Escaping The Crowds In The Greek Islands

Thousands of alluring specks stud the Med, each with its own distinct scenic, cultural and historic appeal. We let UK travellers in on where the locals choose to go

- Dana Facaros

Koula was to be my guide to the Athanato Nero – the ‘immortal spring’ – but first she had to milk her goats. We were on Ikaria, famous for its longevity, so it had not been impolite to ask her age: she was 92 – one of the young ones, she laughed, twinkling under her straw hat. The stillness of late afternoon was broken by a loud ‘ping-pingping’ as she directed the milk into her tin bucket. It was 6pm, but everyone was still napping; on such a summer night, even small children would be awake until well after midnight.

We were in Xylosirtis, on Ikaria’s less-visited south coast, a village of gardens and apricot trees gazing across the Aegean to Patmos, island of the Apocalypse. Ikaria’s most famous son is, of course, Ikaros (Icarus), who crash landed “just over there,” Koula pointed, as if it had happened yesterday.

The village has a beach, but I had spent the morning braving Ikaria’s vertiginous mountain roads to swim at the spectacular pebble-and-sand beach dubbed ‘Seychelles’, its turquoise water, straight out of the tropics, framed by forbidding granite cliffs and pale grey boulders as wrinkly as elephants. But the long drive back had been tiring; it was time, I decided, to seek the mythical spring.

After Koula finished milking her goats, I followed her down to the sea to the far east-end of the village. The meltemi wind that cools the Aegean was whipping up spray into dancing rainbows. It was all so beautiful that I was startled to see, at the end of the path, the immortal water flowing from a pipe in an ugly cement slab. At least it tasted good. “So is this water why Ikarians live so long?” I asked Koula.

“No – it’s because we never look at clocks!” she laughed. “Besides, we have too much fun to die.”