Halfway up a hill on the Greek Island of Patmos, we find ourselves at the ominous sounding Cave of the Apocalypse. Below us, a grove of eucalypt trees runs down towards the jewel-blue sea. They look wrong, a strange visitor to these shores.
“Planted by Greeks returning home from Australia,” says our guide, Harold, himself a German transplanted from Berlin.
The warming afternoon air wraps around us like an invisible cloak. As we enter the famous cave, the temperature drops. A bearded priest sits in a gloomy corner, methodically polishing a silver ciborium, a kind of ornate cup. He barely glances up.
It’s a little eerie to be here, where St. John of Patmos, banished by the Roman Emperor Domitian in AD95, recorded his prophetic visions that became the New Testament’s Book Of Revelations. They were colourful to say the least, bristling with seven-headed dragons, satanic serpents and beasts from the abyss.
The fevered saint had a stone ledge for a pillow and a scribe to record his reveries, which he describes receiving from 'a great voice, as of a trumpet’.
The view down to the harbour at Patmos. Photo by Michael Lamb.
Our mission is more self-indulgent: we’re here to absorb the atmosphere of the Dodecanese Islands. The name suggests there are 12, but really there are 15 main islands plus dozens of islets, scattered like rocky pearls in the seas below Turkey.
The gateway is Rhodes, the largest island, where the A320s angle in from the sky every few minutes, ferrying tourists from Athens. Some visitors are content to set up shop in the big resorts and we try this lifestyle for a few days, but our natural inclination is more to curiosity, so Costas, the manager, arranges for us to meet his friend Marianna for a tour of the old town of Rhodes.
The view through the gate of Saint Catherine, Rhodes old town. Photo by Michael Lamb.
We wait for Marianna at the imposing D'Amboise Gate, a fortified bridge flanked by two stout stone towers. I think about how just being in these far-off places is already like time travel: once you get home you feel like you’ve been in a parallel universe. You look at the photos, the proof it happened, yet it still seems like a dream. And to be in a country as old as Greece is to be continuously slipping into the past. Around every corner is another ancient story, luring you back to the theatre of another time and place.
The old town delivers spectacularly as a time machine. A cluster of precincts built by the Knights of St John in the 13th century, it is one of the most well-preserved medieval walled cities in Europe.
Marianna walks us, literally, through history. She swings up Dosiadou, a small side lane. “Come and see one of my favourite things,” she says. In an elbow of the lane is an abandoned house, worn stairs spiralling up mysteriously. Craning our necks, we see a pair of beautifully ornate wooden doors, distressed by years of guardian service. They look plucked from a museum.
As we stand in the small lane we catch the eye of an elderly woman, her couch angled so she can keep watch on passers by. Marianna takes us in for a quick visit and now we have jumped through another wrinkle in time: Marita must be in her 80s and has lived in the old town her whole life. Her dog, Lucy, perches on her shoulder and barks, refusing to be charmed by these blundering strangers. Marita waves us out to the walled garden, a tangle of remnants from the years: rusty bicycles, forgotten furniture and rambling red geraniums, framed by mud-ochre walls.
Marita and her dog, Lucy in Rhodes old town. Photo by Michael Lamb.
Back on the main tourist street, impatient bar owners collar dehydrated tourists with calls of ‘Thirsty? Beer!’. We drift into the shade of a gigantic ficus tree, to a bar away from the touts, and order marides, crispy baitfish and cold spritzes.
As the days pass we explore the highlights reel of Rhodes: a trip to the Springs of Kallithea, a 1920s art deco folly built next to an idyllic bay, where the locals rent loungers, sip cold drinks and bask in the glass-clear water. We set a course for the pretty town of Lindos, out past the curiously named Anthony Quinn Bay. The late actor will be resting uneasily with his eponymous bay and its odd backstory: apparently, he was so enchanted with Rhodes after filming The Guns of Navarone, he bought some land and was also sold the adjacent beach for a nominal sum. The beach deal was later annulled by the Government. Quinn battled for years to get it back, in vain. He then refused to return to Rhodes or even say its name. The locals, on the other hand, now have his name on their map.
Lindos has no such star-struck issues. Arguably the cutest town on Rhodes, the tourist buses arrive early every day and hundreds of visitors troop down the hill to the town. We join the throngs and move through the tiny streets, occasionally buffeted by a gruff local leading a wobbly tourist on a donkey. The trick here is to go late: the tourists buses fade away in the afternoon.
The streets of Lindos, Rhodes. Photo by Michael Lamb.
Soon we’re aboard the Dodekanisos Seaways express bound for Patmos, and our rendezvous with Harold. Time travelling again, but unlike the tourist mecca of Rhodes, Patmos has those deep religious roots and a meditative quality. It’s an island for adventurers who want a slower rotation of days.
From the boat, we see the scattered white sugarcube houses around the small port of Skala. We disembark and sign on the dotted line for our waiting rental car. Our destination is the idyllic bay of Grikos, a few minutes away.
Many years ago as a destitute young traveller, I came to Greece and kicked about the Cyclades from island to island. Back then, I’d make a hollow in the sand on the beach to sleep in, my own hotel of the gods. As we check into our white-on-white room at the five star Atkis Suites & Spa, I realise I’ve been transported to the opposite end of that lived experience, to a hotel of perfect poise in the middle of a dreamy bay.
That night, we choose a restaurants with tables so close to the water it almost laps around our ankles. The sun drops, the water shuffles, the pitchers of white wine deliver us to a moment we wish wouldn’t end.
A view of Kos town from Nerantzia Castle. Photo by Michael Lamb.
But we have one more rock to check out: our third island in the Dodecanese sampler pack is Kos.
We’ve been told to go to Mummy’s, a packed taverna that could exist at any point in the last thousand years, not so much physically, as spiritually. This is food as family; Mummy’s dutiful son Elias leads us to a table. As we pick up the menus he shakes his head, gently removes them from our hands and asks, “Shall I bring you food?” Yes, we say, understanding we will be brought what is fresh from the oven, and it will come with pitchers of anonymous, endlessly drinkable wine. We eat well: deep fried courgette flowers, pitch-perfect moussaka.
On another blue sky day we drive into the hills above Kos and spot a tiny white church hidden down a rutted track.
As we poke around, I realise the door to the church is unlocked and nudge it open. Packed into a tiny, vaulted room about the size of a wine cellar, is a shrine: gold-framed religious icons, a baptismal font, large gold chest and a carved timber confessional.
But the moment is disrupted: two German tourists in a rental have happened upon the same rutted path, and the illusion of our private discovery is shattered.
Even time travellers have to return to the present eventually, but the Dodecanese will always be an escape to other worlds. After all, out here in this faraway part of the Aegean, there are many more islands to explore.
Story and photos by Michael Lamb for the Winter 2023 issue of AA Directions magazine.
Explore more from AA Directions magazine while you're here:
- Discover the famous street art in Christchurch on a city walking tour
- Meet 18-year-old Radha Patel, an ambitious campaigner for sustainability and humanitarian causes
- AA research reveals the safety benefits of new roads
