The sea isn’t the first thing you see. The octopus is the culprit. Tentacles limp in the afternoon breeze as they are strung up on a thin line between two whitewashed walls, appearing to be someone’s forgotten laundry. If you’ve never seen it before, it’s a strange sight, but once you realize what it means, it becomes strangely beautiful. In Klima, a small fishing village on the island of Milos, drying octopus on a clothesline is not a tourist attraction. It’s only Tuesday.
The unrelenting foot traffic of Mykonos and the breathless coverage of Santorini are not available in Milos. Locals will tell you that there’s a reason for that with a subtle pride that falls short of arrogance. The island, which is located in the southwestern Cyclades and is about three and a half hours away by ferry from Athens, attracts visitors who usually understand why they are there. The beaches are truly unlike anything else in the Mediterranean, particularly Sarakiniko with its bleached volcanic rock formations that appear lifted from a lunar survey. However, the villages are what endure.
Among those villages is Klima. The row of boat garages known as syrmata, which are painted in faded shades of red and yellow and have lower floors that open directly onto the water, line the edge of a small bay. Once, fishermen slept in the rooms above and moored their boats inside. Some people still do, or something similar. It’s difficult not to feel as though you’ve wandered into a scene that hasn’t changed much in fifty years when you’re sitting on a plastic chair at the water’s edge and watching an elderly man untangle a net while a cat watches the operation with professional interest. It’s arguable whether that’s true—it’s likely that things have quietly and gradually changed—but the emotion is genuine.
In most tavernas on the island, a glass of wine costs roughly two euros. Less at times. It comes unceremoniously from a local barrel or bottle with a handwritten label in a stubby glass that is slightly chilled. It tastes just as good as a fourteen-euro bottle of wine should, which begs the question of what people are actually paying for elsewhere. The same reasoning applies to the food, which is fresh, unadorned, and priced as if it were intended for locals rather than tourists.
Another nearby fishing village, Mandrakia, has a small eatery called Medusa that is well-known for its octopus. The grilled version comes with nothing more than a squeeze of lemon and is tender in the center and charred around the edges. That same morning, the octopus that produced it might have been hanging on a line outside. Depending on your appetite for reality, that kind of directness—from sea to line to plate—can be either incredibly alluring or a little intimidating.
Milos continues to receive tourists, with an increasing number each year. It’s still unclear if the island will be able to handle the increasing attention without losing what makes coming here feel like a tiny, personal discovery. Greek families on vacation, dispersed Europeans, and the occasional long-distance traveler who read something online and decided to take a chance are the most common types of travelers these days. Larger island crowds have not yet fully arrived. The octopus is still drying outdoors, the wine is still two dollars a glass, and Klima still smells like salt and woodsmoke. However, that won’t last forever—these things seldom do.
