“The locals never had a chance to see the real potential of this place until now,” said Lefteris Maniadakis, 37, who is a former Greek Championship Rally driver and the president of the Greek Kiteboard Riders Association. “Now it seems everyone wants to surf.”

Surfing is flourishing along the Greece coast, I was told by the owner of an Athens surf shop, in part because of huge infrastructural development that took place in Greece in preparation for the 2004 Olympic Games. New toll roads connecting the Ionian Coast to Athens, for instance, have turned what was a six-hour one-way drive into about three, making day trips to the beach possible.

Although the stormy winter months between November and March bring the best waves here, the sea can be fickle. Andreas Maniadakis, 31 and a freelance industrial designer, mentioned that I might want to try my luck traveling six hours north to Parga, home to a “legendary” break with some of the best rides in Greece.

After picking up my girlfriend in Athens, we headed to Parga, only to find that its sole self-described surf hotel, the Palmina Mare, was shuttered for the rest of the year, curiously before the surf season even began. We figured we had better try our luck back down south at Costa Navarino.

Greece may have some great waves, but finding them can feel like a game of Whac-A-Mole, with swells popping up here and there along the coasts for only a few days, even hours; before you can drive out, wax up your board and hit the wave, they’ve disappeared back into the wine-dark sea. And unlike major surf destinations, there are no 24-hour Web cams here, few surf forecasts and, outside of Athens, only a few dozen dedicated surfers with whom to confer. In Greece you find surf the old-fashioned way: by ambling down unmarked dirt roads, getting wrong directions from locals and paddling your board out to distant points hoping there’s a hidden surprise around the bend.

On our last night along Costa Navarino, at a beach party at the Maniadakises’ beachside surf shack, though, I got word that the Meltemis, strong summertime winds that howl down to the Aegean from Central Russia, would be bringing epic waves for the next few days to the Cyclades, the islands southeast of Athens. I had to act quickly.

When I arrived via ferry boat on the tiny island of Tinos two days later (my girlfriend having headed home), I was thrilled to see that this time, the stars had aligned. On the island’s east side, big, beautiful waves coiled themselves along the foot of five-story vertical cliffs and spun out onto the white sand of one of the most pristine beaches I have ever seen. The beach, called Kolibithra, is usually home to the Tinos Surf School (tinossurflessons.com), the first surf school in the Cyclades. But the school had packed up for the season, leaving the beach, and all those waves, entirely to me. Luckily, I had packed my fins and a handmade handplane, a short board perfect for body surfing. For the next week, I spent my afternoons there, finally surfing those elusive and magical sheets of water in the ancient Aegean.