The last time I traveled in Greece, I went solo. I hitchhiked, drank retsina, sunbathed naked, and rode a donkey up a mountain on the island of Páros. For a month’s wandering I carried copies of Mrs. Dalloway, The Magus, and The Golden Notebook and a suitcase the size of a bread box. I was immortal and footloose; I was 23.
Now I am traveling to Greece after years of longing for it, and after setting part of my first novel on Páros. This time, though, my sons, Alec and Oliver (ages 7 and 2), and their father, Dennis, are with me. I carry guidebooks, maps, birth certificates, and clothing for every climate this side of Nome. I am a counting song and a cautionary tale; I am 47.
But it isn’t to Páros—that beautiful, simple, uninhabited place—that I am returning, for that Páros no longer exists. Nor am I headed to Mykonos or Santorini (too trendy) or to Lesbos, Corfu, or Crete, with their hip historic profiles. I want to take my family to a Greek island that’s an island in the true sense of the word, a place apart—from schedules and souvenirs and civilization.
“Welcome to the island of contraposition,” proclaims the awkwardly translated website for Ikaria, a place I’d never heard of. I soon find out that it’s one of the most sparsely populated, rugged islands in the Aegean Sea. I book our trip.
Ikaria might be the perfect setting for a midlife crisis or a rustic honeymoon. You don’t come here for incomparable beaches, glorious temples, or world-class resorts, or to dine like a king or shop like a queen (beyond basic necessities, a few quaint pots, and hairy backpacks made from goat pelts, there isn’t much to buy). You should require no society but your own, and you should be a dogged hiker or a fearless driver ... or both. And, maybe most of all, you should believe that in some corners of the world there are places, like the mythical village of Brigadoon, where you can truly get lost.
That’s the way we start our journey, by getting hopelessly lost. After taking the hour-long ferry ride from the neighboring island of Sámos, we pick up our rental car in Evdilos and head for the mountain village of Christos Raches, past steeply terraced slopes where groves of olive trees thrive in the dry August heat. Under the meltemi, the late summer wind that taunts the Aegean, their silver leaves throw off a soothing watery glimmer. Following the example of Sámos, Ikaria is undergoing a renaissance in viticulture—its vineyards planted with Muscat grapes that will be pressed into golden dessert and aperitif wines—but it is better known for its apricots and honey. Scattered through its orchards and pine groves are beehives: regiments of wooden boxes painted turquoise, as integral to this landscape as lobster pots are to the coast of Maine.
On Ikaria, the few road signs naming destinations—even on the coast road—are only in Greek. It so happens I took Homeric Greek in seventh grade and still know my deltas from my sigmas—yet this is not always enough. The road we’ve chosen takes us sharply up and quickly sheds its paving, and we soon learn that even passing under someone’s drying sheets or through a gathering of goats does not mean you’ve left the main drag. After a while it feels like we’re driving in a spiral through the back of beyond, and when we arrive at a farmhouse where two men are drinking coffee at an outdoor table, Dennis does a remarkable thing. He gets out to ask for directions. The rest of us watch the three men go through an elaborate pantomime over our map—the wild sweep of the Greek guys’ gestures implying that where we want to be is continents away.
Dennis comes back to the car and tells us he doesn’t have directions yet but that his new friends want us to join them. So we seat ourselves at the table, and an elderly woman emerges with cold water and small dishes of cherries preserved in syrup. (This intense treat is one kind of “spoon sweet”; when made with the sour cherries known as vissino, you can stir the syrup into water to make a deeply refreshing drink.) Awkwardly, we exchange names. Our hosts are Ioannis; his wife, Eleftheria; and their son, Vangelis. When we point to ourselves and say, “New York,” Vangelis nods and says something approving (in Greek) about the Yankees. Eleftheria beams at the children and brings us tomatoes and cucumbers sprinkled with salt, along with a bowl of grapes.
“You grow?” says Dennis, making a fluttery gesture that he must think resembles plants rising from the soil. (He looks like he’s trying to dry his hands without a towel.) Our hosts smile, shake their heads, and exchange repartee that appears to be droll; at least it doesn’t look like the ridicule we deserve for traveling here without the ability to converse.
Without a word in common, we pass a cheerful if awkward hour, during which I fumble about in my phrase book and Eleftheria fills our glasses from a jug of cloudy pink wine, a local plonk that to me tastes like mild vinegar but is, as we discover upon visits to tavernas here, very popular.
The men show us where we are on the map, and as we’re about to leave, Eleftheria presses upon us a bag of her tomatoes. “Filoxenia,” says Ioannis. Later, I am told this is a Greek word for “the befriending of strangers.”
We finally find our way to Christos Raches and settle in at the pension-style Manetta’s, whose grounds are planted with roses. The view down the mountain is dazzling.
We begin to see “contraposition” in action. The pretty village of stone houses is a fan of shady flagstone lanes lined with clusters of tables and chairs that are rarely occupied until well after dark, the sleepy village of the daytime becoming youthful and festive well after sunset.
Late nights are the essence of life on Ikaria, which, even among the night-loving Greeks, is renowned for its extreme nocturnal ways. To use a fairy-tale word I’ve always loved, time in this corner of the world runs widdershins.
For many natives, even farmers and teachers, the day does not begin till nearly noon. Unless you are staying at a hotel, good luck finding so much as a cup of coffee before then. Businesses open for the early afternoon, then close until seven or so. Restaurants hit their stride after midnight, as do local merchants. (Buying groceries at 1:00 a.m., you will stand in line.)
The tavernas fill up and tables begin to groan with vividly red stuffed tomatoes; fish salted and grilled whole; sharp yet mild feta; galaktoboureko, a pastry filled with silky milk custard; a sublime salad of raw purslane mixed with olives, chopped onion, and just a touch of oil; and the luscious soufiko, Ikaria’s native stew of eggplant, zucchini, and tomatoes simmered for an hour with garlic and herbs. These are dishes that do not sanctify their ingredients; they are elemental foods.
Our best meals are in simple places where the kitchen itself is the menu, where you eat outdoors among fruit and flowers. In two tavernas—To Fytema, near Evdilos, and Anna, in Nas—we sit down and wait for someone to usher us in. We are shown dishes on the stove and in the oven; we compose our meal by pointing rather than speaking—though Anna knows a little English. In her kitchen, she opens a Styrofoam cooler to reveal an eclectic trove of raw seafood. “My father catch today,” she says with pride.
No matter how simple the food, evening meals take two to three hours, and by the end Oliver has usually fallen asleep in Dennis’s arms. He can’t keep up with his Greek contemporaries, whose nocturnal routine apparently continues right through the school year. One of the island’s most peculiar charms is the sound, into the wee hours, of young children playing in the streets.
As with most Greek customs, there’s a legend behind the late-night habits. Starting with Icarus, who allegedly fell to the sea just off the southern coast, Ikaria’s history is a saga of hard knocks and misfortune. It was repeatedly invaded and pillaged, for more than a thousand years, by a roster that includes Saracens, Sicilians, and Turks. In the 16th century, the battered islanders abandoned the coast altogether, establishing a hidden life high in the mountains. From two long coasts just a few miles apart, Ikaria’s interior rises dramatically to a steep dorsal range, 3,000 feet above sea level. The landscape is stunning, strewn with granite monoliths and looming boulders, riddled with abundant caves, ravines, and crannies where bunkerlike dwellings could be concealed. Legend has it that today’s nocturnal lifestyle originated in that era—when, to hide from roving pirates, people kept to their camouflaged homes by day, coming out to work and socialize only well after dark.
Ikaria never played a significant role in high Greek culture, and a lack of natural harbors hindered the development of commerce. It has therefore always been poorer than most other islands, its people dismissed as primitive agrarians. This lowly status, combined with its relative inaccessibility because of the turbulent seas, turned Ikaria into a dumping ground for political exiles as far back as Byzantine times, when disfavored members of the imperial family were banished, and as recently as the 1940s, when the conservative government put leftists (the lucky ones) out to pasture.
There remains a countercultural pride to this place, a do-it-our-own-way recalcitrance. Diane Kochilas, an American- Ikarian who is renowned for her Greek cookbooks and who teaches cooking classes in the village of Christos Raches, tells us that the island’s attitude toward its population of goats is a good example. Apparently, on an island with some 7,000 year-round residents, 30,000 goats roam freely about the interior, eating and trampling everything that hasn’t already been ravaged by wildfires (the island’s other scourge). But so far, all efforts to legislate the restriction of goats have met with libertarian protest, and dominant left-wing politicians boast of their pro-goat agenda.
We meet up with a good number of those four-legged constituents as we explore the island. Each day we aim for a village that we think we’ll be able to reach in time for lunch; almost invariably, we get there far later than we intended, most shops and restaurants have closed for the afternoon, and we find ourselves walking deserted streets during what I have come to call “the time of disappearance.” Some people may be sleeping, but snatches of conversation and the smell of roasting meats creep through the closed shutters, to mingle with the clashing scents of donkey and jasmine, the amplified sounds of wind in the grasses, cicadas in the leaves, and, from dark sheds in village cul-de-sacs, the restive chuckle of poultry.
We follow a stone pathway outside Pigi to two memorable churches, both on the same site. Theoktisti is a plain 17th-century church whose walls and ceilings are covered by an expansive fresco depicting St. George and the dragon. The painting is in earth tones, the colors of Ikaria itself. Passing other small buildings dwarfed by surrounding boulders, we arrive at Theoskepasti—the most hauntingly beautiful man-made site we will see on our trip. Minute, primitive, fashioned from stone and mortar, it seems to hide shyly beneath a mammoth ledge that looks like a nun’s wimple caught in the wind. Rather than bejeweled icons or stained-glass windows, the treasure inside this thimble of a church is a cache of bones: by one account, those of a reclusive nun named Lesvia. We climb a rocky flight of stairs and enter a red door bearing a white cross; two windows look down the mountain through the branches of a big chestnut tree. The grace and peace of this place are arresting, its façade eerily human.
One day, we take a short drive west of Christos Raches to Nas, a spectacular cove at the foot of a plunging ravine, flanked by the most fantastically shaped promontories: towering rocks that look as if they have been ruffled, torn, and scored with hieroglyphs. The place is rendered just a little funky by a camp of tie-dyed tents between the beach and the flattened remains of the Temple of Artemis, one of the island’s few ancient sites. To get to the ruins, we have to step over some of the naked tent dwellers, who look as if they’ve been zoning out here since the days of Watergate. Flying from the temple is a colorful flag depicting Bob Marley.
Another day, we follow a casual tip to check out the great beach at Trapalou. What that tip does not include is the caution that, to get there from Christos Raches, we will have to drive three hours over terrain that makes the back roads of other Greek isles look like Route 66.
In no time at all, we are deep in a majestically forlorn landscape like something from Star Trek or Salvador Dali. Among the vast yet fanciful rocks, sometimes wedged beneath them, we spot abandoned “antipirate” houses, meticulously crafted stone walls, and olive trees so severely subjugated by wind that they bear a delightful resemblance to the curlicued trees of Dr. Seuss. Two sounds dominate this part of Ikaria: the soft but constant wind and the lovely dissonance made by thousands of goat bells. Goats—brown, speckled, black—sleep under trees, leap from rock to rock, and clamber along the vertiginous slopes.
The farther we venture, the farther it seems we have to go—because every ten minutes we hit a rise with a new view of the road ahead of and below us. Imagine a ball of brown twine tossed high in the air and coming to rest all along a mountainside. That’s what the road before us looks like. For miles, we see no signs, no occupied houses: nothing but goats, rocks, clouds, sky, and a sea so broad and far down that it’s hard to believe we are not in a plane.
The journey is beautiful, vertigo aside—and a journey it is, later to stand out as far more memorable than the fine beach at its end. The last half hour of road, right on the cliffside coast, is deeply pitted, the going slow. But finally we are in Trapalou. It is an ordinary, modest Greek enclave—yet right now it looks positively suburban. I get out of the car and teeter as if I’ve been on a boat. “This is perfect. I live here now,” I announce. I cannot imagine that anything would send me back along those roads.
The beach is wide and, but for one other family, deserted. There are no umbrellas or chaises longues, no snack bars—just a stretch of pale smooth stones and placid turquoise water. The one taverna sits above a small pier with fishing boats, a terrace shaded by grapevines. We loiter among the empty tables, certain it must be closed until an older couple emerge from behind a screen door.
They bring us Greek salad, Greek fries, and the freshest calamari we have tasted, along with a platter of red mullet, fried whole. And that is how we eat them, crunching through bones and tails, leaving only the heads. They are fresh and flaky, with a crispy brown crust. “This is the real thing,” says Dennis. “That’s good, because I live here now,” I remind him. The fries—canary yellow from olive oil, speckled with oregano, and oozing with cheese—are irresistible to Alec and Oliver, who fall on the plate like a pair of bandits.
We linger at the beach until the sun is well past its peak, then navigate back along the cliffside roads, arriving in Christos Raches just before it sets. But it’s Ikaria; our day is only beginning. There’s a gentle evening breeze blowing and, as we sit in the town square, the light dims and gradually there are voices of families coming out to take the air. In the warm night we sit beneath a splendid sea of stars and realize now how logical it is to live so much of your life after dark.
The Details
Staying There
Luxury hotels are nonexistent here, but clean simple rooms, a handsome restaurant, and a fine seaside pool may be found in Armenistis (Ikaria’s sole “resort” town) at Erofili Beach Hotel (011-30-22750-71-05-8; erofili.gr). Two neighboring alternatives, similar though not quite as pleasant, are Cavos Bay Hotel & Studios (011-30-22750-71-38-1; cavosbay.com.gr) and Daidalos Hotel (011-30-22750-71-39-0).
Or head for the mountains, to the ancient yet hip, highly nocturnal Christos Raches, and rent a pretty studio with balcony and view at Manetta’s (run by George Kavoutsos; 011-30-22750-41-04-4; enlist a native speaker to reserve).
Eating There
Taverna Platanos (22750-41-47-2), in Agios Dimitrios, serves excellent stewed goat, an unusual beet yogurt salad, and other local fare under the splendidly wide branches of the eponymous platanos (plane) tree.
There’s no menu at To Fytema (west of Evdilos; 22750-31-92-8), where you are invited to choose your meal from the day’s dishes on the stove and windowsills in the kitchen, then relish it in a garden under cascading grapes. The soufiko (Ikaria’s vegetable stew) was cooked to buttery perfection, and the zucchini cheese pie and a salad of crisp purslane with olives were truly sublime.
It’s the same kind of cooking at the very welcoming Anna (Armenistis; 22750-71-48-9; annanas@sam.forthnet.gr). This pretty taverna specializes in seafood—caught by Anna’s father—and has a large vegetarian selection (though Anna’s moussaka is wonderful, too).
Cooking classes at Diane Kochilas’s The Glorious Greek Kitchen include the hands-on creation of classic Greek dishes, as well as trips to local purveyors. ($2,446 per week; 011-30-6947-84-78-33; cuisineinternational.com)