A ROPE OF VINES, PANAYIOTA AND MORE

When I lived in Athens in the early 1990s, working as a teacher of English, I spent a couple of winter weekends on the island of Ydra (Hydra). The first time, while walking around the coast I met an older Greek man with a large moustache. He turned out to be a sculptor and paid for me to change my ferry ticket so we could travel back to Athens together – which we did, playing tavli (backgammon) on deck as the sun went down. 

We were friends for a year. Many a time, recovering from my latest heartache, I wanted someone to take me home and look after me; and that’s what he did, lending me his t-shirts to sleep in and making me peppermint tea in the morning. I’m sorry I lost touch with him.

I recently read Brenda Chamberlain’s A Rope of Vines: Journal from a Greek Island, written in the early 1960s by the Welsh writer and artist. When someone first told me about the book, he said Chamberlain was always falling in love with unsuitable men, then taking herself off to a convent for a few days to recover. I was intrigued, and frankly hoping for a few tips and directions to the convent.

I was soon hooked by Chamberlain’s personality, her artistic sensibility. From the first paragraphs of her introduction we know her new friend Leonidas is serving a sentence for manslaughter of an English tourist – and that, sequestered among the nuns to contemplate life and pray for him, she can ‘take a siesta in a juniper tree’ if she feels like it. 

The island was then more populated than now, with 3,000 souls. One of them must have been Leonard Cohen, who had arrived as an unknown poet in 1960. The expat community of artists and writers on the island in those years including Australian writers George Johnston and Charmian Clift, who had started out on the Dodecanese island of Kalymnos but found it too remote, and preferred Ydra for its proximity to Athens and for its literary associations; Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell had lived there in the 1930s. In the 1950s it was a hotspot for filmmaking, drawing Sophia Loren, Melina Mercouri, Brigitte Bardot. 

Chamberlain doesn’t mention any of them, although perhaps it was this too that she was escaping when she spent her days living up near the wells, with the nuns. She says:

‘International travellers throw an unreal glamour over the port, but step out of the harbour and you will come upon club-footed boys, women withering with the sun’s luminosity, mal-fed children grossly fat, dwarfs with sun-smitten faces.’

It’s a clear-eyed, unsentimental journal and yet filled with beauty of the austere high places, ‘breeze, and heat, and golden promontories’, fresh-caught fish that she guts with a broken-handled knife, people harvesting wheat while others scream at one another, spiders’ webs like steel wires. She wants to be more like the nuns and live in the Spirit alone, patient and secure, but cannot. 

‘I am for ocean, the tumult of Thalassa… for black-skinned seamen bearing baskets of coral…’

There is much darkness in the journal, and in the sea in her mind. She also writes of ‘fire-gleaming, passionate waters… Light-filled depths…’ Thalassa is not blue but ‘Indigo, green of jade, white, silver, black.’

The cover is a gorgeous painting by the author showing dark-eyed fishermen returning with a catch. The text is scattered with her spare, evocative line drawings. She reminds herself to hold on to the clarity of vision induced by disaster, to try to be wiser through suffering. The book was written during her first few years on the island. She died only six years after publishing it, at the age of 59, after returning to north Wales. According to online sources, it was from an overdose of sedatives.

Also over this summer I received a book about Greece in a different style, Panayiota, a novel by Rhodes-based writer John Manuel. The novel is loosely based on what he learned of his wife’s family background, set against well researched real events.

It takes place partly in contemporary times in a hospice in Bath, England, and partly in wartime Athens – when 40,000 people died in the city from starvation alone, quite apart from executions and shoot-outs. 

The heroine of the tale is Panayiota, born in 1925 into a family who ran a taverna in the Plaka district under the Acropolis – a merry place to grow up with the sound of traditional musical instruments played under the influence of ouzo or tsipouro or retsina. The city was still a collection of villages, and everyone had a bit of land with some oranges and olives and vegetables. Panayiota has a happy childhood; ‘we’d hear our fathers and grandfathers arguing about Italians and the refugees from Turkey and stuff, but we were more interested in having a good time’. The city was full of life.

This all changed in April 1941 when the Germans bomb Piraeus, hitting a British ship, and that is more or less where the story begins, telling of the following dramatic years with their terrors and moments of joy. Manuel gives fascinating insights into an extraordinary era.

Which reminds me: Doug Gold’s book The Note Through the Wire, already a number one bestseller in New Zealand, will be published in the UK next spring. Doug’s book is also based on his wife’s family story, and part of it gives a vivid description of the Kiwi protagonist’s experiences fighting in the ill-fated Greece campaign and escaping in the Peloponnese. Injured, he was eventually captured and taken as a prisoner-of-war to Slovenia, which is where the love story with resistance fighter Josefine begins.

And that reminds me about The Lost Lyra by Richard Clark, about a friendship that begins between an escaping British soldier and a resistance fighter in the mountains of Crete. Yet another gripping read. 

Finally, John X. Cooper’s The Sting of the Wasp is a contemporary thriller set in Athens against the memories of the Civil War. His new book, Dead Letter, also featuring detective Panos Akritas, was launched on Kindle at the start of the summer. To enter a competition to win a copy of the Kindle edition, please share this post somewhere and let me know. 

Happy reading.

It seemed like the beginning of a damn good story…

An interview with John X. Cooper (born Yianni Xiros) about his new novel Dead Letter – and two excerpts from the book

The ruins of Rhamnous, the ancient city just north of Athens, where Akritas is pursued by assassins

Why did you decide to set Dead Letter in contemporary Athens? 

I taught English literature at the University of British Columbia for many years and when I retired I thought I’d finally get to read all those books that I had referred to many times in lectures and my academic writing but never actually read from cover to cover. One of those books was the Bible. So, I started with Genesis, Chapter 1 and worked my way through to the final chapter of Revelations. There was an episode in Acts of the Apostles (Chapter 17: 16-34) that really caught my attention. 

It was St. Paul’s visit to Athens in 51 AD, when the news of Christianity arrived in Athens. I was amused by the reaction of the pagan philosophers, Epicureans and Stoics, to Paul’s message. They dismissed it as the ramblings of a lunatic. I remember thinking that not much had change in the sceptical attitudes of Athenians in 2000 years. 

But later I wondered why Paul had never written one of his famous letters to the Athenians. Why did the Corinthians, Thessalonians, Philippians, and others receive epistles from Paul but not Athens? Then it occurred to me that perhaps he had written such a letter, but it was lost, or better still, it was suppressed. What if someone in contemporary Athens found it in the National Library and then was murdered? It seemed like the beginning of a damn good story.

Raphael’s picture of St. Paul preaching to the Athenians

What is your own connection with Greece? 

I was born Yianni Xiros in the Kypseli neighbourhood of Athens and lived there with my parents for the first few years of my life. My parents divorced when I was five and my mother left Greece with me in tow for Bergamo in Italy where her brother was in business. We lived there for two years until she met Norman Cooper. He was British and his sister was married to my mother’s brother. They fell in love, married in the UK, and after a two-year sojourn in his family home in Sussex, we immigrated to Montreal in Canada. In 2013 when I retired from my academic post I returned to Athens to reconnect with my roots and now I spend periods of time every year in Canada, the UK, and Athens.

The old National Library on Panepistimiou Street. The archives of the Library have now been moved to a new facility in Kallithea.

Who is Panos Akritas?

 Panos is a captain in the Hellenic Police (the Astynomia Elleniki) with its headquarters in the big police building on Alexandras Avenue across from the Panathinaikos football stadium. Akritas is the family name of a medieval Greek warrior who is the subject of a well-known epic poem from the 10^th century AD. The poem called Digenis Akritas Basileios tells of the heroic exploits of this warrior in defending the eastern borders of the Byzantine Empire against invaders from Central Asia. The folksongs that also tell of his exploits are called the Akritic ballads and are collected as the Akritika: Odes of the Byzantine Border-Guards. Akritas seemed like a good name for a modern day policeman, not defending the borders of an empire of course, but perhaps policing different kinds of borders. His first name came to me when I was having a coffee at the Dioscouri café in Plaka that overlooks the east side of the Agora. One of the streets nearby is called Odos Panos. When I saw the small blue street sign it was love at first sight.

A medieval depiction of Digenis Akritas in action

Are you a fan of any other crime/detective novels set in Greece? 

 I’ve read a couple of novels by Petros Markaris and several by the Anglo-Greek writer Anne Zouroudi. Both are very good. There are others, but I must confess I’m a big fan of the Italian crime fiction writers, the Neapolitan Maurizio de Giovanni, for example, or the Sicilian Andrea Camilleri, the British writer Michael Dibden whose crime novels are set in various cities in Italy, and the American Donna Leon who has Venice as background for her Commissario Brunetti novels.

What made you start writing crime fiction?

 Some years ago my wife thought I might like Camilleri’s Montalbano novels. I did, very much and I ended up binge-reading them. But Dibden was my immediate writerly inspiration. Although he’s British he manages to convey his Italian stories and characters in a remarkably vivid way. I also liked his take on Italian society and manners. I remember thinking I could do the same thing for Athens and although I’ve spent most of my adult life elsewhere, I was actually born there. 

What was the inspiration for your first novel, The Sting of the Wasp?

 One of the first things that struck me when I returned to Greece in 2013 was how the Greek Civil War from 1946-1950 was still present in so many ways, small monuments, history texts, people’s memories, and political discourse. Although Sting of the Wasp is not mainly about the civil war it was what got me thinking about the plot that eventually made up the substance of the novel.

Small monument near the police headquarters on Alexandras Avenue put up by the Greek anti-Nazi partisans and communists to remember the “December days” in 1944, which was a prelude to the Civil War that broke out a year later

What do you hope readers will find in your work? What is your favourite reader comment so far?

 I want to write about the real Greece, not the tourist brochure Greece. The city of Athens is a fascinating and complicated place and it seems to me that writing about its reality gives both Greeks and non-Greeks a more vivid picture of what’s it’s like. My favourite reader comment came from an American who read Sting of the Wasp and wrote to say that when he finally visited Athens my book had given him a better appreciation of the place.

Are you writing something new? If so, can you tell us anything about it?

 My new Panos Akritas mystery is called Three Sisters and it involves the murder of a renowned chef who owns a two Michelin star restaurant in wealthy Kifissia and is found stabbed to death with one of his own kitchen knives. All the evidence points to his youngest daughter Zoë. But Captain Akritas has his doubts. I think, more than anything else, it's a novel about appetite. Enough said.

In Dead Letter, Panos is dreaming of his Greek island holiday. Is that something you do?

 Yes, absolutely. I love the Ionian islands, Cephalonia, Zante, Corfu and so on. In the Aegean, I tend to stay away from the very touristy islands. I like Sifnos because of the food and great atmosphere. Folegrandos in the Cyclades is relaxed and not crowded. I’d love to visit Rhodes in the future and your island too, Jennifer, Tilos.

Thank you! And now for two excerpts from Dead Letter:

1: Pursued in the ruins of Rhamnous

  

After a few minutes he saw them. Four men in a line with MP7 type submachine guns, picking their way carefully up the slope. Here they come, he thought. He was on their left. If he stayed where he was, the point man would pass fifteen metres from his position. Too close. He needed to move. But where? Staying low, he moved at an angle further to their left. He kept the buckthorn bushes and stunted trees between him and his hunters. He found a hollow with some cover.

When the men had passed, he set off towards what he assumed were Kato Souli and Schinias. “Not sure where the fuck I’m going,” he murmured to himself. He was sweating profusely as the sun’s rays came at him like an attack of razor blades.

When he reached the church, he rested. It was past noon, so the east side gave some relief from the sun. Problem was he couldn’t spot his pursuers from there. As time passed, he lost all sense of their movements. He listened for sounds but the cicadas were putting up such a racket that he might as well be deaf. Why wouldn’t they search the vicinity of the church? Of course they would. He realised that they would not think he was in the church. Killing him would be too easy there. But would they have to check just to make sure? They’d certainly come around to his side eventually. Before that happened, he would have to move. But where? Straight ahead and slightly to his left there was thick underbrush, large boulders and small gnarled trees. They wouldn’t give much cover but it was better than cowering by the church wall awaiting his executioners. If they were smart they’d come round both ends, hoping to trap him in the middle. He knew he had to move. Now.

He sprinted straight for the underbrush and dived in before anyone rounded the corners. He hid himself in the bushes as well as he could and watched the church wall where he’d been resting. He didn’t have long to wait. The four men split up and two suddenly appeared at each end of the wall, guns in firing position. They looked around at the surrounding shrubs and trees. One said something and the four walked carefully to the front of the church. It looked to Akritas that they entered. This was his moment to escape. He broke cover and was at least a hundred and fifty metres from the church when the four men emerged, glanced around, and waited. They hadn’t seen him. Akritas was hidden among shrubs and rocks. He let out his breath when he saw them confer and head off in a different direction, guns ready. He rose crouching and began to creep crab-like away from the church towards the east.

After an hour, he came across what looked like an ancient marble wall set in the hillside. He looked around. It was obviously an archaeological site, although it was clearly not being excavated, had not been excavated for several years. “Fucking Euro crisis,” he said out loud to a stunted cypress tree nearby. The heat’s getting to me. I’m talking to the fucking trees. “Rhamnous,” he said under his breath, the acropolis of Rhamnous.

2: The bonds of friendship

The next night, Katarina, her sister, Greg and Katia, Valia and Akritas reserved a big table at Rythmos Stage, a club in Ilioupoli, a south Athens suburb. They heard a Cretan band, Chainides, play the superb and inspiring music of that ancient island with wonderfully wry political commentary by the leader, Dimitris Apostolakis, who also did duty on the Cretan lyre. They played until past two in the morning to a packed house. It was a foot-stomping good time. It was defiant, funny, sad, and the entire audience realised somewhere around one o’clock they all shared something in common. Not only a love of their country’s music, or the joyful fellowship of comrades even if it was only for a few hours, or even everyone getting tipsy together on the wine, the beer and the Cutty Sark, not only those things, but something more important. Katarina mentioned it in her thoughtful way as they drove back to the centre. They were a people and they all shared a common fate. It was the truth of what it means to be a nation. The poignancy was not lost on them after six long years of the debt crisis.

As they drove into the centre, the six friends were not ready for the evening to end. It was now about three in the morning. As it was the end of July, the night was warm and many people were still out talking, drinking and just happily walking about. Living joyfully was not yet a dead letter among the Greeks even in a dark time. Akritas suggested the St George terrace in Plateia Karytsi for a nightcap. It would be quiet there under the walls of the big church. When they arrived, the bar was closing, but the very small café next door was still open. Akritas and Greg pulled a couple of tables together so that the friends could all sit as one. The walls of the church reminded him of St Paul and his crisis of faith. That moment is one we all must face in our different ways. Even a nation must face doubt when it loses faith in itself. But perhaps only for a short time.

Dead Letter

Sting of the Wasp

Onions to Arki, Watermelons to Marathi

 

‘Manoli?’ I ask.

‘Jennifer,’ he says. ‘The girl with the dog.’ The girl with the dog has had breakfast and is doing a bit of work and a bit of planning.

I tell Manolis, the owner of Trypas taverna where I’m staying, that I’m thinking of taking the boat to Samos tomorrow to get cash and dog food and a notebook, none of which is available here on the little island of Arki. Manolis is very laid back, a man of few words, completely belied by the way he dresses: flip-flops, board shorts, panama-style hat, scarf around his neck and a different, brightly patterned, well-pressed shirt at least once a day. I asked him earlier how many shirts he owned, and he just laughed.

I arrived on Arki in the north of the Dodecanese four days ago, with the intention of staying two or three days. I stayed a little longer to do my research, because the local people are less talkative than in some other places. But I have, truth be told, found out all I really need to know about this island with about forty permanent residents and an area of about two and a half square miles. The thing is, every time I think I might leave, I find myself sitting on a beach, mesmerised by the sea. It’s such a quiet, easy place to like, with its little stone huts around the harbour where the fishermen sit, its gently undulating hills covered in green bushes and golden yellow grasses, the sound of goat bells above the village where the fantastic local cheese is produced, which the tavernas put in their salads.

The lack of cash is not really a problem yet, as everything is on the ‘pay later’ system. Paying on the same day is generally seen as a bit over the top. As Stephanos told me last night, ‘We are Greeks. Real Greeks.’ But eventually I’ll have to settle my bill. The lack of dog food to buy has been somewhat expensive, although Lisa has been perfectly happy eating tinned ham, chicken souvlaki or meat balls. She’s made it clear that she’d rather go hungry than eat the Purina dry food I brought. If I’m sampling the good local food, so will she. The diet starts tomorrow...

Anyway, Manolis asks, ‘Why don’t you take the boat to Lipsi today, the Lampi? You have one hour there to do what you need to do and come back.’

I didn’t know there was a boat to Lipsi today. Another thing that doesn’t exist on Arki is a boat schedule, except by asking a local; perhaps because most people arrive by their own boat anyway. I scribbled down the surprisingly extensive schedule in the back of my notebook listening to Manolis the other day, and it didn’t feature this one. I ask him when it leaves, and it’s in twenty minutes. I thank him and dash to my room to grab my bank card, then hurry down to the port.

It’s rather confusing but there is the old harbour and the new ‘port’, a small concrete dock, which according to a sign for a taverna there is a seven-minute walk. Next to it is the lovely main beach where I swam this morning, where residents have sprayed onto a boulder, ‘No Camping’ and underneath, ‘Sorry.’ At the taverna on the port I find my new friends from Athens with their lovely dog and we get chatting. They check with the lady from the taverna if they will sell dog food on Lipsi.

‘I think so.’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it’s a big island.’ Then I laugh. When I stayed on Lipsi almost three decades ago, I couldn’t imagine a quieter, tinier place. Now, it feels like going to the big city. But the lady realises that I’m planning to go today.

‘The Lampi doesn’t go today – the only boat was this morning.’

There is certainly no one else waiting for it, and no sign of it coming. It seemed too good to be true. I continue chatting with the couple from Athens about this and that.

And then – a little ferry approaches fast that must be the Lampi. Great! But it goes straight past the dock and is undoubtedly heading at a fast pace for the old harbour. Confirming with the locals it is going mesa, inside to the harbour, I set off at a sprint. Lisa thinks this is a great game. I am soon out of breath – it seems that I am a little out of shape from being on a miniature island – but I have to keep running to catch it…

I arrive, panting, as some boxes are being loaded and unloaded, and Lisa and I make it onto the boat and it soon sets off. We cruise into the archipelago of tiny islets. The only other passenger, a nervous Eastern European girl with a suitcase, gets off at Marathi – I guess she is going to work at the taverna in the summer. Marathi is even smaller than Arki, with expensive yachts moored around the beach. From there on, I have a private cruise to Lipsi. We approach around the northwest of it, which seems mountainous and forbidding after Arki. I ask the young guy who is crew about the boat schedule, and he says today’s was a special service. About an hour after we set off, the town comes into view and it feels strange to see roads and street signs, and a petrol station – this must be where people from Arki get their petrol, if they need it (there are only a couple of cars).

We hop off the boat and I have one hour to do my errands. I put my plastic bottles into the famed recycling bin. I spot the Alpha Bank, one of the three branches that was almost closed down last year. I find a bakery and marvel wide-eyed over an array of products that includes wholegrain tahini and Lipsi wine and carob paximadia. I buy enough dog food to start my own specialised minimarket on Arki. Then, bags bulging, I make my way back to the boat, which is waiting with just one other passenger destined for Marathi. ‘Shall we go?’ the crew asks the captain. We are transporting a few boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables, wrapped up with tape and labelled by hand: onions for Arki, watermelons for Marathi.

 

A Footpath to Tristomo

 

Anna, the proprietress of the taverna at Avlona, is wearing what looks like a flowery nightgown over her dress and bulky frame, and tells me to take off my glasses as she didn’t recognise me with them on. ‘How long have you been here? How long are you staying?’

Having lived in the north of Karpathos for a year and a half, I know people and it’s one good reason to go back. But the other reason this time was to walk from Diafani to Tristomo, in the very north of the island, then back via Avlona to Diafani. We’re carrying backpacks as I’d planned to camp, though it didn’t quite work out like that. We met some of Anna’s cousins instead. They almost made us bring a goat with us this morning, all five hundred metres up to Avlona. It was already hard enough. Greetings complete, we sit down to order drinks and food. I feel a huge sense of satisfaction after the walk.

Tristomo is a natural harbour, a long protected inlet almost cut off from the open sea (with three mouths, hence the name: treis-stoma), and was therefore always an important place when people got around mostly by boat. The area has been virtually deserted for decades, only reached by private boat or on foot, though threatened recently by the possibility of a road. I knew it would be safer not to go alone, and luckily Ian – who hadn’t been to Karpathos for years – was keen to join me and Lisa.

From the ferry, Ian agreed it looked impossible that there could be a decent path along that sheer mountain that seems to fall into the sea. We took a lazy recovery day, wary after the experience on Halki, the day after the corned beef and mosquitoes camping extravaganza; the day where the sketchy path turned into no path at all, and we ran short of water on a hot afternoon with a long way still to go, and were saved by a cistern. A story for another time, that one. In Diafani, I asked around about the condition of the path from Diafani to Tristomo, knowing that roads were severely damaged in the rains this winter. An old lady said, in a Greek variation of the Irish joke, ‘Don’t go from here, go from Avlona!’ 

I called Minas, and he called another Minas, who confirmed the path had been cleared and marked recently. We set out this time with vast amounts of water, drinking lots of it the night before. And we were blessed: the path was excellent, a gentle breeze mitigated the late May heat, and the landscape was magnificent, with mountains to one side and deep blue sea to the other, and pine trees for shade. 

As we approached Tristomo, it was clear that this was a special place, the whole area peaceful and wildly beautiful, a piece of the world where time stopped. 

Around the bay itself, a few houses have been restored by the owners, while others are crumbling into the sea. I knew this, and know some of the owners. What I didn’t expect was to be welcomed like guests and invited to eat fresh calamari by a newly married local couple called Marina and Andreas who had a house there. They gave us as much cold water as we could drink from their tank, saying they liked to help people who had walked there, offered us a place stay in a house with the waves lapping around, and regaled us with stories into the night.

Marina was consumed with laughter as she told us about a couple who came to stay once. Tristomo is a fairly rugged and remote place, needless to say, and her husband Andreas was hesitant but at last agreed. The man was a colleague of Andreas’, and he worked with him on ships. The man’s wife also worked on ships, so it came as a surprise when she got seasick during the crossing from Diafani and refused to go back by boat. It wasn’t quite clear how she expected to leave otherwise, because they also had their toddler with them. By donkey, perhaps?

The husband, meanwhile, had brought every gadget known to man – he arrived wearing an action camera strapped around his head – and was frustrated that there was no phone signal and, moreover, nowhere to charge his devices, given that Tristomo has no electricity. Their visit had got off to a good start, clearly, but it would get worse when they somehow made it back to Olympos and found the rabbit.

A huge rabbit had been making its home around their buildings for some time, and an opportunity arose for Andreas to finish it off and put it in the pot. But he needed something to use as a weapon, and he needed it fast. He asked his friend if he could use his spear gun. The guy hesitated and said he had to ask his wife for permission – but he was scared to ask because his wife was against hunting animals. So Andreas had to call the guy’s wife and ask her on behalf of his friend for permission to use the spear gun. The wife replied that he could use it, but only if her husband didn’t watch.

At this point in the story, which Andreas and Marina told very well while topping up the wine, we were all falling about giggling. Marina, in tears of laughter as she lit another cigarette, summed up the only possible cause for such uptight behaviour. ‘I think no sex. Or shitty sex.’

Andreas and Marina insisted we join them for breakfast the next day – cheese preserved in olive oil, made by his mother, and local bread rusks – then we explored the old settlement at Kilios before making our way up the mountain on a solid old stone footpath.

We’d almost reached the top when we were astonished to meet two more people: one Cypriot, one Spanish, cheerful guys carrying just a daypack between them, tripping down the path fresh as daisies. They planned to go down to Tristomo in twenty minutes or so and be back in Avlona to join their friend for a late lunch. Thinking perhaps they were extremely fit and young and that maybe we were walking excessively slowly to take photographs and notes, we wished them well.

Now, our lunch has arrived. I’m a little sad to see bottled water. But the heaped Avlona salad and artichokes with eggs go down well. There’s a rather rotund tourist letting a cat lick his plate clean, making phone calls to friends and ordering more food. As we finish and prepare to leave, the guys appear looking a little less fresh than last time, and stagger over to join their friend. Apparently Anna had told them it was only a couple of hours there and back.

‘She lied!’ whispers the Cypriot.

A few days later, we are leaving Karpathos after an extraordinary week of walks and seeing friends, and will walk from Olympos down to Diafani for the ferry. When we took the main footpath up, it had been badly damaged by the winter rain, and still had a waterfall even in late May. In any case I’d like to try the alternative path via Ayios Konstantinos, another one I’ve never done before.

We get directions from friends in Olympos, but there isn’t much in the way of landmarks around here – it’s all mastic bushes and pine trees and rocks – and the day is hot and our backpacks heavy as I have stuff to take back to Tilos. However, we find a path and it’s a beautiful one through unspoiled green hills. 

The chapel is lovely, and a mouse lives in a hole in the wall. In the valley, the stream still flows. It doesn’t seem a long walk. We arrive back at Diafani, aim straight for the beach and jump into the sea to cool off.

There’s the sound of a big engine. I’ve just got out of the water when Ian shouts that the ferry is approaching. I throw my clothes on over my bikini and half-run all the way to the dock, laughing. We’re soon up on deck, passing the cliffs and wondering how there could possibly be a path to Tristomo that way.