Goodbye Amorgos

Eleven and a half hours. That’s the amount of time between the time I left Amorgos this morning and when I’ll be arriving in Athens later today. Most of that will be spent at sea, but for about 2 ½ hours I will wait in Naxos after disembarking the Small Cyclades slow boat and waiting for the High Speed 4 ferry to Greece’s capital. From there it’s likely a metro ride into the city where I’ll find my hotel and hopefully my friend Frankie waiting ahead of me. The boat I’m currently on is far smaller than the large ferry I took to Amorgos seven days ago. Combine the size of the ship with the wind and rough seas, and I’ve had quite a different experience from the rather calm ride a week ago. The boat has been crashing up and down and listing from side to side quite violently most of the morning. Water has been splashing up to the top deck where I was until recently retreating to the relative calm of the inner portion of the boat. The Dramamine I swallowed 30 minutes before departure is doing its job. No seasickness to speak of yet.

Amorgos. It’s going to be difficult to sum up all of the experiences and fun I had on the island in one blog post. But, I’ll try my best and focus on the high points.

During my time in Amorgos, I spent most of it in and around the village of Egialis. Without a car, and happy to enjoy what Egialis had to offer, it was easiest to stay put for most of the time. I stayed on the hillside just above the village - an easy 10 minute walk to the beach and harbor. The village itself is mostly a collection of shops, coffee shops, bars and restaurants. Some face the harbor, some are further down along the beach, and others are nestled together up the nooks and crannies of the narrow footpaths of the city. I found my favorite coffee spot, my favorite little grocery store and a favorite spot on the beach for a beer or a quick bite. At the coffee spot I met Nota, a high school sophomore from Athens who’s spent many summers on Amorgos with her mother. This summer was her first working at the coffee shop, and she told me she started just one day before I made my first visit. There is a dock in the city - the arrival and departure spot for several ferries each day and several fishing boats that use the large, flat surface to untangle and dry(?) their nets. Beginning near the village is the main beach which stretches in a half-moon away from town then up to a cliffside footpath that leads beach goers to two smaller, more secluded beaches. The second of which is a nude beach. (Maybe I should leave out this detail, but I can note that I did partake in some alfresco sunbathing and swimming there during one of my days on Amorgos. When in Rome, am I right?) Cats are the stars of the village. They seem to be everyone - sleeping on the other side of worn fences, walking as if they owned the streets, and meandering about under one’s legs and beneath the chairs of the restaurants, looking for the occasional dropped piece of food or hand out of table scraps. It’s a sleepy village with a very chill, laid back vibe. Nothing much gets started until after 10:00 a.m. and there is little night life to speak of except for long-into-the-night conversations over wine at restaurants that refuse to close until the last customer has finally decided to call it quits.

A met a fair amount of people while on the island. There was Nota from the coffee shop. My next-door Aussie neighbor Chris who, among other things, talked a mile a minute, invited himself over to my place during the first hours of my stay with beers and an edible gummie in hand, joined us for dinner our first night but promptly rose from his seat and hour in and said he had to return to his apartment because he’d had too much to drink, and who confessed to leaving an “aqua turd” behind in the shallows of the nude beach. (I later asked my real Aussie friend, Hans, if aqua turds were common with his lot. He said they were not.) There was Voula from dinner last night, who owned the Cretan restaurant we ate at in Langada and who sat down next to me during dessert and coffee to tell me about her place and how she gets all her raki (southern Grecian schnapps) and all of her snails shipped to her from her dad in Crete. He makes the raki himself and personally collects the snails a couple of times each year. The snails then “sleep” on the boat to Amorgos, and Voula gives them water to “wake them up” before cooking them. They were tasty. Voula and I shared a small jar of raki together during our conversation.

Finally, there was Theo, Puki and Tony. These are friends of David and Mameaw - friends who live on the island and who David and Mameaw have gotten to know quite well in the 8-10 years they’ve been coming to Amorgos. Theo and Puki operate a collection of vacation apartments further up the hill in the village of Patomos. Tony and his Ethiopan-born wife Lydia run a hotel in Egialis. On Friday night we dined with Tony’s family, Tony’s hotel staffperson (also Ethiopian) Alem and Theo at a restaurant in the village owned by Theo’s brother. Thanks to Puki’s influence, every Friday at the restaurant is Thai night. The place was packed and Puki was hard at work in the kitchen while the rest of us were hard at work crammed into a couple of tables and devouring each new dish of Thai food that appeared in front of us. The wine flowed, and the conversation was great - that is except for some tense moments when most of us took offense to the fact that Tony insisted that the West is just as bad as Putin and that we should stay out of the “civil war” in Ukraine. Knowing David and Mameaw, and them knowing Theo, Puki and Tony, made my time in Amorgos an experience I never would have been able to have come anywhere close to on my own, and an experience rich in new friendships, camaraderie, many laughs, and an immense amount of local color. 

The best night on the island was Saturday. Intending to join Theo and Puki for dinner in the village of Chora, we switched plans when Mameaw found out a taverna in Egialis was hosting live, traditional Greek music. She said they don’t do this often and it was really something we shouldn’t miss. She didn’t have to twist my arm even a little bit, and I was thankful she had taken it upon herself to find this out. So after exploring a 1,000 year-old cliff-side monastery near Chora, David, Mameaw and I returned to our village, cleaned up a bit and met Theo and Puki at the outdoor restaurant. Music, from a two-piece string band and vocalist, played throughout our meal of goat, lamb and pork cooked on a spit behind the restaurant, Greek salads and assorted other tasty bites, but it was a bit later in the evening when things got cooking on the dance floor.

Adjacent to the restaurant was a campground which drew dozens of university students to the area in the summer. And let me tell you, along with the happy-as-a-clam middle-aged restaurant owner, these kids knew how to dance. The students dominated the dance floor, but everyone was welcome. A dad and his cutie-pie 5-year-old daughter, 20-something friend groups, more older gentlemen - and - me! I couldn’t resist. I knew I’d kick myself later if I didn’t join in, and I knew I couldn’t pass up this authentic, cultural experience.

So, I broke into the circle, grabbed the hands of the person on either side of me, and went for it. Some of the dances were fairly simple circle dances of back and forth 1-2-3 footwork, but others were hypnotizing and confusing routines of steps, leans, waiting, then more steps in quick succession. I tried. Other times the leader of the circle would split off, dragging our group dancing hand-in-hand in a snake-like line weaving through tables and eventually to a larger dance floor near the back entrance to the restaurant where we’d form yet another circle. Damn it was fun. And hot. I was sweating through my shirt. At 1:00 it was fun - but sad - to enjoy the last dance of the night- the dance that by far enticed the most people onto the floor. Smiles and laughs all around, and the happiness knowing I had moved a little outside my comfort zone to create a memory I’ll live with for the rest of my life.

So, I must say goodbye to beautiful Amorgos and its picturesque hillside villages, it’s amazing food, it’s welcoming people, its turquoise water and it’s breathtaking scenery. It’s sad, and bittersweet. I don’t think I could have had a better Grecian experience than the one I had here, with new friends and old. But, the sadness is fleeting as I feel in my heart that I will come back. I have friends here now, and friends in David and Mameaw who will likely vacation here for years to come. Why wouldn’t I return? For now, it’s off to Athens and three full days of exploring everything the city has to offer. Goodbye Amorgos. Hello ancient Greece.