric Mini Moke (beach buggy) or 12 electric bicycles.
I spent an afternoon on the Gundari boat, sailing around the island and going to beaches like Agali, Livadaki and Katergos for snorkelling.
During my ride with Larriera we stopped at a small taverna, Irini’s, in the agricultural mountain village of Ano Meria. The restaurant opened in 1953 and now doubles as a grocery store.
The original Irini, now a YiaYia, has handed the reins over to her granddaughter, Irini, who greets Larriera like an old friend and plies us with plates of local pasta (Matsata) with meatballs, Greek salad, taramasalata and tzatziki. “I talked YiaYia Irini into coming out of retirement to give cooking lessons to my guests,” Larriera said with a grin, which didn’t surprise me at all.
Francesca Syz traveled as a guest of Gundari (gundari.com) where suites start from £520, B&B. The hotel is seasonal and open until 15th October.