Folegandros
On our first day of sailing through the Cycladic islands we arrived at the island of Poliegos…meaning the island of the many goats. This tiny island, one of the many uninhabited islands of the Aegean, has a very beautiful deep cove and beach at the end of it. The color of the water was turquoise and ever so inviting for us to swim and kayak within it. Possibly a monk seal was seen by one of the guests in a small cave. The scenery around us was impressively white and the nearby island was named Kimolos, meaning chalk, as that is exactly what composes the hills. It even used to be quarried.
We sailed through the beautiful blue and calm seas of the Aegean to reach later in the afternoon one of the most remote and unique Cycladic islands, Pholegandros. As we approached it, amongst many impressive rocks was a tiny church called Kardiani, meaning “the virgin of the heart”; it had been built by sailors to help them in their journeys.
We took a windy narrow road up to the Chora, the capital of the island. The name Folegandros means “the iron islands” and we realized why they had named it this when following this road. The scenery was so rocky and hard, it was like iron! Tradition has it that Pholegandros was one of the sons of King Minos of Crete and the first one to inhabit the island. It has always been one of the most remote islands of the Cycladic. Up until 1969 it had been a place of exile for political detainees, and it had served the same use in the Roman periods. The first car arrived here in 1970, and electricity came a few years later.
Some of us walked up to the church of the Virgin Mary that was overlooking a stunning view of the sea and the Chora and had incorporated into its walls statues from classical and Roman periods, evidence of the past that it once had.
The main town, the Chora, was so quaint with its whitewashed houses. The houses actually formed a castle that had an inner and outer section to it! How can you have a castle with no walls??... Well, when they first started to build the houses is the 16th century they built them one next to the other and they had no windows or doors on the outside, so indeed it looked like the walls of a castle. It was planned like this for defense against the pirates that would often raid the area. We lost ourselves in the narrow streets of the castle, admiring the white against the blue of the houses and the abrupt drops.
We found our way to the main square of the town and tried the famous Rakomelo, which is raki, a strong alcoholic drink mixed with cinnamon and honey and served warm. Folegandros was a place with such character and charm. Folegandros has been saved from tourism exactly because it is so remote. Santorini is for professional photographers, whereas Folegandros is for amateur lovers; here the sunset and sunrise leaves poets without words and its visitors with the need to return.
