Day 59 Naxos

Thursday, September 30th. Mykonos to Naxos today.
Naxos is a quieter island, we stayed at Pension Irene (35 euros/room/night), swimming pool, balcony, refrigerator and small sink and cook top. Stavros and his mum run it well.
Friday October 1st. We catch the local bus up to the top of the island to the village of Aparantas 45 minutes away. These are the ancestors of the Cretans who fled the invading Turks 300 years ago. Not much to see there except the surrounding Aegean and so we walk for about 4 hours down through Filoti to Chalki (“Halki”) and catch the return bus home. Very nice quiet walk through the Naxos countryside and we heard the tinkling of about two dozen goat bells before we saw them all making for the shade and food below an olive tree grove. Then a truck with loudspeakers came by bellowing the news that they had small live chickens and turkeys for sell. No-one seemed to be buying but the loudspeakers didn’t stop.
So in Naxos we tried to get away from the tourist areas and get inland to see the “real” Greek village. You can’t romanticize the unromantic, however, and Filoti for one was grubby and very poor with abandoned cars clearly left for several years on main streets and a generally neglected feeling to it. The Greeks seem to us to have a careless attitude to litter (they throw it down and never pick it up) and the general upkeep of their own surroundings. Sad and a little surprising given their reliance on tourism. If they have been overspending in the public sector they certainly don’t seem to have much to show for it.
That said, here at the tail-end of what must be an exhausting tourist season for them they still seem friendly and inviting.