Peeling Back the Layers of Naxos, Greece
At
dusk we walked up a path along the stream that stitches together Pano
Potamia and Kato Potamia, two villages in the most fertile part of
Naxos, the Greek island. While most of the other Cycladic islands are as
dry as toast, Naxos is covered in verdant valleys and mountain
villages, clusters of whitewashed houses nestled into a Bruegel-like
landscape.
That
evening last summer my husband, Pedro, had our baby strapped to his
chest and the slippery stones and the impending darkness ignited a
moment of panic as we headed toward Pano Potamia, the upper village, and
the source of the stream. We passed river crabs and a knot of swans and
then several ruins, including a crumbling tower where evidence of a
13th-century forbidden love affair is said to be buried.
We
were on our annual trip to Naxos, where my half-Greek husband’s mother,
Voula, lives on a small farm. Arriving at the village, we found the
church where my niece and nephew were baptized, and Pigi, the tavern
where Voula gave our rehearsal dinner the night before our Jewish-Greek
wedding, almost a decade before. She served goat on the spit and,
following her own special logic, offered rooster for the vegetarians.
That was 2004, when Greece hosted the Olympics and there was a feeling
of buoyancy on the island. In Athens there was even talk of the Elgin
marbles coming safely home.
Views From Naxos
Credit Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times
With
each visit a layer of Naxos is peeled back for me. I learn of a new
village, or that there is a ruin in the center of the island that I have
never seen. I’m an American who does not speak Greek; while this makes
me an outsider, I also have the foreigner’s thrill of learning facts
that might elude tourists: that the village of Melanes is the best place
for rooster in red sauce; that locals face the main street when sitting
in cafes and not the picture-perfect port so that they can see who is
walking — and with whom — through town. And despite my outsider status, I
feel a tremendous closeness to the island, in large part because so
many of my life’s milestones have taken place here.
The
first time I went to Naxos, well before that wedding trip, I was 23 and
traveling alone. I’d gone to college with my future husband, who told
me it was a “real” island — as opposed to those where tourism is
mass-marketed, like Mykonos, with its urbane night life and high-end
shops, or Santorini, which teemed with tourists attracted by its
otherworldly landscape. Naxos, he said, has the most beautiful beaches
and secluded ruins. And because it has its own sustainable agriculture
it is one of the few places in the Aegean where you can sit down to an
entire meal of local produce.
On
that first trip, I went by the guidebook. I walked through the Castro,
the old city that winds beneath a Venetian-era castle. I went to Plaka, a
remote hippie beach where you could buy hemp bracelets. Greece was
still on the drachma, the dollar was strong and everything was
blissfully cheap. I ate baklava at a cafe at the harbor, and then I
rented the requisite moped — and promptly crashed.
Once
I married that boy from Naxos my appreciation for the island deepened.
The first time he took me to the island he drove Voula and me up to
Apiranthos, the highest village on the island, his old Volkswagen
chugging around the switchbacks. At a restaurant there, we dined beneath
a walnut tree. When I groaned with pleasure as I bit into tyropita, a
layered savory pastry dripping with graviera, a melted hard cheese,
Voula slapped my wrist.
“Be quiet!” she said. “They will think we’re not feeding you.”
That
spot is gone, and because of the global economic downturn that hit
Greece particularly hard, so are many other restaurants and breweries.
Anekamma, my favorite bakery, shut its doors. Despite being the height
of tourist season, prices for everything from leather sandals to olive
oil soap were reduced. There were “for sale” signs on properties
throughout the island; as Naxians hold their land close, this was a
serious indication of difficult times.
But
still bustling is Axiotissa, a restaurant near Kastraki beach where
Voula, and most locals, go. Pink bougainvillea snakes along the
vine-covered terrace and you can see past a garden of olive trees —
along with chickens, goats and planted rosemary and oregano bushes — to
the sea. Over many visits last summer, I found inventive dishes
different from others I’d had on the island. We had salads topped with
mizithra, a soft local cheese, and purslane, or with arugula and fresh
herbs. Grilled eggplant was drizzled with honey and sprinkled with
almonds, zucchini croquettes were flecked with fresh dill, and boiled
rabbit was so tender it fell off the bone. Everything, of course, was
local and organic.
After
lunch we passed by Voula’s portion of unused land along the beach to
make sure no one was keeping goats there. Once it was the cool and
fertile mountain areas farther inland that were coveted. Land by the
beach was worthless; nothing could grow there. Now beachfront parcels
are much sought-after — and yet half-built homes dot hills along the
coast because the bank loans have ceased and no one can afford to finish
them.
turkey
aegean
Sea
greece
Kato Potamia
Aegean sea
Engares
Naxos
Athens
Melanes
agios
prokopios
Apiranthos
Plaka
beach
Mykonos
Damarionas
Parthena
beach
Pano Potamia
Cycladic islands
kastraki
beach
NAXOS
Santorini
4 miles
50 miles
From
Kastraki we drove south to Alyko, a secluded beach surrounded by rocks,
a cedar forest and dunes. Hovering on the lip of land above the water
is a hotel, also half-finished, a ruin from a 1950s business deal gone
sour. Yet it has left a pleasant legacy: It’s because of the hotel that a
road was built to get access to these rugged, tucked away coves. Also
nearby is my favorite beach, Parthena, better suited to wind- and
kite-surfing than to swimming. But on windless days — maybe three days a
summer — the quarter-mile-long bay is perfect for a dip, and it feels
wild and abandoned, as if we alone discovered it.
I
was married above Agios Prokopios, a dazzling stretch of white sand
that extends down the west coast of the island, eventually becoming
Plaka. It’s no longer the Plaka I first found 20 years ago; the hippies
have moved on and now umbrellas and beach chairs take up real estate in
front of the hotels and studios along the beach. And while there are
still quiet places to spread a towel, there is a wide range of tavernas
in which to eat and drink. Last summer we went to a spot called Meze2
for calamari and sardines, but one can be happy eating marithes (tiny
fried fish) and drinking a cold Mythos beer at any taverna along the
beach road.
Those
inland areas, though, still hold a powerful appeal. According to Voula,
everything good and healthy — honey, farm eggs, vissino cherries for
preserves — comes from there. Last year we visited Halki, a village that
was once the capital of the island because of its distance from pirate
ships. From its main street there’s a short, paved walk, flanked by
olive groves, to St. Georges, the Byzantine church. (A somewhat less
pleasant stroll, I should add, if a stroller is involved.) Gianni’s
Taverna in the center square is known for its gigantes, large white
beans prepared in tomato sauce, as well as grilled lamb chops and
souvlaki.
The
first time my husband took me there, the taverna was half-filled and
the village was quiet. We had come from the nearby Church of Panagia
Drosiani, Our Lady of Refreshment, one of the oldest Orthodox churches
in the Balkans, which has rare Byzantine frescoes. It’s open to the
public sporadically; that evening we ascended the steps, looking up to
the rough stone bell tower, and an elderly woman greeted us in the small
chapel. It was dusty and cool, and the faded frescoes were eerie and
magical in the fading light.
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When
we returned to Halki on this most recent visit — joined by my
sister-in-law Patricia, her husband, Vangelis, their children, and a
friend — the village teemed with busloads of tourists and Gianni’s was
full. The famous Vallindras distillery was jammed with tourists waiting
in line for kitron, a Naxian sweet liqueur made from the fruit of citron
trees. The baby began to wail and I wanted to go back down to town for
grilled octopus and an ouzo, made milky with ice. But Vangelis and his
friend suggested another taverna in a village below, Damarionas, a place
I had often passed but had never noticed.
Locals
would likely refer to our destination as the first place on the left
when one enters the village, and that vagueness is indicative of the
dining experience: The restaurant had no menu and so we were told what
was available, which, as usual, I could not understand. My niece and
nephew ran with other children — they stay out until 2 and 3 in the
morning on Naxos, playing soccer and chasing village cats — along the
brightly lit stone terrace. Along its side stood the oldest olive tree
I’d seen, its trunk as thick as an oak.
As
we waited for our meal, the conversation turned, as it often does on
the island, to local gossip. Pedro repeated a story about a restaurant
in a particularly idyllic part of Plaka where, owing to a real-estate
dispute, a beautiful tree had been burned with acid by a neighbor and
left leafless.
Finally
the meal arrived: deep red tomato salads topped with feta, juicy
souvlaki, heaps of fried Naxos potatoes — sweet and flavorful, deep
yellow in color, they are famous all over Greece — and plates of the
most tender boiled goat anyone at the table had ever tasted.
A
week later, we arrived at Pano Potamia, the baby asleep against Pedro’s
chest. As we made our way to Pigi — I could already taste the tangy
tzatziki, which we would soon slather on village bread — we passed a
spigot at its entrance. Naxians say the water in Potamia is the clearest
and purest on the island; Patricia had even brought a jug to carry
water back to Voula.
I
knelt down at the spigot and cupped my hands. I once believed that
island lore had it that to taste the water would make a wish come true;
it turned out that wasn’t true. I sipped — the water was delicious — and
made my wish anyway.
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