Trip 44 — Ikaria Walk

Day 7: Therma to Agios Kirykos
Thursday, 1 May 2025

Yesterday: 1817 steps/1.52 km/0.94 mi/18m
Grand total: 173150 steps/130.55 km/81.12 mi/26h 17m

The wind howled overnight in Therma. A constant whir through the hotel's foundations was punctuated by desperate creaks like cats' wails as the balcony doors rubbed against each other. The toilet water sloshed. I'd spent an extra $3 to have the balcony, where the plastic chairs glided around as if in a strange hockey game. I went out only to observe the large eucalyptus tree opposite, whose branches and long talons of leaves gesticulated violently, as if in a wild, drunken dance.

More broadly, the unusual winds had an effect on ferry service in some of the Greek islands. I would later learn at the archeological museum that the Ikarians had a ceremony of bottling and burying the wind. The eldest would position the opening of a jug so that it whistled from the wind, and then he would close it with his hand, utter a saying, and deposit it in the earth. Villagers would then toss quartz stones on the jug and hex the wind.

I had a very short journey to Agios Kirykos to close up the 24th Abecedarian Walk. It started with a short but steep climb up out of Therma. Coming to the main road, which skirts around Therma above it, I saw the familiar red blazes, arrows, and signs indicating a walking route to Agios Kirykos. It was only about 15 minutes along this road, but it was better marked than some of the mountain paths. Guardrails, posts, even a concrete block with graffiti all sported the red marks.

The final stretch took me down a long staircase that delivered me exactly to my starting point a week before. I hadn't even noticed the staircase when I set out last week; I imagined coming down the bend in the road. But it was dramatic to arrive at the endpoint by coming down the stairs, hemmed in by houses of stone and white concrete and adorned by plants, alone other than the cats that scattered upon my approach.

A song was playing at the Pension Akti: "Take me back to where I started."

Demetri congratulated me on my completing the walk, and I finally met Marsha, Kristy's first cousin once removed, we worked out.

"You should make a video each day and put in on YouTube," Demetri said. "There's a guy in Greece who goes fishing every day and sings rap, and he has a huge number of followers. You could get a big following."

In the afternoon I visited the museum, where I was pleased to learn that I had seen most of the main historic sites on my walk: Oenoe, the Roman baths near Therma, the temple at Nas, the Drakano Tower. A whole room was devoted to Drakano, with numerous clay lamps and such that had been found at the site; it had been an extensive fortification. The main site I hadn't seen was the remains of the acropolis at Katafygi, the seat of government that overlooked and supported Therma.

The museum put the island's development in context. The two capitals, Oenoe and Therma, developed independently on the north and south sides, respectively. The south was generally drier and the north more lush, with most of the usable water. "The picture given by travellers' accounts," a panel read, "is one of an inaccessible and relatively isolated island."

It went on with humility: "Some of the production activities (wine, honey, sheep and goats) have remained the same from antiquity to the present day while the character of the inhabitants, as described by past travellers, continues to be undisciplined and lackadaisical."

This morning I woke up to one of those articles that Chrome likes to suggest when I open the browser. They're often way off the mark, but today's top headline couldn't have been more pertinent: "Labor Day Strike on May 1 to Disrupt Public Transport and Ferries in Greece."

I had a specific itinerary getting off the island: today's weekly ferry to Mykonos, where I would spend two nights before flying to Athens on Saturday and then onward to Newark. I could have stayed on today's ferry back to Piraeus, but that would have been another midnight arrival, and why not see something of Mykonos?

I did some research regarding the strike. In Athens, buses and subways would be running with longer headways, and for only part of the day. Arriving late, I'd have faced an 11-kilometer uphill walk back into the city from Piraeus — the same dreary walk I already took in the other direction. And what would they have done if I'd walked along the airport highway when there were no running buses?

Many of the Blue Star ships had been canceled, but the Myconos seemed still to be running. Its position on the MarineTraffic Web site showed as en route from Chios to Samos, three stops before Agios Kirykos.

"Why don't you check at the port?" Marsha suggested. "But I'm sure it's running. Another guest just left her bag here and she's taking it, too."

The ticket office confirmed that the ship was on time. It was running only because it was on its way back to Piraeus, and they weren't going to strand the crew on some other island. If I'd been coming in the other direction, I'd have been out of luck.

While I waited for the ship, I lingered over lunch at Stou Volika. It was my third meal there, the first two being immediately after my arrival on the island and last night, when I went to all three places fronting the harbor: a pre-dinner Ikariotissa ale (brewed over by Nealia Beach) next door, where men spend the day playing cards and backgammon; kathoura (Ikarian goat cheese) and octopus at Stou Volika, where I cheered on Panathinaikos toward a more favorable outcome versus Anadolu Efes than I had witnessed in Karkinagri; and a galaktoboureko (a syrup-soaked filo pastry with a custard filling), my choice from the dozens of sweet options at the adjoining dessert shop.

For lunch today, I had a final Greek salad and a daily special of stuffed cabbage rolls, along with my customary half-liter of wine, and for a moment I thought: This is something I could eat every day. But in the next moment I realized I could say the same of sushi, or dim sum, or kitfo, or any number of things, and there is no better place for that variety than New York. (Except the kitfo, an Ethiopian raw-beef dish. Queen of Sheba, my neighborhood's last remaining Ethiopian place — there were three a few years ago — closed in the last week after 25 years.)

The Pension Akti's cafe overlooks the harbor, and it's possible to see the ship come in all the way from the island of Fourni. For the first 45 minutes of the journey, we followed the southern coast of Ikaria heading west, and I had a review of the first couple of days of the walk: Icarus's rock, Magganitis, Karkinagri...and somewhere behind it was the trail up to Pezi, today leading into the clouds.

Then we passed the white lighthouse at the southwestern point, more resembling a mosque with a minaret than a beacon. And then Ikaria was behind us, and I've got two more islands to go.

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