The Sea’s  Island

At the edge of the Northern Sporades group, Alonissos remains off the beaten path of tourism. But this island, whose name derives from the Greek ancient Greek for sea, als, harbors many pleasures, at sea and on land, for travelers who want to relax and get back in tune with nature, as Diana Porter found.

I am standing on the deck of a large passenger ferry chugging its way over the sea. The water below me is deep blue, almost indigo, and the sky above is brilliant, almost blinding cerulean. A slight breeze blows a stray strand across my eyes and in the seconds it takes to brush it away, something shiny breaks the water’s surface, then disappears. Or did I imagine it. I stare intensely at the horizon, scanning the sea for splashes of foamy white but its surface remains smooth, unwrinkled. Ladi. Olive oil–that’s what the Greeks call the sea when it’s still. Ladi.
My Greek holiday is ending. It’s been five weeks already but I feel as if I’ve just arrived. I can never get my fill of Greece. My friends have stayed behind on Skopelos, but I’ve decided to spend four days of my last week here exploring a new island. Alonissos. There’s something musical about its name that draws me to it–that, and the promise of a few days of solitude. After weeks surrounded by the starkness of the Mani, in the southern Peloponnese, and some of the Cyclades, the Sporades’ lushness is like a balm. Mihalis, a man from the kafeneion who has appointed himself our unofficial guide and guardian on Skopelos, assures me that the only thing I’ll find on Alonissos is quiet. This suits me fine.
The trip between the two islands is disappointingly short; I like to savor the journey. The Aegean fascinates me, a sea deservedly rich in mythology. The Northern Sporades–as the archipelagos of Skyros, Skiathos, Skopelos, Alonissos, and a host of smaller isles mostly north and west of Alonissos are called–go back to the primal myth, creation. I love the Greeks for their mythology, for the way they interpreted the mysteries of life and their world, how in the most primitive times they expressed the profound philosophical questions that still preoccupy our minds through these wonderful stories. Yes, as I peer at the horizon, I can see how this archipelagos of islands may have been created by a tantrum or a fight waged high above among the gods and that these isles are rocks or mountains that fell to the sea below as they were being hurled across the sky by Titans and the Cyclopes. Geological science offers a more credible explanation but I like to visualize the gods’ rage, feel their fury. It’s far more inspiring to think of a volcano, like the small dormant one on Psathoura, one of the isles off the coast, as one of these warring Giants exploding after being crushed or trapped under a rock by Heracles. My imagination is not calmed by learning that there’s a cavern on Gioura called the Cave of the Cyclopes.

Alonissos is the sort of island whose discovery you want to shout to the world, then clamp your hand over your mouth as it forms its name; it’s a treasure you want to share with all your friends, yet at the same time you feel strongly compelled to guard knowledge of its existence like a closely-held secret for fear the island will be spoiled by the sheer number of prospective visitors. But Alonissos has been spared such onslaught by its geography, which has placed it at the end of the string of islands known as the Northern Sporades, ensuring that only those who truly appreciate its detachment from the other islands’ bustle and its largely untamed beauty land on its shore.
There’s not much that has been written about Alonissos’s history, but the island wears its heritage proudly in the name of its main port, Patitiri (which means grape press), and its agriculture, grapes. Both are a silent nod to the island’s ancient roots as a colony established by Staphylus, a mythical ruler of Crete. His name is Greek for grape, stafyli, and not coincidentally he was said to be the son of Dionysus, god of wine. Skopelos has claimed the demi-god’s presence for themselves, as he is said to have landed at a cove near Skopelos Town where a Bronze Age tomb was found. Nonetheless, it’s Alonissos, or Ikos, as it was known in antiquity, that had the reputation for winemaking. The island continued to produce good wine through the 1950s, when most of the vineyards were destroyed by diseases that killed off all the vines. Evil never happens alone, as the locals say, and this was followed by a severe earthquake in 1965 which severely damaged Palea Alonissos. Evil is caused by envy, the evil eye or to mati and it’s Alonissos’s fate to have been envied by its neighbors, even back in antiquity, for while it was sparsely populated even then, its soil was graced by important visitors, like Peleus, the father of Achilles.

The thing to do on Alonissos is hike. I’ve arrived prepared: swimsuit, a change of jeans and tops, hiking boots and socks, sandals, camera, and notebook are all I’ve brought. Hiking can, at times, be a matter of necessity, as when you’ve lingered at a taverna in Patitiri long after the last bus to Hora has departed and all taxi drivers have retired for the night. But it’s also a source of deep pleasure as the topography offers just the right amount of difficulty to make a hike challenging but not overly strenuous. The island is covered in Aleppo pines, oak trees, brushwood, junipers, and other flora, rare and common. Paths lead over low bluffs covered in scratchy phrygana offer breath-taking views over the archipelagos, rewarding you with virgin coves offering their waters for a cooling dip. Of course you went hiking, say my beach-bar bound friends when I describe the island to them after we’re reunited: what else is there to do on an island with scant nightlife and no archeological or other sights. What else would you want to do, is my rejoinder.
The baguette-shaped island covers an area of 65 square kilometers and has a coastline that, if traced, runs for 82 kilometers. Alonissos’s “short” ends are located along a roughly north-south axis, with its western coast open to the sea and its eastern coast guarded by the Peristera islets. A low mountainous ridge–its highest peak barely rises to 480 meters–forms the island’s spine. Patitiri, the port at the southern end, is linked to Yerakas, the northernmost point, by a single road. These two points, Patitiri and Yerakas, are just nineteen kilometers apart–an indication of the island’s size and scale. Yet Alonissos feels anything but cramped: indeed, one of the joys it offers is the pure pleasure you feel just simply being outdoors.
Time and space seem curiously altered on Alonissos. Stepping off the boat onto the small dock at Patitiri, you have the eerie sensation of having also taken a tiny step back in time. This impression is at odds with the visual data: Patitiri is a new village, built from the ground up from the mid-1970s. Since then, it has spilled over a blunt headland into the resort-village of Rusum Yialos and further still towards Votsi. Island cottages, if they ever existed at these sites, have given way to two- and three-story villas with ample balconies or flat-roofed box-like buildings prevalent in rural towns on the mainland. Yet the modern building frames seem somewhat quaint, as if the rhythms of day-to-day life on the island have yet to catch up with the faster-paced lifestyle represented by these very modern facades.
This old-worldly aura is much stronger in Hora or Palea Alonissos, as the old capital is known. The difference in spatial relationships are also more pronounced. Hora hovers on a hilltop above Patitiri. By road, it is separated from the port by three kilometers; on foot, it is a thirty-minute hike up an old stone-laid, graded donkey trail that zigzags up an incline with terraced fields and small clumps of pines. But the walk actually far longer than a half hour for no one makes it up without pausing several times along the route. These frequent stops, ostensibly made for a short rest are actually to take in the view of Patitiri, snug in its cup-shaped harbor, from different perspectives and heights.
Looking up at Palea Alonissos from Patitiri, the old hora (as Greek islands' principal villages are called) looks as if it is reclining against the rolling peaks that comprise the tailbone of the island's spine. It's not until you've reached the old village that you realize how precipitously Palea Alonissos is poised on the bluff and how tightly built it is, especially compared to Patitiri's casual sprawl.
Palea Alonissos is located high on the island’s southern tip, and this location gives Hora a panoramic view of the sea. In medieval times, there was a small fist-shaped tower here whose function was not unlike that of the lookout’s perch high on the mast of old clippers and other ships. The view is made even more striking by the contrast between the vista's expansiveness and the confinement of the maze-like passages. From the second century B.C. until Greece gained independence, the island passed from the hands of one conqueror to another as the Aegean’s dominion passed from Rome to Constantinople, and then to the Franks, Venetians, and Turks. The fortifications were built under Byzantine rule and the village of Palea Alonissos grew slowly around them as the island’s inhabitants settled in the area outside its walls. The tower's asphyxiatingly narrow alleys are still entered through two portals that have been preserved and restored. The old, split-level homes contained within the medieval walls have been faithfully restored, down to the slate shingles used for roofing–a detail lacking in the island's newer homes whose roofs feature mass-produced clay tiles.
The island's population, estimated at around 2,500, is concentrated in the southern headland, from Patitiri to Votsi. Several smaller settlements are scattered over twelve kilometers along the eastern coast as far as the fishing hamlet of Steni Valla. All have fine beaches, but are also excellent starting points for short hikes to more isolated coves where the combination of shingle, shallow water and dense fringe of pines that reaches to the water's edge creates an astonishing palette of blues and greens.
Steni Valla is hemmed in by Peristera, one of several islets sprinkled in the sea to the east and north of Alonissos. Thus shielded by the northerly winds, Steni Valla has the tranquility of a lakeside resort, and is a popular anchorage, for sailboats touring the Sporades. An excellent site for swimming is the adjacent Ayios Petros cove which, like all great places on Alonissos, is just a short hike away.

Swimming is the other pleasure Alonissos offers. Its beaches aren’t the long sandy coastlines found on islands like Naxos or Ios, nor do they have the cosmopolitan buzz of the beach clubs on Mykonos or Paros or Skiathos even. But the sea is cool and pristine.
The thirty-odd isles and rock outcrops off the coast of Alonissos–Peristera, Kyra Panayia, Gioura, Psathoura, Piperi, to name some of the larger ones–comprise the National Marine Park of Alonissos, the largest protected marine area in Europe. The rarity of this marine habitat–which includes the flora and fauna of the islets–was highlighted by a German zoologist and director of documentaries about animal life. The park’s total area is mostly sea, but human presence is severely limited on land as well.
The marine park is most identified with the Mediterranean monk seal, or Monachus monachus, and, indeed, Piperi, the species’ most important breeding site, is at the park’s core. But these are not the only rare species found within its embrace: the Capra aegagrus ssp. Dorcas, a species of wild goat, survives only on the islet of Gioura.