Antikythera is the axial pillar of the Mediterranean. Because it is close to the well of Oinousses and is a gateway to the Greek Polynesia, this rocky islet had and still has enormous geopolitical importance and certainly plays an important role in the geophysical rift of the Mediterranean. It is surrounded by great depths and is the only reef arm at the confluence of the three seas that rises out of nowhere.

I wake up at five in the morning. I go out on the terrace. Kythera is fast asleep. The last moon is leaving behind the ridge of Tainaros. The first light of day dims in front of the eyebrow of Kavo-Malias.
I take the road to Diakofti. A little light that looks like a ship, barely visible on the head of Cape Malia. Last year’s wreck at Prasonisi draws a triangle of purple on the blushing horizon with its upright bow. By the time I think about it, the Romilda is coming into port.
Dozens of cars pull out of Piraeus. It empties the hold. Soon the ship creaks in silence. I enter with a thousand precautions, lest I disturb the waters of the morning heat. The boatswain with swollen eyes, newly awakened, looks at me in wonder:
– Do you know where you are going? The ship doesn’t go to Gythio or Crete… it only goes to Antikythera… and it turns around…
– “I know, I know,” I tell him and wink. But at the same time I’m winking at the same time…
I don’t have time to get out on deck and the ship is open on the edge of the three-client line. It’s six in the morning. You know what it is to feel the air loaded with the smells and winds of three seas… and what seas… Myrtoo, Cretan and Ionian… The joy of the wild boars that swarm beside me and lubricate my body, swaying playfully there at the confluence of the three seas with their gossamer bodies.
Antikythera is the axial pillar of the Mediterranean. Because it is close to the well of Oenoussa and is the gateway to the Greek Polynesia, this rocky islet had and still has enormous geopolitical importance and certainly plays an important role in the geophysical rift of the Mediterranean. It is surrounded by great depths and is the only reef arm at the confluence of the three seas that rises out of nowhere.
Antikythera was the first place of exile for the Romans, who considered it inaccessible from the mainland and banished here a number of rivals and undesirables. Plutarch mentions the island by its ancient name (Aegila) with a reference to Cleomenes, the defeated Spartan ruler defeated by Antigonus, who came here in self-exile and pressured to commit suicide. Yet the king of Sparta, a stoic by conviction, reacted by saying the famous:
“See that arbitrary death is not a flight of deeds, but an act”, that is to say, voluntary death should not be inaction, but an act that benefits others…
So the place of Roman exile – and exile – Antikythera…
A journey to this island is therefore a cognitive precondition of the zero that also defines the absolute abolition and annihilation of time.
That’s why we leave everything behind and start exploring “naked”…
On the island there is, what they say, no easy communication with the outside world. The infrastructure is almost non-existent and the life of the few (about sixty) inhabitants is left to the fate of the untrodden plains.
I step down from the darkened hold. The light that bathes me as the catapult falls strips me of all my possessions. The bare sense of things, from the enclosed cove to the touch of the wind and in the scattered hollows of homesteaders and hermits, as well as the hovering of the few white houses over the harbor, makes me feel at a loss in a world that does not partake of the ordinary way of life and perception of things. I abandon at once-and somewhere between time and place-my livelihood, my name and all my memories.
The first good morning that comes out of the lips of a dry and white-haired Antikytherian, with a heavy Cretan accent, falls with force on the windshield of my car and shatters the unshakable peace of the landscape. The man saw us looking around and turned around to ask us what we were looking for, like losers…
– “If you have nowhere to stay,” he says, “go to that house” – and shows us something like a guesthouse, but half-finished – “I’ll bring you a cot, I’ll give you sheets, don’t worry, you can make yourself comfortable, I don’t want money…”
Then he turns downhill and leaves…
We turn around on the river. The new dock in the safe cove of the harbor, a vertical arm that closes the small inner nice harbor for the fishing boats, and above it the white houses, crowded a ton at a time, sustain and condense all the life of the island. Between them flows the waters of a lively spring stream that lies somewhere in the middle of the settlement, which it cuts in two. A fine whitewashed fountain, from which cool nama always runs, dominates the deep basin of the unexpectedly picturesque gully.
We glide along the narrow picturesque and uphill streets. Carefree people move about unhurriedly and carelessly. Either they go down to the harbour to pick up the supplies brought by the ship, or they climb slowly up the mountainous ridge of the island to supervise and supervise farm work. They are always filling in the lime plaster on some forgotten wall or on the graceful paths. Everything is now whitewashed.
On the two slopes of the settlement, between the stream that runs through it, dominate the two wine shops, which are both cafes and taverns. The few foreigners, mainly graduates of the archaeology department of the universities involved in the excavations of ancient Aegila, have been gathering here since morning to discuss the findings of the archaeological site and the exuberant loneliness of the island. Here, locals and tourists alike gather to talk before everyone takes up their work.
Then they leave and suddenly the settlement goes dead until noon, when it will bustle again on the verandas of the two shops as the local wine and ouzo that will accompany the fine fish meze will flow abundantly.
Eight hundred meters from Potamos, which is the main settlement of the island, there is the first crossroads. Towards Charkhaliana. Turn right. In another thousand meters or so the narrow asphalt road stops. But a little further on and again to the right, just as I bypass the island’s helipad, a well-paved dirt road leaves and stops in front of a plateau with a suspicion of a steep cliff. I leave the car there and in ten metres I arrive at an unforgiving and hopeless sight. The Camarella!
The rocky crawl, the small sandbar on the twisted cove and the hole in the rock high up on the right stone screen all make up and define the endless wonder of Antikythera. A solid and relief body, made of various rocks and solid limestones. The descent from the steep and serpentine path, as well as taking a morning dip in the waters of Kamarela, is a gift of high pleasure and a zodiacal wish.
I’m back on the tarmac again. The road climbs uphill for a while. In a couple of turns I reach the confluence of Xeropotamos. From here a well-trodden dirt road leaves on our left, which in a thousand hundred meters of downhill leads to the unique spreading pebbles of the island. The beach faces north and is exposed to the raging winds that beat the coast mercilessly most of the time.
Just above this pebbled cove unfolds the archaeological site of Aegila, – as is the ancient name of Antikythera -, where excavations and research seem to unravel the tangle of the Minoan civilization that operated here hundreds of years ago. The ancient dikes, the excavated perimeter, the giant granite foundations and the castle’s enclosure clearly stand out. Further north, there is also a neo-shrine.
Just north of the rocky shore a train of seawalls moves picturesquely to the west. It is the thymonias, inaccessible rocky islets that establish with their morning prestige the beauty of Antikythera’s northern courtyard.
To the right of the archaeological site and in the straight line to the east, beyond the cape “Glyfadia the Vlychadia”, not far out to sea, recent history has left the marks of an unlikely and exciting discovery: The famous bronze statue of Ephibos, which took its surname from the island while making it famous all over the world. The Famous Teenager of Antikythera, which adorns the halls of the Archaeological Museum of Athens, is now orphaned from the beloved object he so gracefully held in his left hand. No one can guess what it was that the teenager was holding with such a mood of display and admiration in his fingers which, even though orphaned, nevertheless have a curious and admirable movement and plasticity.
The wreck at the Antikythera Glyfadia revealed numerous other pieces – because the Teenager was also found in pieces – but also the also amazing mechanism of the Calendar Computer, which took twenty years of hard work to be identified by scientists and archaeologists. The Antikythera Calculator was at first thought to be a common astrolabe. It is mentioned from the time of the Stoic philosopher Poseidon, a fact that Cicero points out in a treatise.
The important thing is that Antikythera was heard across the globe, so that today the place is an attractive choice for archaeologists who come here in admiration of the place. All they find are old and new ruins and debris and a few hermits who persist in this arid and inhospitable land.
After this historical reminiscence and a brief stop, I take the continuation of the road to the interior of the island. In four kilometres the road ends. Here we are in Galaniana. A little further up, at the edge of the ravine that descends from the mountain, in a wide and verdant valley, is the monastery of Agios Myronas.
In a large area around the monastery – which is of course inactive – are scattered wide-faced vineyards that bear a delicate sweet grape from which the locals distill the nectar of the island.
Galaniana is deserted and uninhabited. Only the priest lives here, maybe a couple of other families. But the road doesn’t stop here. But also time. There are no hours, no nights, no seasons. The carcasses and well-preserved ruins of a once mighty era keep you from moving on.
St Myronas, the island’s patron saint, is celebrated on 17 August. On this day a whole ship is chartered and hundreds of Antikytherians flock from Piraeus, Kastelli, Chania, Kalamata, Gythio, Neapolis, Kythera, Australia and America. It celebrates the island – for two days. St. Myron smells here above the incense and honeysuckle, herbs of the place and the lion-headed air shimmers with highlights, voices and glory to you.
There I leave my people. Who end their tour of the island’s “secular” landscape and are eager to return to Camarella to continue their dives.
Beyond here opens up the other half, the unknown and secret landscape, the uninhabited and “forbidden” island.
Before I take the uphill, I finish the uphill until I come across a secret spring, “locked” to unsuspecting eyes. It is in front of me a door with glass and bars blocking the mountain. Next to it the door has rocks and bushes. I wonder what it is barring and locking to unwanted visitors to the monastery? I try to open it. Indeed, a squeaky squeaky grommet train is pulled aside and behind the door reveals a beautiful water (lake) cave of about a hundred square meters, which waters the monastery and its grounds.
Out of the absolute nothingness unfolds like a fan a world of incompatible, self-existent and silent world that is scented, blessed and carved by a mysterious and almost impossible path.
Which if you whisper it in the ears of the natives will stir up anger, irony and objections.
– A march to Apolitara…
The stone lantern of the south…
Built on the cape of the same name, it illuminates the sea at night all the way to the shores of Rodopos and Balou, marking the course of the ships that cross the Mediterranean.
I look at the mountain that rises before me and has a huge mill on its summit, grinding the winds night and day. May this little man be well, coming down the right side of the mountain, playing with his dog. I’m waiting for him if I ask him about the Apolytara trail.
– Where is he going, comrade, to Apolitares?
Companion Galanakis, he thinks, but instead of answering, he snuggles up to his dog.
– He’d like to know the way, but the damn thing wants to pounce on the chickens. And he smells the smell of the orchards. So he’s in the night…
I’ll ask him again about Apolitara. He curses the dog, and tries to restrain it. And at the same time he engages in a convincing, though ineffective, attempt to restrain me from going to Apolitara.
Then he unenthusiastically points out to me the imaginary path, the side of the mountain I must follow.
– Don’t go right, there’s gorse. You’ll go straight through the pit. And there in the bushes, look for the passage. If you’re lucky, you’ll make it to the light.
It’s ten o’clock. The sun has hung low enough and the stones are now red-hot. I close my ears to the negative sirens and go up. In ten minutes a vast plain unfolds before me. It is a plateau, around which the stone huts of the island’s old Orestevian inhabitants seem to fortify the untamed landscape.
I hurry across the plateau. To my right is the highest peak of the island. The air coming from Crete is hot and makes it hard to breathe. I pass under the peak and begin to lower in altitude. A second smaller plateau, Doma, as the locals call it, surprises me. A summit pillar to the south misleads me into thinking I’m going to see the lighthouse. To the right, vertical cliffs open up.
“Don’t go right, there’s a grenade,” I hear Galanakis’ voice.
– My brother, thanks for the advice, but mostly for the information.
The locals, as many times as I have been dissuaded from a place because they said it was rough and dangerous, have been the best guides in my adventures. I almost always went where they kept me from going. And of course afterwards I was grateful to them.
In front of me was a natural wall of rocks, thickets and thistles, a natural habitat for wild geese. Hands and feet go into the cloaking mechanism to capture the lean castle of utopia. I move the strands, dislodge the bushes, unhook shoots and thorns. I tread, tread again, to make sure it’s not a deadly, natural vacuum trap, down below. I grab at the crevices, straighten my body like a climbing plant up the notches in the rocks. I rise at last like a fly, no more, I am the equal and peer of the wildebeests. I begin to feel the bleeding of longing, the subjugation but also the undoing of the senses, as the sudden wind from the west cracks my face, revealing at the same time the wild and exciting grandeur of this random and non-“picture” scene. A palpable chimera, this is a universal dream that has handles and bones. I am gradually being deprived of the magic. I am disintegrating. And as I realize the position I am in and the nature of the miracle, this alternate place demystifies all description and sense of perfection. I find myself in front of a rift of fortune built in the depths of the western Antikythera by the angel of the abyss. My meditative thought lingers before the chaos as the vertical rift sinks into the sea. That’s it! My being is healed, my insatiable senses are sweetened, God relieves my thirst…
The place, by the way, is called Karavostasis or Karavochono…
I go on my way. The stones, miniature Gothic stones, rise up sharply and impale me incessantly. At a certain point I am anxious for my adventure to end. At every ridge I expect the lighthouse to appear. I count four such cuts. In each one I hope to see it. But each one reveals another. More distant, more gradual and time-consuming.
Now I’m getting my hopes up. “If the lighthouse doesn’t appear, I won’t go back,” I think.
In my mind, that quote by Plutarch, paraphrased and adapted to the situation, whirls around: “Behold the arbitrary life, it is not the flight of actions, but action…”
There is no path. I’m spinning in the valleys. I find again the goat shelter I had lost. Red slaughter lines like intestines gutted. On the fourth ridge the lighthouse makes an abrupt appearance, in the throat of a small tongue of land that straddles like a cape. The famous lighthouse of Apolytara, which to the sea-wolves looks like an immense fortress, tall, straightforward, and a precious friend, to me coming down from the high stone dikes of Antikythera looks like a white insignificant dot, perhaps a chapel or a whitewashed fishermen’s hut on the ridge of a low hill overlooking the sea. And yet. The lighthouse of Apolytara, a huge, greasy cylinder rises like the chimney of a pelagic laboratory, which divides the waves and the winds.
And of course for the old lighthouse keepers it was connected by a short path from the sea. But for the land wolves there was and is no access. Anyone who wanted to travel by the River had to pray first and then cross the island and take supplies to the hermits of Apolitara.
So the locals fed me. But things are not exactly like that. The lack of a route and the existence of any map, the hard and sharp rocks that grow and protrude like bushes and the gravel sunflowers scattered in my path made it so. I am further hampered by the sun, the Mediterranean and the apnea that flames my body. Here I step, there I am. I walk like a boat in the sand, with a bonghi. From the hard earth a flame rises that fires my insides. Every stride is a little adventure, a ripple in the body, a loss of balance, of uprightness, but also of right thinking.
By the time I reached the traffic light at Apolitara, two hours had passed. But I had crossed two-thirds of the island. The stone lighthouse, with a tower 23 metres high and 45 metres above sea level, built in 1925 by the French Lighthouse Company, marks a legend in the Mediterranean and continues to shine its dazzling light for eighty years, a range of tens of miles across the southern sea.
Two fishing-ladies from the River have reeled their nets under the lighthouse and are swaying like drunkards in the hollow wave. Far away a mothership plays in the sea. To the left and south, pale and distant, the rocky mass of Gramvousa barely traces its blurred line on the horizon.
The return to Antikythera’s civilisation is painful to unbearable. The midday sun of the first of August binds to me what forces remain alive and dissolve any organic resistance. The boulders and toadstools, roasted by the August fire, slow my progress.
I follow the fallen wires and the remnants of the poles that once channeled power to the traffic light. Footsteps and breaths work mechanically like boat pistons. So almost mechanically I approach the monastery and then the settlement of Potamos, where at its edge, between vertical cliffs, a lily pebbles play and call me like a siren to its waters.
I fall, as I am, with my clothes on and all the fiery memories laden, into its sweet cool embrace, to quench the heat and all the fiery images that burn me all day long.
Late in the afternoon I go up to the wine cellar. The two girls who work it are eager, cheerful despite their recent bereavement and eager to serve us whatever our souls love.
And what does our material soul love, after the laborious course of the day in the sun and the arriving stone? The same, of course, that the soul of my companions loves and longs for, who, however, during the hours of my march, were indulging in dips and sunbathing in the Camarella. A cacovia of morning, delicious Antikythera deep-sea fish… We ask for the classic stewed fish that we know from our part of the world to be the essence of a delicious and tasty cacovia. However, the two “tavern ladies”, who spend the winter in Kastelli of Kissamos, Chania, where they come from, have a different mentality from ours regarding the composition and selection of the fish that will distill the cacava.
No scorpions, fish and hooked fish, but live two-pound long-tasting bass that will be put whole in the pot to distill – with water and oil only – the exciting taste and deliciousness of the fish soup that will soon tire our hungry throats with its concentrated essence.
The rising of the caviar and the stinging sun of Antikythera, the last strong fragments of the island, strengthen the overall memory that is ever more charmingly printed on the perpetual image of this inaccessible and isolated sea rock of the three seas.