So…what am I talking about? Political troubles, unfinished hotel apartments, polluted swimming pools? No, nothing like that. We didn’t take that sort of holiday, anyway. We were strictly ‘off-the-beaten-track’ types. Hence Makelos.
We couldn’t fly there direct; the island was mainly a flat-topped mountain climbing right out of the water, with a dirt landing strip on the plateau suitable only for Skyvans. So it was a packed jet to Athens, a night on the town, and in the mid-morning a flying Greek matchbox the rest of the way. Less than an hour out of Athens and into the Cyclades, descending through a handful of cotton-wool clouds, that was our first sight of our destination.
Less than three miles long, a mile wide—that was it. Makelos. There was a ‘town’, also called Makelos, at one end of the island where twin spurs formed something of a harbour; and the rest of the place around the central plateau was rock and scrub and tiny bays, olive groves galore, almonds and some walnuts, prickly pears and a few lonely lemons. Oh, and lots of wildflowers, so that the air seemed scented.
The year before, there’d been a few apartments available in Makelos town. But towns weren’t our scene. This time, however, the island had something new to offer: a lone taverna catering for just three detached, cabin-style apartments, or ‘villas’, all nestling in a valley two miles down the coast from Makelos town itself. Only one or two taxis on the entire island (the coastal road was little more than a track), no fast-food stands, and no packed shingle beaches where the tideless sea would be one-third sun oil and two-thirds tourist pee!
We came down gentle as a feather, taxied up to a wind-blown shack that turned out to be the airport, deplaned and passed in front of the shack and out the back, and boarded our transport. There were other holiday makers; but we were too excited to pay them much attention; also a handful of dour-faced island Greeks—Makelosians, we guessed. Dour, yes. Maybe that should have told us something about their island.
Our passports had been stamped over the Athens stamp with a local variety as we passed through the airport shack, and the official doing the job turned out to be our driver. A busy man, he also introduced himself as the mayor of Makelos! The traction end of our ‘transport’ was a three-wheeler: literally a converted tractor, hauling a four-wheeled trolley with bucket seats bolted to its sides. On the way down from the plateau, I remember thinking we’d never make it; Julie kept her eyes closed for most of the trip; I gave everyone aboard As for nerve. And the driver-mayor sang a doleful Greek number all the way down.
The town was very old, with nowhere the whitewashed walls you become accustomed to in the islands. Instead, there was an air of desolation about the place. Throw in a few tumbleweeds, and you could shoot a Western there. But fishing boats bobbed in the harbour, leathery Greeks mended nets along the quayside; old men drank muddy coffee at wooden tables outside the tavernas, and bottles of Metaxa and ouzo were very much in evidence. Crumbling fortified walls of massive thickness proclaimed, however inarticulately, a one-time Crusader occupation.
Once we‘d trundled to a halt in the town’s square, the rest of the passengers were home and dry; Julie and I still had a mile and a half to go. Our taxi driver (transfer charges both ways, six pounds sterling: I’d wondered why it was so cheap!) collected our luggage from the tractor’s trolley, stowed it away, waited for us while we dusted ourselves down and stretched our legs. Then we got into his ‘taxi’.
I won’t impugn anyone’s reputation by remarking on the make of that old bus; come to think of it, I could possibly make someone’s name, for anywhere else in the world this beauty would have been off the road in the late sixties! Inside—it was a shrine, of course. The Greek sort, with good-luck charms, pictures of the saints, photos of Mum and Dad, and icon-like miniatures in silver frames, hanging and jangling everywhere. And even enough room for the driver to see through his windscreen.
“Nichos,” he introduced himself, grave-faced, trying to loosen my arm in its socket with his handshake where he reached back from the driver’s seat. And to Julie, seated beside him up front: “Nick!” and he took her hand and bowed his head to kiss it. Fine, except we were already mobile and leaving the town, and holiday makers and villagers alike scattering like clucking hens in all directions in our heavy blue exhaust smoke.
Nichos was maybe fifty, hard to telclass="underline" bright brown eyes, hair greying, upward-turned moustache, skin brown as old leather. His nicotine-stained teeth and ouzo breath were pretty standard. “A fine old car,” I opined, as he jarred us mercilessly on non-existent suspension down the patchy, pot-holed tarmacadam street.
“Eh?” He raised an eyebrow.
“The car,” I answered. “She goes, er, well!”
“Very well, thank you. The car,” he apparently agreed.
“Maybe he doesn’t speak it too well, darling.” Julie was straight-faced.
“Speaks it,” Nichos agreed with a nod. Then, registering understanding: “Ah—speak it! I am speaking it, yes, and slowly. Very slooowly! Then is understanding. Good morning, good evening, welcome to my house—exactly! I am in Athens. Three years. Speaks it much, in Athens.”
“Great!” I enthused, without malice. After all, I couldn’t speak any Greek.
“You stay at Villas Dimitrios, yes?” He was just passing the time; of course we were staying there; he’d been paid to take us there, hadn’t he? And yet at the same time, I’d picked up a note of genuine enquiry, even something of concern in his voice, as if our choice surprised or dismayed him.
“Is it a nice place?” Julie asked.
“Nice?” he repeated her. “Beautiful!” He blew a kiss. “Beautiful sea—for swim, beautiful!” Then he shrugged, said: “All Makelos same. But Dimitrios water—water for drink—him not so good. You drinking? OK—you drink Coke. You drink beer. Drinking water in bottle. Drinking wine—very cheap! Not drinking water. Is big hole in Dimitrios. Deep, er—well? Yes? Water in well bad. All around Dimitrios bad. Good for olives, lemons, no good for the people.”
We just about made sense of everything he said, which wasn’t quite as easy as I’ve made it sound here. As for the water situation: that was standard, too. We never drank the local water anyway. “So it’s a beautiful place,” I said. “Good.”
Again he glanced at me over his shoulder, offered another shrug. “Er, beautiful, yes.” He didn’t seem very sure about it now. The Greeks are notoriously vague.
We were out of Makelos, heading south round the central plateau, kicking up the dust of a narrow road where it had been cut through steep, seaward-sloping strata of yellow-banded, dazzling white rock to run parallel with the sea on our left. We were maybe thirty or forty feet above sea level, and down there through bights in the shallow sea cliffs, we were allowed tantalizing glimpses of white pebble beaches scalloping an ocean flat as a mill-pond. The fishing would be good. Nothing like the south coast of England (no Dover sole basking on a muddy bottom here), but that made it more of a challenge. You had to be good to shoot fish here!
I took out a small paper parcel from my pocket and unwrapped it: a pair of gleaming trident spearheads purchased in Athens. With luck these heads should fit my spears. Nichos turned his head. “You like to fish? I catch plenty! Big fisherman!” Then that look was back on his face. “You fish in Dimitrios? No eat. You like the fishing—good! Chase him, the fish—shoot, maybe kill—but no eat. OK?”
I began to feel worried. Julie, too. She turned to stare at me. I leaned forward, said: “Nichos, what do you mean? Why shouldn’t we eat what I catch?”
“My house!” he answered as we turned a bend through a stand of stunted trees. He grinned, pointed.