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| Kokkari village is known as Samos’s “Little Venice” |
By Amanda Dardanis for "The Times"
It’s 3pm in Samos, the far-flung eastern Aegean island. The same mighty sun that once bore down on Antony and Cleopatra when they stopped by on their summer holidays in the 1st century BC is at the height of its powers.
It’s perhaps not the right time of day to be on a two-mile, mostly
uphill quest from pretty Limnionas beach in the southwest of the island,
to reach the remote local landmark, the Taverna at the End of the
World, but the pull of legend is a fierce motivator.
Set atop the craggy coastline above a secluded swimming cove, with a stupendous, unblocked Aegean view, a utilitarian, red-roofed abode squats next to a lone wind turbine. When I appear on the shaded terrace, the eccentric host and expert storyteller, Andreas Kostos, is regaling his only other customers, a German family, with recent heroics involving a live scorpion.
However, the truth is you don’t need to travel to the End of the World to escape the crowds in Samos now. This summer the tourists have cleared out, as have, indeed, most of the recent migrants. Negative headlines about Samos have painted a misleading picture of an “out of control” island battling waves of daily arrivals, and with ill-secured camps at flashpoint.
With only about a mile separating Turkey from Samos at the Mycale Strait — one of Greece’s narrowest crossings — Samos has always been a strategic thoroughfare between Asia and Europe, not least in the recent migrant crisis. However, in March, when the EU’s migrant swap deal with Turkey came into effect, the Samos camp converted from a processing centre, where migrants could pass through to the mainland, to a “closed facility” above the capital of Vathy. Refugees have all but stopped coming because many do not think it is worth the risk.
Even some of the island’s most faithful tourists have been saying: “We’ll give Samos a miss this year.” Travel companies say that bookings are down by half, and in mid-July small Samian hotels remain shuttered, their towns and beaches unnaturally empty.
Penny Manoliadis, whose family run the Villa Penny apartments where I’m staying on the outskirts of the picturesque fishing village of Kokkari, says that with the controversial refugee agreement still holding, arrival numbers have dropped from thousands each week to about 40.
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| Villa Penny, Kokkari |
With just a handful of apartments and a loyal customer base, Villa Penny is one of the few to be fully booked throughout my stay. “We had one or two concerned guests phoning us up before they came,” says Penny. “But we told them that the situation had now changed and there was no need to cancel their trips.”
Elsewhere around Samos, many hoteliers are having to take the unprecedented step of discounting during peak season, from anywhere between 10 and 25 per cent, and there are plenty of package deals available. Chris Wright, the managing director at Sunvil, says: “We have some excellent discounts on Samos and it’s very unusual to be able to enjoy 20 per cent savings on a family holiday in peak season.”
During the three days that I travel exhaustively all over Samos, I do not encounter a single migrant, let alone a migrant “situation”. Instead, I find blissfully unchoked coastal roads, restaurant bills half the size of those in Athens and empty beaches such as Lemonakia, one of Samos’s most fêted horseshoe bays that unfurls below Villa Penny. Each morning I swim just before 9am and find I’m the first to claim a sunbed on this pine-clad stretch that has the feel of Sardinia. (Try this in Paros in mid-July and see what happens.)
Once famous in the ancient world as a cosmopolitan island of leisure, Samos packs a big poetic legacy for being only 43km across. It is quoted in the scriptures. Herodotus and Aesop dwelt here for long periods. Cleopatra and her lover made their doomed preparations for war against Rome. And in the modern age Lord Byron was stirred to write his paean to the famous sweet Samos muscat wine. According to mythology, it was also here that Hera married her brother Zeus, with a wedding night that lasted 300 years.
While Pythagoras was cracking his right-angled triangle theorem, the enthusiastic tyrant Polycrates made Samos the centre of the Ionian world. In the 6th century BC he erected such archaeological, engineering and cultural marvels as the first artificial harbour in Pythagorio (where the popular tourist port still exists); Hera’s epic temple, the Heraion (once one and a half times larger than the Parthenon); and the Tunnel of Eupalinos, a 1km aqueduct lying beneath the mountain slopes of Panagia Spiliani (but closed at the moment for restoration).
Elsewhere around Samos, many hoteliers are having to take the unprecedented step of discounting during peak season, from anywhere between 10 and 25 per cent, and there are plenty of package deals available. Chris Wright, the managing director at Sunvil, says: “We have some excellent discounts on Samos and it’s very unusual to be able to enjoy 20 per cent savings on a family holiday in peak season.”
During the three days that I travel exhaustively all over Samos, I do not encounter a single migrant, let alone a migrant “situation”. Instead, I find blissfully unchoked coastal roads, restaurant bills half the size of those in Athens and empty beaches such as Lemonakia, one of Samos’s most fêted horseshoe bays that unfurls below Villa Penny. Each morning I swim just before 9am and find I’m the first to claim a sunbed on this pine-clad stretch that has the feel of Sardinia. (Try this in Paros in mid-July and see what happens.)
Once famous in the ancient world as a cosmopolitan island of leisure, Samos packs a big poetic legacy for being only 43km across. It is quoted in the scriptures. Herodotus and Aesop dwelt here for long periods. Cleopatra and her lover made their doomed preparations for war against Rome. And in the modern age Lord Byron was stirred to write his paean to the famous sweet Samos muscat wine. According to mythology, it was also here that Hera married her brother Zeus, with a wedding night that lasted 300 years.
While Pythagoras was cracking his right-angled triangle theorem, the enthusiastic tyrant Polycrates made Samos the centre of the Ionian world. In the 6th century BC he erected such archaeological, engineering and cultural marvels as the first artificial harbour in Pythagorio (where the popular tourist port still exists); Hera’s epic temple, the Heraion (once one and a half times larger than the Parthenon); and the Tunnel of Eupalinos, a 1km aqueduct lying beneath the mountain slopes of Panagia Spiliani (but closed at the moment for restoration).
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| Ireon archaeological site with columns of the Temple of Hera in Samos - Getty Images |
Polycrates offered his royal court as a spiritual salon for the world’s top thinkers and threw open his vast library of significant texts to Samian citizens so they could educate themselves. Under his rule, according to Herodotus, Samos rose to become one of the three most powerful city states of the sea, alongside Athens, and Knossos in Crete.
Modern Samos has lost this knack of marketing itself, although for me this is the island’s great draw. It’s one of the most genuine Greek isles you’ll visit. Irksome taverna touts are few on the ground and you can pass an entire weekend without seeing one Frozen T-shirt or Premier League football kit.
Possibly it’s a residue from the island’s hippy days when the cool set camped out at turquoise-watered beaches such as Tsamadou and Potami before catching the boat onwards to Turkey. Or maybe it’s because of the confidence that comes with self-sufficiency.
Since antiquity, Samos’s luxuriant mountainous terrain and generous rainfall have always granted it a working pulse outside tourism. Little needs to be shipped in. The island supplies its own excellent apples and apricots, almonds and onions, honey and herbs. It’s the only place in Greece that cultivates orchids for export.
In winter months you can watch flamingos in the salt marshes of Psili Ammos, forage for wild mushrooms in the hills, or pluck ripe overhanging olives as you hike in traditional spring-fed mountain villages such as Manolates.
Year-round you can visit honey and apple farms, or tiny, family-run wineries that survive on word of mouth, such as one belonging to Petros and Evaggelia Eleutheriou in the village of Stavrinides. I drop in here en route to Sunday lunch. Even so, they force-feed me Samian pancakes sprinkled with goat’s cheese and their glorious honey, while we toast each other’s families tree with potent local ouzo (souma) and their best six-year-old muscat under an age-old plane.
On an island of 45,000 there are 2,500 registered wine producers. Not being overly fond of dessert wines, I’m pleasantly surprised by how much I take to the muscats at the drier end of the spectrum. I’m particularly fond of the popular Psiles Korfes and Golden Samena, which you can find almost everywhere, along with the sweeter labels, for about €2.50 a glass.
Unlike the austere Cyclades, in Samos you always get the sense of nature being exuberantly alive. The Kissos vines envelop the metal road barriers all the way down the coast, and there’s a deafening tzitzikas (cicada) chorus. Groups of cranky goats stream across the roads.
At Villa Penny, fresh Samos springwater fills the pool, and olive wood lines the fireplaces. Breakfast is a hospitable, home-grown affair of freshly baked bread with pumpkin seeds, home-made apricot jam, and eggs procured from the neighbour’s hen house. (Almost everyone eco-moonlights in Samos. Even the mayor has his own lavender-oil farm.)
While there is a lively enough bar scene in attractive Vathy and the university town Karlovasi, people don’t come here for the nightlife. This is an island perfectly formed for exploration, where independent-minded folk return each year to plonk themselves down at characterful guesthouses to hike, eat terrific food and visit Samos’s stunning beaches.
“There’s a gentle grace to Samos, and that character hasn’t altered over the years,” says Kellie Longhawn, a travel rep from Norfolk who has been holidaying on the island since 1999 and now lives here year-round. “We haven’t had to watch the island we love change beyond all recognition like so many other Greek islands.”
There are still many island traditions upheld, such as the fruit and vegetable trucks and mobile bakeries that you can hail from the side of the road, she tells me over a meal of stuffed wild mushrooms, chickpea balls (a Samian staple) and braised octopus at Enalion taverna in her quaint adopted home of Balos.
On my last afternoon I make the 40-minute scenic drive from Kokkari to Potami beach in the northwest to “do” the sunset at Hippys, another unmissable Samos institution.
I trek through a scruffy field of sunflowers to reach a long sand and pebble beach where Hippys’ prime sunbeds cost only €3 each — perfectly aware that if this were Mykonos there’d be an extra zero added just for fun.
Random rock formations supply the drama; ambient Indian music and slouchy double divans, the Ibiza vibe. Settling in with a summer cocktail of prosecco, muscat and a single lazy swirl of orange peel, I take a look around.
For me, this exceedingly beautiful and modest island is still one of the best-value-for-quality Greek destinations around.
Amanda Dardanis is editor of Athens Insider
Need to know
Amanda Dardanis was a guest of the Greece specialist Sunvil (020 8758 4758, sunvil.co.uk), which has 20 per cent off holidays to Samos this August. Seven nights’ self-catering at Villa Penny in Kokkari costs from £669pp, including return flights from Gatwick and transfers. A family of four in August would pay from £586pp on the same basis.
What to see in Samos
Samos wine museum
A tasting tour reveals the Samos muscat’s surprisingly broad spectrum, from the dry dynamic whites Psiles Korfes and Golden Samena to the sweeter labels popular in the UK, such as Samos Vin Doux and the Samos Anthemis (samoswine.gr).
Potami waterfall hike
Take Samos’s hiking trail in the mountains behind Potami beach, where you’ll see the island’s oldest church and wade through chilly water to reach the Potami waterfall.
Open-air cinema in Mitilinioi
The family-run Cine Rex has films under the stars, and you will also get free home-made honey doughnuts (loukoumades). Most movies are in English.
Navagos at Tsamadou beach
Make time for an all-day visit to Navagos Beach Bar, on exquisite Tsamadou. Umbrellas and loungers overlook a Caribbean-dream bay — and all are free of charge.
A World Not Ours at Pythagorio
With Schwarz Foundation’s super-modern art space about to open on the Unesco-listed Pythagorio harbour, Samos is making marks on the contemporary art map. Contemplate the refugee crisis at A World Not Ours (from August 5 to October 15) featuring the Pulitzer prize-winning Yannis Behrakis among others (schwarzfoundation.com).
Mountain life
Samos’s beautiful trio of working alpine villages in the north — Ambelos, Stavrinides and Manolates — are full of ceramics and jewellery workshops, tavernas, hiking trails with abundant springs, and the inescapable Pythagorean Cup (if you overfill it, it runs dry, teaching us all that when you’re greedy, you lose everything).
Archaeology digested
Visit the Archaeological Museum of Samos (hosting the 5.35m-tall Kouros of Samos and Greece’s best preserved Kouros statue); the Archaeological Museum of Pythagorio (notable exhibits include a Venus statue and tombstone of Lucius); and the Heraion of Samos, the coastal ruins of Hera’s once mighty temple.
Romantic dining at Kokkari
This coveted tourist resort, about 10km from Vathy, is Samos’s Little Venice. Eat at stylish Italian Piccolo Porto. Keep walking past the long pebbly beach to reach the prettier harbour quarters on the western side. It’s where Kokkari’s best charms are on display.
Source: TheTimes.co.uk
