Oh, I know – Greece. Hardly globetrotting, says you. But some of the best experiences can be had close to home, if you dig a little deeper. You can go to the other side of the world, coddled in the security of an international community, a set route, your preconceived notions… Or you can take a cheapo Easyjet flight to Rhodes, then an erratic ferry to a quirky little rock in the Med, and you can be surprised by another way of life.
Yesterday, Dimitris the chemistry teacher and I went snorkelling and I asked him about the best places to find octopus. He found one for me, dived down, lifted up the rock, grabbed the little creature and thrust it into my hands underwater. I was giggling so much that I swallowed a big gulp of seawater. Just bigger than a fist, light brown it was, the gentle suckers gripping my hands as it tried to decide if they were a comfortable place to be or not. It decided probably not, blasted black ink at us, and like a cartoon octopus it shot off and into the seaweed.
Tilos has a population of 300 – people that is; though there are probably more goats (the main traffic problem is that the goats like to sit in the middle of the road towards the end of the afternoon when it’s nice and warm). Ferries come here somewhat less than once a day, though we do get the occasional warship or submarine in the harbour, being so close to Turkey. Boosting the local population now as well as a few Brits there are Albanians, Romanians, Bulgarians and Ukrainians. The government offers tax incentives to Greeks to move back to islands with a population this low, and there’s now a primary and high school on the island. Children play on the beach in the afternoon and play football in the square at night, watched over by everyone.
I go snorkelling often in one of the tiny coves where you have to scramble down steep slopes covered in wild thyme and sage and oregano (in antiquity, the island’s herbs were well known for their healing powers) and flowers, since the dry season is only just starting. The rocks in the north-west are volcanic – purple bauxite and white pumice. My favourite fish is the fikopsari, ‘seaweed fish’, which looks to me more like a native spear with eyes, and changes colour in seconds. On the way back, I look out for the big lizard, the agama, scuttling away into the rocks. 
My friend Vangelis remembers when the families moved down to Despoti Nero beach in the summer for its fresh water supply which drains into the sea, and they’d grow grapes and figs. Tilos still grows oranges, courgettes, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, though the island is capable of growing much more. You can eat tiny sweet shrimp straight from the sea – or octopus, if you’re a good fisherman, like Dimitris. You can gather herbs and other edible plants from the wilderness of the island.
Four and a half thousand years ago, when civilisations on Crete and Santorini were thriving, Tilos had the last European elephants. They came from Africa 45,000 years ago, crossing the sea when it was shallower, and living on an island evolved into a dwarf species just one and a half metres tall. The bones of the last remaining forty elephants were found in Harkadio Cave, probably trapped during an eruption of the volcano on the next island, Nisyros. You can see a skeleton of mother and baby in the tiny museum in Megalo Horio.
The European Commission has helped to turn Tilos into a Special Protection Area for endangered and rare wildlife such as Bonelli’s Eagle and Eleonora’s Falcon; historically it’s been an important stopover for migrating birds such as Bee-eaters in spring and autumn, and is visited by monk seals and sea turtles. Vangelis says before the buildings in Livadia there was a wetland, and it was fantastic to watch all the birds landing here.
People do what they can to make ends meet here, since no business can be very busy. Some keep bees or collect grass for hay. Vangelis keeps goats (‘I go to kill two animals,’ he said, one day when he got an order) and makes charcoal in the winter when there are no visitors to be bothered by the smoke; he does the slow burning of the wood up on the mountain near a small chapel; in the summer, he’s adapted to the new way of life and sells bottles of water on Eristos beach. Meanwhile, Georgos, the waiter in Irina, the restaurant named after the island’s famous ancient poetess, works as a medic, going around to visit the old people who live on their own, taking their blood pressure. The husband of the lady who looks after the museum is a roaming barber on a motorcycle.
Things get busier in July and August. The festival of Saint Pandelimon (July 25-27) culminates in feasting and traditional dancing at the monastery on the desolate cliffs of Profitis Ilias, and there’s less traditional dancing till the early hours at a bar in an abandoned village, and hundreds of families from Italy and Greece camp for free on Eristos beach. But it’s hard to beat the months of eesikheea, tranquillity.
In some ways it’s a scrappy little island. There’s no recycling, and cars and tractors get abandoned wherever they stop working. Oil gets onto the beach from passing tankers, and stray cats leap out of rubbish bins leaving plastic bags and bottles in their wake. Plastic washes up onto the beaches, and there are always goat droppings. Roads get bulldozed in whenever someone wants to build a house, and the rule on building no more than two stories high has been bypassed. Meanwhile the new museum near Harkadio Cave has been half-built for three years now, and its shiny marble floor is covered with goat droppings. Everything, here, is for the goats.
If you want pretty perfection, go to Symi or Halki. But if you want the freedom of a wild, ancient rock with a mysterious past and a slow and simple present, Tilos inspires. I love the fact that there are sheep in the fields on the edge of the beach. That’s how it should be.
To find out more about Jennifer and her travels see
Jennifer Barclay once lived in Greece for a year, teaching English in Athens and cleaning hotel rooms in Santorini, and has visited regularly ever since. Her first book is Meeting Mr Kim: Or How I Went to Korea and Learned to Love Kimchi (Summersdale, 2008).
