Milos rocks

By Christine Richard

updated 7:54 p.m. ET April 3, 2007

On the Greek Island of Milos, eat fish cooked in clay pots beneath volcanic sand, drink wine aged in caves, explore catacombs and a Roman amphitheater – and leave time to study its colorful rocks and visit its otherworldy beaches.

I knew I was going to gain weight in Greece. But it’s not feta pounds I’m grappling with this time. It’s a new addiction: My pants pockets are bulging with rocks. I am with my aunt at an abandoned iron mine on the island of Milos, where every rock on the ground fascinates me. This is a new discovery for me, who once thought a rock was a rock. Swirls of red in white rocks. Swirls of white in red rocks. Green rocks. Rocks with crystal interiors. Smooth, black obsidian rocks that made it possible for civilization to begin. I am a student of the rock now, foraging for them as I walk through an 1890s mining camp across soil so dark it looks like shaved chocolate. But my new rock fetish is not the reason I’m here. I’m hunting for beaches. There are about 77 on Milos, each and every one of them nearly a piece of art dramatically framed by oddly shaped rock walls -- beaches so otherworldly that even Salvador Dali couldn’t have imagined them.

After crawling around the abandoned outbuildings, we find the small shoreline we have been seeking. It is littered with egg-size pebbles, and sweeping ashore is the blue Aegean that knocks the rocks together, creating a throaty melody like coins being shaken in a bag. There is not another soul in sight. I carefully lie on the giant rocks and stare up at the blue sky. What a beach.

This whole rocky journey started with an e-mail several months ago. I wrote my mother’s sister, Karen, who has lived in Athens for the past 15 years: “I want to visit a new Greek island, something different, one that is undiscovered. I thought of Santorini or Cephalonia, but I dream of something less trodden. What’s undiscovered, but you can’t figure out why?”

Her answer was quick: “Milos.” Although the island is part of the very visited Cyclades group (Santorini and Mikonos are here) and where the famous Roman statue of the Venus de Milo was uncovered in 1820, it is virtually unheard-of by Americans.

Aunt Karen told me she went a year ago, but only for a couple days. She wrote how, during this past trip, she ate at a restaurant where the cook put redfish in clay pots and then placed the pots under the volcanic sand to steam. She told me about a beach called Sarakiniko that looked like mounds of frozen meringue. And, she wrote, there are many other beaches just as weird. Great, I thought. So off we went to Milos, my aunt and I, on the hunt for perfect beaches.

Apparently my aunt had recommended the right island, because the first thing Leonidas Fotinos told me over a coffee our first morning on island was “Milos is the island of 100 beaches.” We are in the lobby of the Hotel Portiani in the main port town of Adamas on the north side of the island. A gentle Aegean breeze blew in from the very large bay just outside the hotel’s large French doors.

“There are only 77 beaches. But ‘island of 77 beaches’ doesn’t sound right,” Leonidas said. In all likelihood, if the Census Bureau of Beaches, say, were to come here, it would probably locate 23 more beaches that haven’t yet been found.

Captain Petros Papageorgiou / Milos Yachting Swim in a sea cave – there are many on the west coast.

Leonidas is a friend of a friend of mine who lives in Athens. My Athenian friend recommended that I get in touch with this longtime resident of Milos who could point Aunt Karen and me in the right direction. But Leonidas, being a typical Greek, did one better; he met us at the airport, he settled us into our hotel and he insisted on showing us his island. Leonidas’ wife and young child had gone back to Athens since peak season had ended on the island, and he had the time.

So while we drank coffee, he pulled out a map of a fairly large island that was nearly cut in half by a bay. The western, mostly uninhabited, half of the island is known as Chalakas, he said, making the “ch” sound more like a breathy “h.” He then started circling place names with a red pen: “We need to see this: Vani, where the iron mines are. Some people say it looks like the Grand Canyon. Then there is Triades. That means a bunch of three.” He added, in case I didn’t get it, “There are three beaches there separated by beautiful rocks. Then here,” he said, moving his pen slightly to the left, “is Ormos Triadon: Translated this means ‘three more beaches.’” The eastern half of the island, where most residents live, had just as many sands to choose from. He spit out names: Tsigrado, Firiplaka, Paleohori. Seeing that our days would be full, we sprang into action.

I hadn’t traveled with my aunt alone ever, so it was on that first drive to our first Milos beach that her peculiar traits started to emerge. For example, my aunt has an uncanny ability to notice (and identify) plants while speeding by them in a moving car. She adeptly pointed out crocuses, heather and wild onions; she knows weird botany facts: “See that mandrake plant?” she asked as we whizzed along the road. “Some people believe it’s part human. It has a head, arms and a penis. If you pull it from the ground, it screams.” She claimed that the juniper trees on Milos are prized, one of the largest variety of juniper, only she called them something like Juniperus excelsa polycarpos. And my aunt, I soon discovered, loves rocks. “Look at those,” she said admiringly as she pointed at a large, uninspiring (in my opinion) rock wall. I remember thinking that day, “Is that what I have to look forward to when I reach her age in 20 years? Liking rocks? Isn’t that only one step removed from liking dirt?

About 20 minutes outside Adamas, we turned off by a sign on the side of the road that said Sarakiniko. The car was soon buckling over a blindingly white washboard surface of what I mistakenly took to be sand. My aunt and I climbed out of the car, and I bent down to sift through it. But it was as hard as if Medusa herself had stared at it and turned the beach to stone. It is actually diatomite, Leonidas told me. He pointed to patterns within the stone: fossils of sea creatures.

We parked and walked toward Sarakiniko’s turquoise sea where over the water, bridges are formed from white rock, Swiss-cheesed with large holes. “Old mining caves,” Karen said as we walked into them, getting lost in hallways upon hallways. While the unusual beaches of Milos have remained a secret, the minerals that formed these beaches have not. A mining industry that began in the 1860s still exists on the island, employing some 300 people; since the early days of this industry, many sites have been abandoned, although perlite, bentonite and kaolin are still mined here.

We took off our sandals and put our feet in the October-chilled clear water. Two men swam underneath the Dali-esque bridges of rock and into the Aegean. I sat quietly, fascinated by the formations, wondering how far they continued below the water’s surface.

A rock isn’t just a good backdrop for beaches, I learned later that day at the site of Filakopi, a short drive from Sarakiniko. If it weren’t for obsidian, perhaps Milos wouldn’t have been inhabited in 10,000 B.C. Obsidian is a glassy volcanic rock, hard enough to be used for sharp tools, that was largely mined on Milos. (It would later be replaced, in part, by bronze and iron:hence the Stone, Bronze and then Iron ages.)  We stood in the middle of unturned earth while Leonidas twirled a small piece of obsidian in his hand. I reached over and felt its smoothness.

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