The Pirates Came from Where?


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Europe » Greece » South Aegean » Naxos
August 21st 2022
Published: September 13th 2022
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Today we’ve booked a full day “Highlights of Naxos” bus tour. Our guide introduces himself as Dimitri and his driver as Vasili, which I guess dispels any doubts we might have had about them not being genuine Greeks.

As we head up one of the fertile valleys towards the island’s mountainous interior, Dimitri points out a field of potatoes which he says is one of the island’s main crops. He says that Naxos potatoes are an essential ingredient of one of the island’s delicacies, the Naxos Fried Potato, and the potatoes for this dish have to come from Naxos. Now I’ve always been partial to a good spud. I thought I’d found the perfect potato dish when I first tasted Naxos Fried Potato a few nights ago, and I was salivating at the thought of cooking up batches every night in the kitchen back home. It’s shattering to find out now that if I want to do this I’m going to have to work out a way of importing the key ingredient from the other side of the world. Hopefully the day will improve from here.

First stop is the Temple of Demeter. It’s a full bus and Dimitri stresses the importance of everyone getting back on board on time at 10.30. He then repeats the time in French. He then stresses in English that if anyone can’t understand him they need to come and talk to him in person. Perhaps unsurprisingly no one does. The Temple is thought to have been built in the early fifth century BC by the same tyrant Lygdamus who was responsible for the Portara in Naxos Town. And this time, unlike the Portara, he actually managed to get it finished before he was overthrown. We’re told that it’s in the Doric architectural style and became the model for other temples around Greece, including the Parthenon in Athens, which it apparently predates by about fifty years.

Next stop is a tiny village where we’re given a demonstration of pottery making, and then a tour (is it still a tour if it’s only one room?) of a disused olive pressing facility. We’re told that at one time every village in Naxos had at least one olive press, but their use declined when electricity came to the island in 1963. Under the old manual system it took seven kgs of olives to make a kg of oil, but modern mechanisation has reduced this to three kgs. We’re told that 98% of the world’s olive oil comes from countries around the Mediterranean.

Next stop is the very cute Halki village. We’re told that this was the island’s capital in the days when piracy was rife and living next to the coast was likely to be hazardous to your health. Dimitri’s list of the places where pirates used to come from to spread terror and pillage everything in sight includes my beloved’s Maltese homeland. Funny that her cousins’ many tales of their island’s history were strangely silent on that particular detail.

We continue on up into the mountains past the village of Filoti. A lot of the peaks around us seem to have churches or monasteries on them, and when I say “on” I mean right on the very top, not a few metres down one side. There’s a particularly striking example on a very steep high rocky crag above Filoti, and Dimitri then points out the steep winding path up to it. He tells us that on one particular day every year everyone in the village treks up there. I hope they stagger the entry times; it doesn’t look all that big. I’m also wondering a bit exactly what he means by “everyone”. The path’s not exactly a ropes and crampons exercise, but it’s not far off it, and I wouldn’t like the chances of any of the more elderly residents in particular of making it to the top. I wonder why the Greeks have got such a penchant for mountaintop churches. Fortunately there also seem to be more accessible churches in most villages, which is probably just as well for the average worshipper.

We pass the start of the path up to the summit of Mount Zas (or Zeus), the highest peak not only in Naxos but in the whole of the Cyclades. It’s a more than respectable 1,001 to 1,004 metres depending on who you believe. We‘re told that according to Greek mythology the God Zeus was raised in a cave, the Cave of Zas, on the slopes of the mountain.

The population of Naxos is currently somewhere around 20,000, but we’re told that at one time it was more like 120,000. A lot of Naxonians left after the devastating Greek Civil War of 1946 to 1949 which Dimitri says virtually ruined the country. A lot went to Canada and the USA, and also to our homeland if I’m not very much mistaken. There are also apparently somewhere around 100,000 Naxians living in Athens. Another reason for the population decline is that a lot of the younger people don’t want to be farmers, and consequently a lot of the houses in the rural villages are now empty. This sounds like a very familiar tale; exactly the same thing’s happening in many rural areas of our homeland.

The road is now a continuous series of hairpin bends around the mountainsides, and the scenery is spectacular. We‘re seeing terraces held up by stone walls on the steep slopes all around us. Dimitri says that when there were more than 100,000 people here, every square inch was under cultivation in order to keep the island fed, but most of this has now been abandoned. Any farming here has to be undertaken by hand and is hard work; it’s way too steep and rocky to get any machines in.

Next stop is the also impossibly cute Apeiranthos village, which is also perched on the side of a steep mountain. It’s Sunday and the residents are filing out of church. The village is a maze of narrow alleyways, and Dimitri cautions us against venturing too far from the main thoroughfare (still a very narrow alleyway) or we’ll get lost. He leads us through to the main square, which seems very small for the size of the village. It looks like the tourists outnumber the locals here by about ten to one, well that’s assuming that the more elderly folk sitting in cafes drinking coffee, smoking and discussing the day’s events are all locals and everyone else is a tourist. I wonder what the locals think about being so outnumbered. I suppose it brings in money, and they probably need it given that their other main form of livelihood, farming, appears to have largely gone the way of the dinosaur.

We begin the long slow descent down to the coastal village of Apollonas near the island’s northern tip. Dimitri tells us that its population has “exploded” in recent years and is now somewhere around 100. I’m not quite sure what that means in terms of what was here before the explosion; very little I suspect. He says it’s been “discovered” by people from Athens (presumably only a very few people) who’ve now set up their summer homes here. It’s very pretty, with a nice sandy beach and fishing boats in the harbour. We dine on the waterfront and I take a refreshing dip while Issy explores the shops (I think that might have only been one shop). The village feels very isolated. Other than the waterfront it’s completely surrounded by mountains and I suspect getting supplies in might be a bit of a challenge.

We make a brief stop at the eleven metre long Apollonas Kouros statue on the hillside above the village. It’s believed to be of the God Dionysus, but the jury seems to still be out on that issue. Other theories are that it’s Zeus, or even just a random older man. It’s lying down and it’s unfinished. It seems that it was carved here in the quarry, and never left. Again no one’s quite sure why, but popular theories are that it had a crack in the neck and the guys who carved it thought it would break if they tried to move it, or that it was too heavy to move (80 tons, yep that’s heavy), or that no one paid the sculptors so they went on strike (I wonder who came up with that theory), or that they got halfway through carving it and realised they’d forgotten to build the road to get it out (I’m discounting that last theory; if the ancient Greeks were smart enough to invent democracy and algebra, and to build the Acropolis, forgetting to build a road wouldn’t quite seem to fit the prototype).

The trip back to Naxos Town takes us around the mountainsides high above the island’s rugged west coast. The scenery is again spectacular. Dimitri‘s commentary had been sounding a bit wooden through the day, almost as if he was reading off an invisible script. It’s hard to be critical; I’d probably sound like I was reading off a script too if I was trying to commentate my way around Australia in Greek to a bunch of Greek tourists. He’s starting to go off script now as he starts to explain his passion for Greece and its history. He says he first got inspired when he visited the massive Delos archaeological site off the coast of Mykonos, and this changed his life. He then starts reading poetry about Greece by local poets and others including Oscar Wilde. There’s clearly a lot of passion in there somewhere.


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13th September 2022
Halki village

Naxos
I see you are making friends along the way
18th September 2022
Halki village

Naxos
It was indeed wonderful! Thx for reading.
29th October 2022

Love the photos
I think I may have already told you that Naxos looked very inviting when we passed it on the ferry ride from Syros going south. It's so fabulous that you had the time to get to know it quite well.

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