Key takeaways
- Gozo sits on the far side of the same channel. From the Blue Lagoon it is minutes away, and its coast is the wilder of the two.
- The south and west of Gozo are high limestone cliffs, considerably more dramatic than anything on Malta.
- The famous arch at Dwejra collapsed into the sea in 2017. The site is still striking and the arch is not there.
- Adding Gozo to a Comino trip needs hours rather than minutes, so it belongs on a longer block.
Where Gozo sits
The Maltese archipelago runs in a line: Malta, then Comino in the channel, then Gozo. From the Blue Lagoon, Gozo is the land mass on the far side, close enough that the harbour at Mgarr is a short run across.
It is smaller than Malta, greener, considerably less built up and slower in temperament, and the Gozitans will tell you so. For a boat trip what matters is the coastline, which is where the difference between Malta and Gozo is most obvious.
There is one more thing the water shows that the road cannot, which is how the whole archipelago fits together. From the middle of the channel you can see Malta astern, Comino alongside and Gozo ahead, all at once, and the archipelago stops being an abstraction on a map.
What a boat shows you
Gozo from the sea is cliffs. The southern and western coasts rise in high limestone walls, undercut in places, with caves and inlets and the occasional improbable stack standing offshore. Malta's coast has good stretches; Gozo's is on another scale.
There are small bays cut into it, some with a handful of buildings and a slipway, most with nothing at all. Seen from the water the island reads as far emptier than it is, because the villages are inland on the high ground where Maltese villages have always been.
The colours are different too. Gozo's limestone runs warmer and more ochre than Comino's pale grey, so a boat that visits both in a morning sees two distinctly different kinds of rock.
The Gozo coast from the sea, higher and emptier than anything on Malta
The Azure Window, and what is there now
For decades the single most photographed thing on Gozo was a natural rock arch on the west coast at Dwejra, standing in the sea with a hole through it big enough to sail a small boat under. In March 2017, in a storm, it collapsed completely.
It is worth knowing before you go looking for it, because it appears in a great many photographs still in circulation and on the covers of guidebooks printed before then. There is no arch. There is a site where an arch used to be.
What remains is genuinely worth seeing: the Inland Sea, a shallow lagoon connected to the open water by a tunnel through the cliff, and the rock formations around it. Boats pass through that tunnel, which is a memorable thing to do.
Mgarr harbour
Gozo's main harbour faces Comino and is where the ferries from Malta arrive. It is a working port with a marina, a church rising behind it on the hill, and boats of every size coming and going.
For a charter it is a practical landmark rather than a destination: the point at which the Gozo coast begins. Landing at a harbour and walking around a town is a different kind of day from being on the water, and most boat trips do one or the other rather than both.
Is landing realistic
On a short trip, no. A two or three hour block is fully occupied by Comino, and adding a landing on Gozo means mooring, walking, and coming back, which is most of an afternoon.
On a longer charter it becomes possible, and the question is whether you want it. Gozo rewards a proper day: Victoria and its citadel, the temples at Ggantija, the salt pans on the north coast. None of those are boat destinations, and trying to see them from a boat trip is the worst of both plans.
The sensible division is to see Gozo coast from the water on a boat day and Gozo interior on a separate day by road. They are two different islands as far as a visitor is concerned, and trying to combine them into one outing serves neither well.
How Gozo differs from Malta
Malta is dense, busy, historic and urban along its eastern side. Gozo is agricultural, quieter, hillier and slower. The difference is obvious within minutes of arriving and it is the reason a lot of visitors end up preferring Gozo and saying so with some force.
From the water the difference reads as emptiness. Long stretches of Gozo's coast have nothing on them at all, which after a run along the Maltese shoreline is a noticeable change.
Whether to add it
Add Gozo's coast to a boat trip if you have a four-hour block and you have already seen the Blue Lagoon, or if you are staying on Gozo and Comino is the addition rather than the main event. The two coastlines complement each other: one is a small pale island riddled with caves, the other is a wall of ochre cliff.
Do not add it to a short trip. Comino alone is more than a two-hour block can properly do, and a rushed run across the channel to look at Gozo from a distance is time taken away from something better.
