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On the Greek island circuit, Lipsi is famous for ... nothing. No historic ruins. No urban development. For most who live there, that's just fine.
By JOHN HENDERSON
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 13, 2002
LIPSI, Greece -- I'm sitting on a boat dock looking at Greece circa 1950. Not one beach in Greece has been introduced to a lounge chair. Few beyond the Aegean Sea have ever heard of ouzo.
From my seat, it doesn't even seem that Zeus has been dead that long.
Outside a tiny one-room cafe called an ouzeria for the potent, licorice-flavored whisky it sells, I've joined old men sipping ouzo in the brilliant sun. Four men in fisherman's hats behind us play backgammon. A half-dozen fishermen drag in their lines off pastel-painted boats bobbing at the edge of the Aegean, almost as blue as the cloudless sky.
The sun-washed docks are void of wall-to-wall restaurants. The dock's lone souvenir shop is closed for the week. The three-star hotel next door is charging only 18 euros (about $18) a night. I hear birds chirping, smell the feta cheese from the tables around me and listen to the sea lap against the boats.
This is Lipsi, the Greek island that mass tourism forgot. So far.
If you're looking for Lipsi on a map, find a good one. This is a tiny speck of rolling farmland and isolated beaches, about 40 miles from Turkey. It is part of the Dodecanese island chain in which overdeveloped Samos, to the north of Lipsi, and Patmos, to the west, now resemble Greek theme parks.
Lipsi is only 12 square miles, has 650 people and twice as many goats. Besides the one bus and two taxis on the island, a main mode of transport remains the donkey. The "bank" is an ATM. There are 45 churches.
Lipsi does, however, have a dozen beaches on individual bays. There are 150 hotel rooms that get booked only in July and August. Lipsi gets about 10,000 tourists a year. Mykonos, Greece's most popular island, gets about 180,000.
Nine good restaurants on the island offer cheap, regional cuisine. If you hear a little less b-a-a-ing one morning, you know the goat in red sauce that night is fresh.
Don't come here for history: There are no ruins. The lone museum, featuring holy water from churches around the world, is open just two hours a day.
Basically, there is nothing to do here but lie on the beach, eat and watch the world go by -- slowly.
One day, a car ferry the size of New Hampshire pulled in, making one of its twice-a-week calls from Piraeus, Greece's mainland port.
"How many tourists did you see get off?" asks Lipsi resident Sarah Vavoulas.
The ferry's giant door had opened but not even a lime rolled out.
Vavoulas is a native of Brighton, England, who first came to Lipsi 14 years ago, met future-husband Haralabos Vavoulas, and never left.
Today they own the Rock, a popular late-night ouzeria overlooking the harbor. During the day, it's a great perch for watching an island in no hurry to go anywhere.
"I lived in London before I came here," she said. "People live for tomorrow in big cities. They never live for the moment. Here, no one plans ahead."
Though I had visited Greece three times before, I had never heard of Lipsi. I discovered it on an Internet travelers' message board.
On the Greek island circuit, Lipsi is nothing. Unlike Santorini, Mykonos and other islands smothered by tourism, there are no straight shots to Lipsi. It has no airport.
To reach the island, I flew into Athens and caught an Olympic Airlines shuttle to Samos. A 5-euro taxi took me to the harbor. From there, a Flying Dolphin, the sleek hydroplanes that started darting around the Greek Islands 10 years ago, took me to Patmos in an hour. Without changing boats, I was in Lipsi in 20 minutes.
A bevy of locals greeted me at the dock, all holding signs with pictures of available guest rooms. I quickly agreed to a price of 18 euros for a room with a bath, and a 30ish, curly-haired man named Stephanos took me in his pick-up down the harbor and up through the tiny village.
We drove on a path just wide enough for his truck, passing burros and donkeys. Two women stood outside a bakery, chatting. Folk music emanated from an open window where a woman in traditional black garb sat in the shade.
"This is Lipsi town," Stephanos announced. "Exciting, isn't it?"
It was perfect.
My spacious room at Studios Anna was spotless and fully furnished, including a refrigerator, hotplate, writing table and a big closet. A balcony overlooked farmlands scattered with the snow-white buildings and turquoise roofs of the Greek Orthodox Church. Stray kittens played in the garden below.
I stood on the balcony, lined with pink bougainvilleas, and took in the fresh salt air and enchanting sounds of rural Greece.
"That's a dove cooing in your ear," said a husky, bald man two balconies over.
Frank Buzzoni, a retired air-traffic controller from Bluemont, Va., said he and his wife, Diana, have been coming to Greece for 20 years. He said they use this little rock as their secret getaway and refuse to mention it much to other Westerners.
"We've been all over Greece, and Lipsi and Patmos are our two favorites," Buzzoni said. "It is so quiet here."
It is deathly quiet, all day and all night. Walking through every street of the charming village took me all of 10 minutes. A walk to the farthest beach was only a half hour.
The village is up a cobblestone path from the central church serving as Lipsi's landmark. The village has quaint restaurants, their outdoor tables on the tiny town square.
Narrow paths snake out from the square past small, dark bakeries, vegetable stands and cozy tavernas (cafes) where a fresh Greek salad, souvlaki, fries and after-dinner liqueur may cost 10 euros.
In a restaurant named the Vault, the menu has a picture of Lipsi in 1912, when it was occupied by Italian troops. Lipsi didn't look much different then than it does now.
"A lot of Greek people don't know about it," said Michael Krabousanos, a Lipsi native who lived in Cincinnati for 35 years. "When I'm in Athens and I tell them where I'm from, they go, 'Where's that?'
"You expect Americans to know?"
They obviously don't know about Lipsi's traditions: the two-day-long wedding festivities during which locals break plates (well, they're plastic) at dancers' feet in the town square, the three-day wine festival in August, the frequent neighborhood dinner parties.
People could have spread the word. In the 1940s, Lipsi had 3,000 people. But the after-effects of the bloody Greek Civil War of 1949 sent nearly a million Greeks abroad. Krabousanos is one of those who left Lipsi to try life elsewhere. Most came back to retire.
Friendliness is common. People stopped to provide me rides to the beach. The owner of one restaurant let me help myself to drinks in the cooler while watching the World Cup with his family and friends. Just leave the euro on the table, he said. My local bakery added free sesame bread sticks with my daily breakfast order of tiropita, a delicious cheese pie.
"I find it just cozy," said Evert Kerkerk, a Dutch yacht builder who said he has sailed the Greek islands for 10 years and returns to Lipsi for seven months every year.
"You meet each other sometimes three or four times a day. Hello here. Hello there. If you are a tourist here, you are not alone."
If you want to be along, head for one of the beaches. The downside of an island that is undeveloped are beaches that are, well, undeveloped. No umbrellas or cushy lounge chairs. Nor is there soft white sand.
A 20-minute walk from the village and a 5-minute trot down a goat path brought me to Hohklakoura, one of Lipsi's best-known beaches. On an early June day, the scenery was breathtaking: a half-moon bay formed by long rock jetties, with smooth, royal-blue water. It was 80 degrees, without a cloud in the sky and a cool breeze came off the Aegean.
Not another soul was on the beach.
I tried to find a plot of sand to lay my straw mat and found none. The beach was rocks. All rocks.
I put down my mat and carefully lay down. When the rocks are even, they form a surprisingly comfortable surface.
"I'm glad they don't have sandy beaches," Buzzoni told me later. "This place would be just like Mykonos or Santorini. It'd be a madhouse."
He's right. The beaches here are just rough enough to keep away the cruise ships that invade Patmos twice a week. Though Lipsi does have sandy beaches. You just have to learn where they are.
The most comfortable beach on the island may be Lendou, just around the jetty from the village harbor. Hotel Aphrodite, one of two three-star hotels on Lipsi, looks over this hardpacked sand from across the narrow road.
Elsewhere, a half-hour walk along spectacular coastline leads to Platis Gialos, where a tasty restaurant plays soft Greek music over a shallow, sandy bay.
While the island's mayor is trying to stop large-scale construction, a Greek-American is planning to have 40 tourist bungalows open in 2004. Not exactly urban sprawl but then, this is an island that didn't have a paved road until 1995.
-- John Henderson is an American freelance writer based in Rome.