Shady, quiet streets featuring bougainvillea, backgammon, coffee and persecuted felines still exist on the Greek islands, writes Angus Begg
It’s late May 1987. The time is somewhere around 8am down at the harbourside in Piraeus, Athens, and hundreds of backpackers and students are milling about, smoking, sitting on pavements, hassling for cheaper tickets … waiting. Waiting for one of the vast ferries to drop us at our respective “holiday islands” across the Aegean Sea.
Six hours of gentle rumbling and rolling later, we arrived at our destination: Paros, in the Cyclades group of islands.
As the huge, cumbersome vessel manoeuvred into a position suitable to dock at the tiny quay, I noticed another island a few nautical miles away. It was so close that I could make out its terraced hillsides (it was a clear day). Not too commercial then, Paros was the sort of place where backpackers from the world over tried their hands at any island pursuit, from painting boats to washing dishes.
The other island’s name was Naxos, and I learned from the local friends I acquired over the next three months it was “dead quiet”. No place for youngsters seeking holiday romance, Wham! and Lloyd Cole and The Commotions. I was 22 and Paros was an emerging party-spot, and all of us there, whether backpacking students or London jobless seeking innovative methods of spending their social benefit cheques, were essentially looking for a good time.
Thirteen years later I’m once again on a ferry, this time bound for Naxos, watching others disembark at Paros through nostalgic lenses. Over the next two weeks I get the feeling of “so much the same, but so very different”.
It began with the three-hour hydrofoil trip. Which itself started with the fact that on this occasion I was travelling with a school-friend I hadn’t seen for a couple of years. After the “howzit buddy” ritual we were soon of like minds: thirtysomethings, one a construction project manager and the other a journalist, there was no way we were taking the six-hour slow-boat.
The first advantage was the speed. We could take our time in getting to the harbour as we didn’t have to rush for an 8am departure.
We caught the 5pm, highly impressive, extremely comfortable hydrofoil. No plastic seats on the deck or being drenched by spray and whipped by unforgiving winds for the better part of a day this was relative luxury.
Just as the Australians hadn’t introduced the hydrofoil to the Aegean waters in 1987, so the cellphone didn’t exist. And it’s a memory I will cling to, as the multitudes of obnoxious Athens teenagers seemed to take pleasure in repeatedly testing their ring-tones.
The hydrofoil dropped us on Naxos at around 8pm, a classic, burnt orange Aegean sunset welcoming our return. So much for undeveloped, I thought, spying bright lights and a number of fast-food franchises on the road lining the harbour wall.
As it transpired, even where we stayed in Hora, the main port town and settlement was rather frenetic. About 10 of us had been booked into some holiday flats in the newer, modern part of town, and the 80cc scooters buzzing up and down the alley outside the same that were to provide so much enjoyment in the days to come were an unwelcome, intrusive part of our daily lives, from dawn, when the bakers are finishing their rounds, until way past dusk.
However I soon established that the shady, quiet streets of “my” Greek island memories bougainvillea, backgammon, coffee and persecuted felines scurrying for shelter in narrow alleys were 10 minutes away, in the old town, up on the hill. It was in this “old quarter”, around a castle dating back to the 1300s (when Naxos was the capital of Venice’s Aegean dukedom), that I took refuge from an excess of sun and volleyball on the beach.
And when we felt the occasional urge to “escape” Hora, in search of empty beaches and isolated tavernas serving tacky retsina (local wine) with creamy, goats-milk feta and calamata olives, we went next door, hired the offending scooters and, quite literally, took to the empty hills and deserted coves. Much like we did on that first visit in 1987.
And it was just as good.