Trip 44 — Ikaria Walk

Day 3: Karkinagri to Armenistis
Saturday, 26 April 2025

Yesterday: 33091 steps/24.89 km/15.47 mi/5h 18m
Total: 87736 steps/66.94 km/41.59 mi/13h 31m

I more accurately toppled out of bed than stood up the morning after the strenuous Pezi hike. My right leg wasn't ready for its customary flex. I stuck an arm out and braced myself against the wall in order to get upright.

There was no urgency to cover the 25 kilometers to Armenistis. I dawdled and finally got moving at around eleven, after enjoying a couple of the almond cookies Efi had left for me. I had to descend four flights of stairs, and I used the railing like a crutch so as to minimize exertion on my right leg.

Gradually, it got accustomed to moving again. I took the steep road out of Karkinagri and joined the main road above. The day's walk would have a net ascent of only six meters, but in the form of 482 meters up — nearly all in the first hour — and 476 meters down.

MapMyWalk's announcements of completed kilometers every 13 minutes were discouraging, especially when I thought I had upped my pace, but it was hard to be in poor spirits in such a pretty place. The southwest corner of Ikaria, an arm strewn with sandstone boulders and scruffy bushes, jutted into the sea — where, technically, the Icarian Sea meets the Aegean, according to Efi. If I'd had the stamina, I might have taken the steep path down to the lighthouse.

The road continued upward for a few more minutes and then began the gradual descent for the next few hours. In the village of Amalou, a restaurant was open, where two cheery men and I wished each other "Kali mera" (good day). It was already 1:00, and I might have stopped for lunch, but it would have left the vast majority of the day's walk after the break, and I wanted to make more progress first.

I did stop a few minutes out of the village at the Glycemia bakery. The store had only large items (bags of lots of cookies, whole cakes) and sliced bread on trays. I heard chattering in the back, and eventually someone appeared. She didn't speak much English, so I prepared the translation of "Do you have anything small and sweet?" on my phone.

She hesitated and then went back into the bakery. She brought out two small oblong cookies on a napkin. I prepared to take out money.

"No, no," she said. "For you."

I thanked her and sat on the porch. A moment later, she returned with an end slice of pound cake with chocolate chips. She still refused payment. It was the third straight day I'd been fed free.

Bees joined me, but they didn't bother me. I finished and continued down the road, which zigzagged midway up the slope.

It was probably the most fragrant day of the Abecedarian Walks. Spanish broom was in bloom: stalks of cup-shaped yellow flowers that gave off a scent of honey. The bees were euphoric over it.

Then there was the antirrhinum, better known as snapdragon or dog flower, giving off a subtler aroma. It came in little inch-long groups of small purple-and-white flowers, sort of blackberry-shaped, and the bees went mad over them, too.

The five-petaled rockrose was also prevalent, either purple or white petals around its yellow pistil and stamens. It has healing properties and is good for making tea. I could even collect it, let it sun-dry, and make my own skin cream, according to the receptionist in Armenistis, who explained all these flowers to me.

In addition to being a fragrant day, it was a musical one: bees, birds, and bells, the last belonging to the goats, ringing around the hills as they walked. Sometimes I encountered fenced-in areas with a doghouse inside. These were usually far from any houses. There was often a dog in there as well, who barked not with menace but because something interesting was coming by. I didn't know the tradition of keeping dogs in this way, but it seemed unkind to leave them out there, next to the road, in enclosures about the size of a van.

As I approached Nas, I had a couple of options. I could stay along the road and make the long detour around a gorge, or I could go down to the beach and up the other side. I thought the beach route would be more interesting, and it had the advantage of being shorter.

A sign pointed to the path: 40 minutes to the beach. Surely it couldn't be that long! Three minutes later, there was another sign: 20 minutes to the beach. What math did they use here?

Here the path separated from the road, with the same red blazes as on the Pezi trail. This was a terrible path, extremely narrow and overgrown; I was frequently stepping on bushes. The unevenness reactivated the trouble in my right leg.

The path brought me to the remains of the sixth-century temple of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and Apollo's sister. The existence of the temple ("naos") is probably what gave the town its name. The stone corner of the temple survives, and the path to the beach goes over it.

I lost the path a few times but eventually came to the beach. On the other side, a staircase went up into the town. The problem was that the sandy beach didn't connect to the staircase. I was going to have to wade for about 50 meters.

The water was clear; the rocky bed was visible. I figured I'd be in up to my knees. I put my phone in my bag and started in.

The water was deeper than I thought, up to my thighs, and I had to hike up my shorts. Why hadn't I bothered to put the rest of my pockets' contents in the bag?

I held onto my shoes and picked my way carefully through the water. On the other side, I heard what seemed to be a colony of seabirds, but it turned out to be a group of chirping frogs. I put my socks and shoes back on and went up the stairs. "Split pace thirty-two minutes, fifty-one seconds." This might have been the slowest kilometer of the entire Abecedarian Walks.

At the top was a taverna, and here I finally stopped for lunch: a deep-red beet salad and a serving of kefalo — gray mullet — which seemed a perfectly reasonable serving for €13 until I noticed that there was a second fish under the first. While I dined, my legs were lovingly caressed by a pair of cats that pranced under the table in opposite directions, hoping for handouts. By the time I finished the meal, the number had grown to five or six.

I had about 45 minutes to go before reaching Armenistis. All I could think of was the similarly named area of France that lent its name to the old World War I song, so I tried to come up with some Ikaria-themed verses. It helped that the extra syllable in "Armenistis" was mitigated by the shorter word for "Do you speak?" (Depending on your interpretation of the original, "pes mas" — "tell us" — could be a more apt translation.)

Mademoiselle from Armeni-
Stis, milas?
Mademoiselle from Armeni-
Stis, milas?
The mullet she cooks is decent fare,
But everyone knows her mullet hair.
Hinky-dinky, oh, milas?

Mademoiselle from Armenistis, milas?
Mademoiselle from Armenistis, milas?
She gobbles up kilos of grilled sardines,
And everyone knows when she eats her beans.
Hinky-dinky, oh, milas?

Mademoiselle from Armenistis, milas?
Mademoiselle from Armenistis, milas?
Her suitor stinks of his fishing boat,
So she prefers to sleep with the goat.
Hinky-dinky, oh, milas?

Armenistis didn't stay open as late as I was expecting. By the time I headed out for dinner, around eleven, only one place was serving. He already had most of the chairs up on tables, but he happily served me a plate of veal with giant green beans. My legs were so tired that I took the hotel's elevator — the only one I've ever seen with folding doors — up one floor instead of going up the stairs.

"You should go to Christos," the receptionist said after she explained the flowers this morning. "It has a nice town square. It's five kilometers up the road. Or do you like paths?"

I said I did, but after the trouble with paths over the past couple of days I'd just as soon take the road.

"If you get tired, you can hold out your thumb, like this. Anyone will stop and give you a ride."

I wasn't sure whether I had the energy, even for such a short walk. Today was officially an Abecedarian Walks rest day. But it was still morning, and there wasn't much to do in Armenistis. What was I going to do, sit on my balcony and look at the gorgeous Aegean? Go to the beach? Swim in the hotel's pool? This isn't a holiday; the Abecedarian Walks are work!

By noon my legs were getting back to normal, and I headed out and up. I made faster progress than I had expected to, and I reached Christos in 70 minutes. The road up was especially sweet-smelling: The Spanish broom was particularly plump here, and with its roots slightly up the wall next to the road, it was at the perfect height to tantalize my nose.

Before one of the hairpin bends, a car passed me, its mechanics clanging as it struggled uphill to the point that I doubted its ability to reach the top. When I rounded the bend, the driver had stopped and was talking to a motorcycle rider coming down the road. The scene epitomized the Ikarian nonchalance: There was no thought given to the possibility of another car taking the extreme curve and immediately encountering a stopped driver in conversation.

Christos was a pretty place indeed; the center was a cluster of stone cafes with people chatting over drinks and cats hoping for scraps. There was a fair amount of English being spoken, including by a large American group of adults and children spending a few months on the island of Syros. There were even souvenir shops and an art gallery, and one could visit a winery.

Back down a kilometer, the village of Agios Dimitrios had a less spiffy aura. Its square was just as pretty, but the clientele were predominantly men drinking bottles of Alfa beer and smoking cigarettes. I stopped for a pastry and a Mythos beer and the owner's young son was sleeping at a booth inside. The man at the table opposite me outside seemed gravely concerned with the server's neglecting to open my beer, until she and I demonstrated that the top could be torn off.

Armenistis itself had souvenir shops, fast food, car rental, and restaurants beyond the usual taverna fare. The Mary Mary restaurant had some innovative dishes that inspired me to have a vegetarian dinner: a dip with roe and squid ink to accompany the bread; honey-carrot-ginger soup; cold chickpeas with zucchini, eggplant, tomato, and mint; and a red spaghetti with beet pesto, almonds, feta mousse, and spearmint oil.

We all, I think, have our individual habits that we don't realize are noteworthy until they're pointed out or we're made to break them. One of mine is that I always step with the left foot first onto a train or elevator or going up or down stairs.

But the lingering strain in my right popliteus, which a minute of thorough searching tells me is the muscle in back of the knee, means that I've spent the afternoon descending stairs with my right foot first — and then putting the left foot on the same step.

And after a half-century of stepping left first, it feels very weird to do that.

But the mobility is coming back. Tomorrow is a short walking day, but the following day is long. It's my hope that by then I'll be back to my old habits, mundane as they may be.

Go on to day 4