Renting a car in Greece: licences, quad bikes and the excess trap

A car transforms the bigger islands. Naxos, Crete, Paros and the mainland are all far better with one, because the good parts are inland and the buses are not built for visitors. Two or three things are worth knowing before you book.

The licence question

EU and UK licences are fine on their own. If your licence is from outside the EU, Greek law asks for an International Driving Permit alongside it, and that includes American, Canadian and Australian drivers. It must be issued in your own country before you travel, because you cannot get one here. Plenty of desks never ask. The one that matters is the traffic officer at the roadside and the insurer after an accident, and both will.

Quad bikes

They are everywhere on the islands and they are rented on an ordinary car licence, since they count as light quadricycles. Two warnings. Helmets are compulsory on open quads, and a great many travel insurance policies exclude them completely. Every summer we hear from someone who found this out in a hospital in Naxos. Read your policy before you sit on one.

The insurance line to read

Greek rentals almost always come with a large excess, often eight hundred to fifteen hundred euros, and the cheap headline rate is cheap because of it. Scratched alloys and undercarriage damage on unmade island roads are the usual claims. Either buy the excess reduction or accept the risk knowingly. Do not discover it at the desk at midnight.

We arrange car hire through operators we actually deal with, so the excess terms are explained before you book and the car is waiting at the port or the airport rather than an office across town.