![]() Ikaria’s past is intertwined with stories of the gods. ![]() When I arrive at dusk, the sun’s last rays are illuminating the chapel’s faded icons and silhouetting the forested mountains, which dip to the sea, as if touched by a celestial hand. ![]() I follow a zigzagging road through a pine forest, past vineyards and rugged, heather-clad slopes to the most impressive example of this architectural legacy: Theoktistis monastery, wedged between boulders, like something from a Stone Age fairytale. During this time, Turkish pirates drove islanders into the hills, where they hid in chimney-less, windowless ‘anti-pirate’ houses, capped off by giant rocks that were the only thing visible from a distance. Here Ikaria’s otherness is most apparent forged by a period of reclusiveness born out of conflict in the ‘century of obscurity’ (1521 to 1601). The coast is ravishing but, as all Ikarians say, you feel the island’s true heartbeat in the mountains of the north. I slip straight from the rocks to drift in piping-hot healing waters, rich in radon, iron and sulphur, and smelling faintly of rotten eggs. The town of Therma, with its ruined Roman baths, has free public hot springs that are a popular choice for a dip, but Lefkada - a couple of bays over - is quieter. If the mood takes me, I head out along treacherously twisty, cliff-skimming roads, past blue-domed orthodox churches and olive groves droning with cicadas, rarely meeting another car.īathing in the south coast’s hot springs - superheated at temperatures between 31C and 58C and among the world’s most radioactive - is cited as another contributing factor to the islanders’ longevity. In the afternoon, Alexandros serves fish fresh from his boat, which we eat with our fingers. In the mornings, I swim off white-pebble coves, licked by a glassy turquoise sea. In Ikaria, no one looks at the clock and time moves in a slow, dreamlike way - but that suits me just fine. In short, the opposite of what the western world perceives as progress. Today’s centenarians have had tough, self-sufficient lives, working in the fields and tending vines and olive groves, often without roads, phones or convenience foods. But Ikarians also benefit from an outdoor lifestyle in tune with nature, a plant-based diet rich in wild herbs, vegetables, pulses, olive oil and natural wine, a lack of stress and tight-knit communities. More than 30% of Ikarians live into their nineties, generally free from chronic illness and dementia, and many hit 100. Ikaria, which is just 30 miles off the coast of Turkey, in the eastern Aegean, is one of them - alongside Sardinia (Italy), Okinawa (Japan), Nicoya (Costa Rica) and Loma Linda (California). In The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer, The New York Times bestselling author and National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner zooms in on the world’s five Blue Zones, places with inhabitants of remarkable longevity, with incredibly high percentages of centenarians. And you know what? It kept us fit, both in body and up here” he chuckles, tapping his head. “Before the roads were finished in the mid-1990s, these tracks were the only way up to hamlets in the mountains the only way home. “When I was young, we had to climb these monopátia (old footpaths) to visit friends and family, swap homegrown produce and buy groceries,” he says. ![]() ![]() In his seventies, he’s as fast and nimble as one of the island’s wild goats. Alexandros, my host where I’m staying at Ikaria Studios, bounds ahead, sometimes stopping to pick a ripe fig or point out an endemic wild herb with no English translation. The faint, overgrown trail isn’t easy to follow, throwing up many dead-ends, but I’m in good company. Above me, ragged, cloud-wisped mountains punch nearly 3,500ft from sea to summit and huge boulders litter the landscape - as if the Greek gods have dropped their marbles. In the golden haze of a September afternoon, my pulse races as I scramble over wind-scarred granite rocks and drop into lichen-draped holm oak woods in Magganitis on Ikaria’s southwest coast. This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). ![]()
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