They took no notice of the sleek yachts. The yachts arrived flying German, Swiss, Norwegian and Danish flags. Four or five bronzed youths gambolled off the yachts and on to the wharf.
They were a routine part of the summer invasion of the Greek islands.
There was nothing unusual about a $300,000, 14-metre yacht with hi-tech sails and a big motor in case anything went wrong.
There was nothing unusual, either, about the Greek fishing boats with their engines. The children ignored them.
Then two specks appeared at the entrance of Vathi harbour on the island of Kalymnos. As they got nearer, the children looked in amazement. Two sea kayaks appeared _ just five metres long with two people in each. At their stern they flew two small Australian flags.
“”Australia, Australia,” the children cried out as the kayaks drew up on the beach near the wharf.
Some yachties came over.
“”Where did you come from?” they asked.
“”We paddled from Australia,” I replied facetiously. “”No; we have come from Leros.”
(Leros was 30 kilometres away.)
“”What, today?” said a yachtie.
“”Yes; and before that Lipsos, and before that Patmos.”
(These islands are 15 to 20 kilometres apart.)
“”What, you have paddled from Patmos in those things? Incredible.”
It was the same at every island in our nine-island stepping-stone kayaking trip through the Dodocanese _ the Greek islands just of the Turkish Aegean coast. Intrigued yachties and enthusiastic locals asked incessant questions about our Odyssey.
Well, Odyssey might be too powerful a word for it, but there were some similarities with Homer’s 2700-year-old description of Odysseus’s 10-year journey home from Troy, including a storm from nowhere with waves the size of houses in the wine-dark sea. The Med is not all blue skies and calm seas. But more of that anon.
Rather than an odyssey, we were more on a pilgrimage, adventure and cultural kayaking trip.
The pilgrimage was to kayak down the Dardenelles, around Cape Helles and up to Anzac Cove (the subject of an earlier article). It ended at the Turkish town of Canakkale near the remains of the ancient city of Troy where appropriately the adventure and cultural kayaking part of the trip began.
The aim was to bus half way down the Turkish Aegean cost looking at the tourist and cultural “”musts”; ferry across to the Greek island of Patmos and the kayak island by island down to Rhodes.
As Odysseus found out, of course, things do not always go to plan _ especially if you are crossing open ocean in a five-metre kayak.
As one Greek said in a heavy accent: “”You must have the guts, or be very crazy.” Probably the latter.
Just bear with me a moment for some of the mundane geographic details, before I return to Odysseus.
We kayaked in eight legs between nine islands: Patmos, Lipsos, Leros, Kalymnos, Kos, Nshidos Yialli, Niseros, Tilos and Halki (a short way off Rhodes). The map shows the route. The longest stretch between island shorelines was 22km and the shortest 6km. But the harbours were not conveniently placed at the tips of islands so the kayaking legs were longer _ the longest 34 kilometres.
At the end of each leg there was invariably a village at the port with pension, food, wine and beer right next to the sea. It was cultural kayaking, not wilderness kayaking.
And now let us return to the Odyssey. About 1000BC, the Greeks led by Odysseus sacked the city of Troy on the coast of Asia Minor in modern Turkey. It was part of a campaign against Troy and Priam because one of the princes of Priam had abducted the beautiful Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta.
After the sacking, Odysseus ran into also sorts of peril and took 10 years to get to his home island. In Homer it is called Ithaca, which is mythical, but reference to nearby islands puts it somewhere in the Dodocanese.
Odysseus’s men got into the walled Troy, it will be recalled, by hiding in the famous wooden horse which the Trojans conveniently wheeled into the city out of curiousity.
The visitor today can also find a wooden horse, supposedly a replica. Now the ancient horse was built to attract the inquisitive locals; whereas the modern one was built to attract inquisitive invaders _ the tourists, because there is precious little else at the site to see for non-archaeologists.
We moved south to Kusadasi, our jumping off point to Greece. Kusadasi is close to the ancient site of Ephesus. That’s the original reason for it becoming a tourist town. Also, it was once a delightful place on the Aegean coast. But tourists invariably destroy the things they come to see and feel.
With Greece and Spain in the European Union, prices have soared, so the Turkish Mediterranean has become the new favourite of the sun-seeking underclass of British northern cities.
They come for the sun alone and announce it proudly in broad Yorkshire and Lancashire accents.
(space italic verse)
Hear a Yorkshireman, or worse
Hear a Cornish man converse
I’d rather hear a choir singing flat.
(end italic verse)
English tourists with bright red bellies walk through Kusadasi streets that contain “”English” pubs and cafes advertising “”Full English Breakfast” and “”Yorkshire pud” with prices in pounds.
One, Allah help us, advertised that its “”full English breakfast” included bacon.
Like outbreaks of fruit fly, locusts or mice, places become choked with tourists, making the place so unpleasant that tourists eventually dessert it _ like the mice infestation that dies back because it has consumed all available nourishment.
Kusadasi is no longer a Turkish town. It is Little Manchester in the Sun. It reminded me of the Monty Python skit where tourists go to Majorca, drink Watney’s Red Barrel and eat fish and chips. With Spain in the EU, Kusadasi is New Majorca. No doubt Australians have done the same thing in Bali.
Down the road 10 kilometres from Kusadasi is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World _ the Celsus Library at Ephesus, started in 135 AD by the Roman consul Gaius Julius Aquila. We spend a day there.
But our destination is the site of another Wonder of the Ancient World: the Colossus of Rhodes. So it was a ferry to Patmos (population 1500; 12 kilometres by 6 kilometres) to begin the 165-kilometre island hop down the Dodocanese (Greek meaning 12 islands, though there are lots of extra minor ones).
Patmos is where St John wrote Revelations (the Apocalypse) after he was banished to the island in 95 AD from Ephesus by the Emperor Dominian.
A small Greek Orthodox church is built around the cave where he is said to have written the text. But like the house in Ephesus where he is supposed to have taken Mary after the crucifixion, its authenticity is questionable.
None the less, thye provides a good income for tour operators who have turned the temples into dens of thieves. It was an entertaining anachronism to see the list in red felt pen on a tour operator’s board: “”Ephesus, Virgin Mary’s house, lunch included”.
After all was revealed in Patmos, we assembled the kayaks for the 20km trip to Lipsos _ 8km next of it along the coasts of the islands and 12km in the open ocean between them.
(The technical details of the kayaks and our safety gear, including a robust hi-tech Australian invention that we tested are in the adjacent article.)
The prevailing breeze came up from behind so we hoisted the small ancillary sail that comes with the kayak and moved easily across to Lipsos with minimal paddling in three and half hours.
Lipsos (population 650, 9km by 2km) is virtually tourist-free in October (aside from Australian sea-kayakers and one or two yachties). It has none of the music bars or discos that pollute so many Aegean Islands.
The next day we set off for Leros. Once again the prevailing wind made for an easy crossing. The five-metre dots in the vast ocean made plain sailing of it.
If these conditions prevailed, I naively thought, we would skip through the eight hops with plenty of time to peel back the layers of history that cloak these islands.
Alas, prevailing winds do not always prevail. After looking at Leros for a couple of days we set out for Kalymnos.
(space italic)
Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down
Twas sad as sad could be
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea. . . .
Hour after hour. Hour after hour
We struck nor breath nor motion
As idle as a painted kayak
Upon a painted ocean.
(space end italic)
Thus I misquoted to my brother in the front of the kayak. My contribution of morale-boosting poetry (and hymns in more dire circumstances later) like some sea-faring Rumpole, made up for a lesser physical contribution to the paddling. You see, I was the journalist and photographer the others three were a maniacally fit woman in the AFP bicycle squad, her husband who is a former SAS major and my Army reserve, triathlon-competing brother. I, on the other hand, have trouble doing the Fun Run in under 50 minutes.
I didn’t know a sea could be like this, being used to the South Coast were there are always waves of some kind or other. Here, it was dead flat glass, ironed silk, not a ripple, like Lake Burley Griffin sometimes on a hot summer’s morning. It took more than seven hours to do the 33 kilometres. But though it was “”a hot and copper sky” and there was salt water, water everywhere, at least we had the foresight to have seven litres of fresh water each to drink.
Whatever their drawbacks, the kayaks were “”historically correct” craft for this trip _ on two counts. We were in the Aegean 50 years after the forerunners of our fold-up Folbot kayaks were launched from submarines to do recces and night-time landings on the islands during the Italian and later German occupation during World War II.
Also, the kayaks perform in a very similar way to the craft described by Homer as used by Odysseus. Those craft, too, could only use sail effectively if the wind was not too stiff and only from behind. Modern yachts, on the other hand, can point close into the wind and make progress by tacking when the wind is against them. Ancient craft and our kayaks, without keels, get pushed too far sideways to make any progress with tacking. Generally, they require human paddling. A heavy cross wind or head-wind spells being rendered into the hands of the gods whose fickle ways dominate Homer’s work.
Several days later, Zeus did his worst for us.
On the leg from Kos to Niseros a storm blew up from nowhere in the worst possible place _ smack between the islands 8km from either shore.
I cannot describe it better than Homer did 2700 years ago:
“”Zeus, who marshals the clouds, now sent my fleet a terrible gale from the north. He covered the land and sea alike with a canopy of cloud; and darkness swept down on us from the sky. Our ships were driven sidelong by the wind, and the force of the gusts tore their sails to rags with tatters. With the fear of death upon us, we lowered these on to the decks and rowed the bare ships landward with all our might . . . with exhaustion and anxiety gnawing at our hearts.”
The waves were as high as a house. It is not possible to get a measuring tape out in a storm. Indeed, the best photographic opportunities are surrendered to the far greater need of preserving life itself. But back home I sat on the lawn and looked up at the roof line. The waves were bigger.
The fear made me work furiously on the paddle and the pedals that control the rudder. The kayak had to be pointed into the waves and had to keep weigh on _ that is, moving forward. To go sideways to the waves meant tipping over, and to lose forward motion meant a greater chance of a wave breaking on us and swamping us.
As the storm came up quickly and had not been forecast, it was, we hoped a local storm and would pass in an hour or two. A Dutch sailor we met, however, had described Greek weather forecasts with some scepticism.
If the storm lasted too long we would run out of strength to paddle into it and we would have no choice but to run before it. That can be highly risky because with kayak and sea travelling the same direction the likelihood of the wave breaking with the kayak on the crest is far greater.
The bare mast of the other kayak, which was quite close, frequently disappeared. The kayaks _ made from flexible aluminum frames and rubber-coated hypalon-and-canvas shells _ bent and twisted with the crests of the waves. A more rigid craft of that length would have quickly capsized. Rain lashed our faces. For a time, we lost sight of land.
Later, safe on shore, the military chaps looked up the sea-kayaking book arguing about the precise size of the sea: Force 6, 7 or perhaps 8. White tops breaking; long rolling waves; spray etc etc. But I have a more certain definition of a Force Seven sea: when a good atheist like me starts singing “”Oh God Our Help in Ages Past” and meaning it.
We had to keep pointing into the wind. Paddle, paddle, paddle. At least the incessant work reduced helpless fear _ we were doing something about our plight, not resigning ourselves uncontrollably to fate or the elements, like a helpless passenger on a faulty aircraft.
In the end it turned out to be a local storm and it abated in three hours. But we didn’t make Niseros because we had been blown 6km off course. Instead we landed exhausted on an islet marked on the charts as Nshidos Yialli, which turned out to be largely taken up by a pumice mine.
It was almost dark. The mine owner was happy to feed us and let us tend the boats, but would not let us camp on the island. Perhaps he associated kayaks with Greenpeace.
There was nothing for it but a night crossing to Niseros, 6 and a half km away.
And just as the god Calypso provided Odysseus with “”a warm and gentle breeze that sprang up at her command”, the direction of the wind turned and it lulled to a manageable warm breeze. We glided across the 6 and a half km in 40 minutes.
With such variable conditions, it is easy to see why the ancient Greeks believed that several different gods were responsible for conditions on earth.
The next day we would enjoy the layers of Dodocanese history. Bear in mind, the storm and hard-slog paddling (and indeed every paddling stretch) were interspersed with days of clambering about Crusader castles and the like. There was some beer and skittles.
The islanders were converted to Christianity by St Paul and St John, but they were plundered several times in the general barbarian takeovers in the Dark Ages in Europe. In the early 13th century the crusaders in the form for the Knights of St John of Jerusalem invaded after being thrown out of Jerusalem where they had set up to give hospitality to Christian pilgrims.
They built forts on most of the islands and held them for 70 years beyond the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
The Turks held them for nearly 400 years before being kicked out by the Italians in 1912. Italian influence can still be seen in the architecture, especially in Halki. After the Italians surrendered in 1943, Germans occupied the islands, but the Allies raided (often in fold-up kayaks) and occupied some of the islands some of the time in an attempt to bluff the Germans into thinking the Allies were serious about an attack on Germany from the Aegean and through Hungary rather than the Normandy invasion.
The islands became part of Greece in 1947.
And since 1947? Let me end with several haunting, heartening and illuminating experiences on Niseros and other islands.
Niseros is a semi-dormant volcano and has a population of under 1000 in four villages. Two of the villages are on the coast and the other two are perched high on the crater wall with a 300-metre steep drop to the crater floor. On the crater floor, steam hisses and there are two small geothermal plants. The inside walls of the crater have been terraced for cultivation. All the terrace walls are created by stone without mortar in a hugely labour-intensive task over more than a thousand years. But nothing grows on the terraces now. A few goats clamber the steep volcano sides.
The two volcano villages are Emboreios and Nikea.
In the 1960s most of the population of Emboreios left for Australia. Conditions in Greece were too hard. Three-quarters of the houses are deserted. But the village is not derelict. Occupied houses are maintained with pride and silent dignity. Some sparkle with whitewash and blue trim (the Greek national colours) while next door floors have collapsed and walls crumbled.
Most of the population of Nikea went to the US. It is like Emboreios, though slightly bigger.
We met Yanni from Nikea. He went to the US 40 years ago and was back on holiday and to check his house.
“”My country is the US,” he said, “”But my heart and soul is in this island.”
That perhaps explains why the islands kept their Greek identity and religion through hundreds of years of foreign occupation.
Though now there is a more insidious invasion of tourist groups. On Kos, which we named Little Sheffield, they have live satellite coverage of English football.
On Niseros, a woman told us of the terrible people on yachts. Just two days ago, she explained, they sailed away leaving this poor dog behind.
Of course, it told us as much about the isolation and idleness of the chatter on a small island that they would know about a stray dog within two days than it did about the bastardry of the yachties.
On another island with a population of 650, we marvelled at its picturesque quaintness while the returning Greek-Australian woman who ran the hotel bemoaned the cruel isolation of being stuck on an island with eight kids and nothing exciting to do.
For kayakers, however, spending a day or two at a time each island was an historic treat _ cultural kayaking.