St. Thomas Island

Worth a detour

A hectare of rock in the bay off Arkutino, called St Thomas on maps and Snake Island by everybody else. It was a reserve in its own right until 1992 and is now part of Ropotamo, which means it is closed. You look at it from the beach. That is the entirety of the visit, and it is worth the two minutes because it completes the view.

Story

Background

The island sits a short way offshore in Arkutino bay, low and scrubby, and is the smallest of the Bulgarian Black Sea islands by a wide margin. Like the other components of the Ropotamo complex it was absorbed into the enlarged reserve in May 1992, and it carries the same regime: no landing, no activity, guarding and science only.

The local name comes from the snakes, and the story is the usual one on the Bulgarian coast — an island with a reputation nobody has any particular reason to test. It also has a reputation for cacti, which circulates widely and which no official source confirms, so this guide does not.

From the beach the island reads as a dark hump in the middle of the bay, and it is the thing that makes the Arkutino view what it is: dune in the foreground, water, rock, and the ridge of Medni Rid running away to the north. Photograph it from the northern end of the sand in the morning. If you are on the Ropotamo boat you will see it from the mouth of the river, which is closer and no more accessible. It is one of four islands in this bay along with St Ivan, St Peter and St Cyricus at Sozopol, and the only one you cannot get near.