Ithaka Bound

Island Hopping: Folegandros

Folegandros.  The name is a joy to pronounce, with the tongue unfurling in four curly syllables — Fol-aye-ahn-dros .

So what went wrong?

I’m not quick to judge a place based on one or two incidents.  I’ve heard too many people say they’ve hated Venice or Paris because a waiter was rude to succumb to the pitfalls of such thinking.  But something about Folegandros and me just wasn’t right.

What was it?  I’m still not quite sure.

I’ve been waiting to visit Folegandros for what seems like forever.  I’d seen a photograph of it’s beautiful Hora on a cliff, and knew I had to go.  By this I mean to say that my heart was in the right place to fall in love with this little island gem, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

I felt almost immediately that something was wrong and considered getting back on the first boat to Naxos, but I’d obligated myself to giving all the islands I’d be visiting a three night minimum and I fell into legalistic thinking.

Also, I rounded a corner in the tiny port town, saw a donkey tethered to a tree and thought this was a good sign.

Then I came across the deal of a century in my room at the Hotel Aeolos and the friendliest man on Folegandros in the person of the hotel owner.

It all started so well.

There was something in the air though.  The locals in the port were watchful in an unusually quiet sort of way.  Smiling was out of fashion. The people in the promised Hora seemed curt and already so over tourists, even though the season hadn’t really started yet.

But a children’s dance exhibition in the Hora made me wonder if I was perhaps too hasty in my judgement and I firmly resolved to stay for three nights and enjoy this little rock in the Aegean, swathed in bougainville and hibiscus.

Later that evening, I was sitting on a stoop in the main square watching the world go by and waiting for my bus back to the port.  The children, warmed up from their dancing, had started a vigorous game of soccer in the square, and were swirling whirly-gigs as they madly chased the ball around.  Adults were on the periphery of the square, looking on and chatting.

A little tow-headed boy, maybe 3 or 4  years old, ran past me and up the stairs I was sitting on.  I saw a group of adults across the way laughing at him and making motions for him to come back.  One of the men told the boy to ask me how I was enjoying myself, in english.  The little boy glanced at me, then ran back to the group.  They said something to the boy, and for some reason sent him back to me.

The boy ran past me up the stairs again.  The adults were again shouting something to him and laughing.  I smiled at the boy and said “Hey there, little one”, holding out my hand to him.

The little tyke tossed me another glance, looked back at the group, and started to run across the square again.  He made it a few steps into the square when another boy, much older, entered my peripheral vision, madly chasing a soccer ball to the goal.

My hands flew to cover my eyes because there was only one thing that could happen now and there was no stopping it. In the split second before my hands covered my face, I saw the little boy hit with such force, I was certain he wouldn’t survive the blow.  I felt my stomach clench as I heard the sharp crack of his skull hitting the hard pavement and reverberating through the square.  I think his head actually bounced.

His cries and screams rang out as I peered through my parted fingers.  People were running in the square, but it seemed to take them forever to reach the little boy. I wanted to run to him, but didn’t want to come between him and his mother.

It probably only took her seconds to reach him, but Einstein’s theory of relativity was played out and the moments stretched out forever.  An endless Sahara of moments

Finally she reached him, amazingly calm in my eyes.  Hadn’t she heard his head crack like a coconut? I can hear it still.

When I dared to remove my hands, I saw none of the expected blood and gore.  The little boy was still screaming, the adults were looking on, the other children were scolding the boy who had run into the little towhead.

Had I misjudged?  No one seemed to be as upset as I was.  I placed my hand to my chest.  My heart was running a winning 100m dash.  The mother walked into a restaurant to get a bag of ice for his head, when I would have medevac’d  him on the first helo to a neurological center.

On the bus later that evening, I told myself the little boy would be just fine.  I know that children have really rubbery skulls.  Hadn’t my own sister fallen down a flight of stairs as a baby and only received a few scrapes on the face as a result?  Hadn’t she also taken a baseball bat to the face, a blow that had only warranted a couple stitches in the emergency room?  Perhaps the Natasha Richardson story was still too fresh in my mind.  As a mother, I would have been a complete hypochondriac, rushing the kid to the emergency room for every hangnail

Questions ran circles in my head for the rest of the night.  I woke up exhausted and wanted nothing more than to get out of Folegandros but had to wait one more day for a ferry.

Everything was twice as expensive as on the other islands.  If you decide to visit, your best bet for a meal in the port is the first restaurant you encounter as you get off the ferry.  The owner’s elderly mother cooks all the meals and they only offer what is fresh for the day, at half the price of other places in town

Avoid the restaurant attached to the market/bakery. They overcharged me, and a British couple I met the next day.  Although, it must be noted that the Rupert Everett-lookalike  owner of the market/bakery will give you good deals on just about everything.

I’m making it sound so bad; I don’t mean to.  This was simply my experience of Folegandros for a few days in June of 2009. If you went tomorrow you would probably have the time of your life, find it immensely charming, and exclaim “magnifique!” over the view, as the French always do. In fact, I would probably do the same thing if I went back tomorrow.  Maybe.

There were no rental cars to be had, so I hoofed it or took the bus.

The day after the accident, I learned that the island’s ruggedness had led to its use as a place of exile for political prisoners by the Romans, and later by the Greeks in the 20th century, as late as the military dictatorship of 1967-74.

So that’s what’s wrong– too many ghosts in confinement.

This hit home for me after I’d done my three days and was skipping to the port to catch the first ferry off the island.  Poseidon began to stir things up, and all ships were grounded due to high winds on the sea.

Confined to the poshest, yet unluckiest of Greek isles, exhausted from all the hill climbing of the past three weeks and the nagging something that wouldn’t leave me since arriving in Folegandros,  I spent the extra day in bed, staring out the window at the turbulent sea and watching Top Chef.

© 2009 – 2010, Ithaka Bound. All rights reserved. Photos and text are copyright protected.