Trip 44 — Ikaria Walk

Day 1: Agios Kirykos to Magganitis
Wednesday, 23 April 2025

Today: 33716 steps/26.45 km/16.44 mi/4h 59m

The Pension Akti was waiting for me. I didn't get to meet Kristy's relative, but her husband and their daughter checked me in to the hotel. They even took in an unexpected second traveler a few minutes later.

When I told Kristy the boat was due in at 11:45 p.m., she had written, "Great! Just in time for dinner."

This wasn't hyperbole. A few of Agios Kirykos's casual restaurants, parallel to a row of tamarisk trees and facing the water, were still serving. I hadn't been hungry on the boat, and I'm still not sure I was, but I couldn't resist that idyllic scene. And so, just before 1 a.m., I sat down to a dinner of Greek salad and a half-kilo of little grilled red mullet. The tomatoes were among the freshest I'd ever had, the fish a bit salty. I wonder whether the cats got the leftovers.

I didn't wake up until just before ten, but it wouldn't be a very long walking day. It was warm and sunny, and I put on my sunscreen and prepared to leave. I checked out with the owners' son Demetri.

"I just want to confirm that I'm coming back here next Wednesday," I said.

"Where will you be until then?"

"I'm going to walk around the island. Today I'm going to Magganitis."

"Walking all the way to Magganitis? That's very far."

"It's about twenty-five kilometers. Not too much."

"Do you have a good map?"

I did, beyond Google Maps. I'd found a large folding map of Ikaria in a map store in Athens and sprawled it out on the ferry, as much as I could with the reclined seat in front of me and the broken tray dangling next to me. It had 19 recommended walking routes, none of which fit my perimeter plan, because they all involved going into the mountainous interior. Still, it was helpful to have a real paper hiking map.

"That's a good one," Demetri said. "But if you feel like it's too much, hold your thumb out like this. Anyone will stop for you and give you a ride."

"Thank you."

The restaurants were already getting crowded at 11 a.m.; what better place to be than dallying over a seafood meal by the harbor in perfect weather?

Well, walking, for now.

The road seemed too narrow to accommodate two-way traffic and one stubborn pedestrian, but beyond the town it widened and the houses fizzled out.

I soon reached the graffiti-marked turnoff to the Toula Hotel, with the outline of its name painted on a building a couple hundred meters uphill. Nick Perry, the author of "Escape to Ikaria," had worked on the hotel and led a strike against the overseer due to the low pay and punishing treatment. The workers got what they wanted, but Nick was fired for being a troublemaker. He didn't mind.

The hotel lasted only three years, putting the island in debt and a blight on the landscape. Maybe it was a Trump venture.

Farther along was Lefkada, where Nick lived with his family for most of a year. Which house was his, the dilapidated one barely noticeable through the thick growth immediately on the inland side? Or the building being fixed up on the seaward side, with the worker taking a cigarette break? Or was it even standing at all? There's a new taverna 500 meters uphill, but there was no sign of the one where he spent so many nights.

I went a few steps down the path toward the hot springs, but I wasn't ready to make the effort. The access, according to Nick's book, was precarious, and the springs were notorious for not being uniformly hot and for sometimes being too hot, so if you didn't know where to go, you could be shivering one moment and scalding the next.

Xylosyrtis and Livadi's blue-domed Orthodox churches stood out among the white buildings and red roofs. In Livadi, a poster said, "All Israeli soldiers are war criminals / Occupiers — Rapists — Murderers / We don't want you here!" in English and Hebrew. I saw the poster again later. That, combined with occasional "Free Palestine" graffiti along the road, clued me in regarding the prevailing, or at least more vocal, Ikarian opinion about what's happening across the Mediterranean.

At the ten-kilometer mark, I took a dirt track down to the water, startling a few goats shortly after the turnoff. After ten minutes I descended a staircase of an eight-row stone amphitheatre. Fifty meters into the water lay what appeared to be a fairly unremarkable black rock. This, according to the legend, is where Icarus fell into the sea, his wax wings having melted when he disobeyed his father's instruction not to fly too close to the sun. It was a serene spot, and I was inspired to sing a verse of "Glorious Apollo," a glee that I remembered from my Harvard Glee Club days.

I came back up and followed a winding road of dirt and stones for almost an hour. When it bent to the left, it became woodsy and unsuitable for cars; I was to continue another few hundred meters until I merged back with the main road. But instead I came to a gate. This wasn't the way.

I returned to the bend; there was a slightly higher path. It, too, eventually became overgrown and dead-ended at a fence. High above me was the main road, yet Google's map had me reaching it only about 30 seconds ahead.

I had to go back almost a kilometer, where there was a cutover up to the main road. The cutover was steep, and so was the main road once I reached it. It felt like a long way around. When I reached the point on the map where I originally was to have met the road, I looked down. There was no path. It was almost a vertical wall. Maybe the goats could have climbed it.

I was annoyed by the detour, but it was hard to stay so; these mountains were beautiful, the temperature was agreeable, and in 20 minutes I would reach Plagia, where there were three lunch spots. One was probably closed, according to Google Maps, but the other two were shown to be open 24 hours — I didn't believe this — and one had a review from a week ago.

Of course, none were open. The parking lot of the adjacent church, with its light-blue dome and roof and yellow walls, saw a lot of activity, but none of it involved alimentation. This wasn't surprising after the preparation Kristy had given me.

"Nothing is usually open between 9 a.m. and noon," she had written. "And then like noon – 6 p.m."

I sat for a few minutes, exchanging awkward glances with one of the drivers by the church, pondering whether to eat the bags of Emirates wasabi peas and M&Ms (probably one large M&M after a day in the heat), and sipping water.

Water. That's what I didn't have enough of, or at least as much as I wanted to. Some of these walks have involved such long days that I started out this morning with a "Twenty-six kilometers? No problem" attitude, and all I had was most of a half-liter bottle from the Titania Hotel.

Still, I didn't have that far to go until Magganitis. Only 11 kilometers, and with a net decline of almost 200 meters. The problem was that it came in the form of 248 meters up and 436 meters down. And the "up" was imminent.

But might as well get it over with. I climbed back to the main road, which squiggled upward and through the mountainside dramatically. The wind kicked up, and it looked like it was blowing the Aegean away from me; the water appeared to converge toward the horizon steadily and uniformly, as if directed by a computer, though no computer is as impressive as nature.

Many squiggles away, I could make out a cluster of blue road signs, where one road cut through the island to Evdilos, the main town on the north coast, and the road I was on slithered back down to Magganitis. I finally reached this point, the apex of this section, and my pace quickened as I started the descent.

Numerous hairpin bends later, and after a tunnel of a few hundred meters, I entered Magganitis. The descent had gone too far; there was one more climb into the town and then a steeper one up to where I was staying. But a mini-market's sign promised me water, and I had to stop for that first.

I could barely make out Roula in the dim light, but once my eyes adjusted I realized it was a store delightfully crammed with all sorts of items of the edible and inedible variety. Below the shelves of pasta, cleaners, stuffed grape leaves, juices, and coffee were photographs of her family, a stuffed cat, ceramic swans, painted stones, and fake flowers.

"You look Greek," Roula said.

"Thank you. But I'm from the United States."

"Where? I lived in Chicago for twenty-eight years."

"New York. How late will you be here?"

"About nine."

"Good, I may see you later. Now I just need water and juice."

The only cold water was in small bottles, one of which I cracked open as we were finishing our conversation. The liter of fruit juice was also room-temperature, but those were calories I wanted.

A final steep incline later, I was welcomed at Zacharoula Rooms by Dina, the cleaner; her son of about ten years, Alvin; and three cats. The owners, Stella and Stefanos, were in Athens. Alvin showed me how to use the shower: turn on the hot-water switch in another building for an hour first; then turn it off and get clean. "And there's a blanket in the closet if you get cold."

"Stella left you fruit," Dina said. On a table in the room were three apples.

I paid her and they left. The room had a kitchen with an oven, a stove, and a refrigerator. The ceiling sloped. A coaxial cable spiraled up one of the walls, but it didn't lead to anything. I liked the place.

My plan was to go back to the market for a large water bottle (now that I knew I could cool it), more juice, and a couple of beers; watch the sunset from down near the port; put away my liquids; and have dinner at the taverna up the hill or one of the spots by the water.

Roula was in the market, watching the news on television with her partner, Kostas.

"There was an earthquake in Turkey," they said. "Six point two."

"That's pretty close to here! Did you feel it?"

"No. They felt it up in Chios."

"Do you get earthquakes here?"

"Not for two years." I wasn't sure whether to be reassured or concerned by this.

Kostas pointed at the wall. "See the crack? From the last earthquake. But Greek houses are built very strong. Into the rock."

The next news segment was about the fires in New Jersey; I was surprised they made it to Greek television. Then came a bit about an eight-year-old fashion designer.

Roula's numbers never quite added up. She had left Greece for the USA at age 17 to marry her American boyfriend, had a kid the following year, lived in Chicago for 28 years (but divorced her husband after 11 of them), come back to Magganitis, met Kostas, and been with him for 31 years. But she was only 69.

"We aren't married," she said. "If I marry him, I lose my ex-husband's pension from the United States." And she was grateful to Trump for a decision way back that provided her with $700 of extra pension money; I didn't fully understand what that was.

She asked me the awkward question first. "Do you like Trump?"

"I think he's very dangerous," I said as diplomatically as I could. "He's making the global economy go...." I indicated with my hand a downward slope approximately matching the one I was to have climbed back near Plagia. It was the first of his failures I could think of; there wasn't time to list the others. "Do you like him?"

"Sometimes yes and sometimes no," she said, also diplomatically.

It took a few exchanges for them to understand that I had come on foot from Agios Kirykos this morning and would be heading to Karkinagri tomorrow and then around the island. "Where are you staying tonight?" she asked.

"Zacharoula Rooms."

"Ah! Stella's place. There is an American living there with his girlfriend from Romania. Did you see them?"

"No." But I think I heard them later, when I went about the shower business.

"What will you eat tonight?"

"I thought I'd go up to the taverna. Or do you recommend somewhere?"

"Please let us give you food," Kostas said.

"No money," Roula added.

Kostas left and came back a minute later with two plates. One was briam, a Greek casserole with zucchini, pepper, potato, onion, and garlic, similar to ratatouille. The other had bread and loukaniko, a kind of sausage, in a similar casserole style.

"No fat," Roula said. "Well, a little."

"That's OK."

"Do you like wine?" Kostas asked.

"Yes." He came back with a glass of red.

They watched the weather forecasts, flipping among channels to get the latest and most specific details. "No rain tomorrow," Roula said. It looks to be great for walking, in the upper teens Celsius during the day and a few degrees cooler at night, with clouds tomorrow and then a few sunny days.

I finished the food and purchased my beverages. "I can't pay you for the food?"

"No, no, I don't want money."

"That is so kind of you."

"Will you come back in the morning for coffee?" Roula asked.

"Thank you very much, but I don't like coffee. Though if I did, it would be Greek coffee. And I'm not sure of my timing for tomorrow."

"I don't like Greek coffee," she said. "I like American coffee."

Kostas went back into the house for a moment.

"I used to work at the beach at Seichelles," Roula said. I had seen the cove with its vivid turquoise water a kilometer east of Magganitis. "When rocks would fall down the mountain, and get stuck in people, I used to pick them out. People would write reviews: 'Thank you, Bubu.' Ask anyone around the island; they know Bubu and Kosta. But then the police told me I couldn't do that anymore."

She looked wistful for a moment. "Sometimes I get bored here."

"Come visit," I said, though I can't in good conscience recommend that anyone visit the United States these days.

"Maybe. I would like to."

Go on to day 2