CRUISES: K Lines Constellation and the Glorious Greek Islands

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

The ideal cruise might be one where distances between ports are short, transfer to land is quick and easy and where all that’s interesting is close to hand. As a cruise destination the Greek islands win most of those challenges except, perhaps, the latter. On the islands you’ll want comfortable walking shoes and you are going to be climbing uphill a lot of the time. There’s more to Greek islands than flat beaches of dazzling white sand.

The cruise we took a long time ago with K Lines Constellation was before the great days of cruising but it covered most of the well-known islands. The ship had had a checkered life. It had been built in Yugoslavia in 1962 for Brazilian coastal routes as the Anna Nery then sold to a Greek passenger ship company Kavounides Line in 1978. She was finally renamed Constellation. Her career thereafter was inauspicious. K Line failed in 1987 and the ship went through three companies and three name changes before she became Salamis Glory in 1996 with Salamis Cruise Lines. Refurbished by Salamis in 2007 she now makes mini-cruises out of Cyprus visiting many ports in the Eastern Med of long acquaintance and being one of the few cruise ships offering excursions to the island of Hippocrates, Kos.

None of this was known to us as we boarded Constellation in 1985, just that it was the extension of a Maupintour trip around Greece that had gone perfectly and this was the expected icing on the cake. Expectations were met too. This was the 1980s, Maupinour knew what it was doing, the cruise was flawless.

Mykonos and the Cyclades came up first, even in those days one of the most popular of all the Greek islands. It was dry and windy. The famous windmills are there for a reason. Looking at such a barren island it was hard to conceive that even as recently as the time of Christ many of those now dried up Greek islands with glistening white sand beaches were once covered with fertile green fields. Mykonos bustled with energy. Tourism was in full swing: night clubs were noisy, the boutiques were open late at night and full of visitors and the following morning its beaches seemed dominated by so many happy  and nude tourists it seemed as if members of the Support Obesity Society had come to town.

Santorini was the complete opposite even although the tourists of the 80s had clearly discovered it too. Approaching this island by ocean-going liner through what is essentially a flooded caldera was a nerve-tingling experience provoked by knowing something of its history. Looking up at the cliff with dwellings encrusted on the top like frosting on a wedding cake, it was easy to believe that when the volcano blew in 1500BC it dropped the center of this island (then called Thira) into the sea with what scientists say might have had the power of 100 H bombs. The tidal wave struck Crete to wipe out much of Minoan culture and southern Greece miles away to create the legend of Atlantis falling into the sea. To get up from the sea one had a choice of a mule ride or an ascent in a train-like gondola. The gondola was easier.

Santorini, or Thira or Fira as it is sometimes called, is enjoyed best on top. It’s a series of villages that abut each other, many offering spare rooms and a landlady should you wish to come back another day. Today many luxury inns have taken the place of what were peasant B & Bs but wherever you stay on Santorini try to avoid the rush of summer.

When Patmos showed up on our horizon it was an unknown island to us but it turned out to be one of the most interesting. The Eastern Mediterranean has had a long biblical history and we had stood on an earlier trip to Greece at Corinth where St. Paul had scolded the Corinthians for their behavior but we had not known that the apostle John had been banished to Patmos and had written the Book of Revelation in the very cave of the church we were now standing in. Or so our guide explained. Unfortunately there are many churches and monasteries on Patmos, many with the name of St. John, for example, monastery of Agios Ioannis Theologos and the church of Agios Ioannis Theologos but they are in different locations. It’s maybe enough just to visit and believe.

We found Rhodes fascinating because of its connections with the Crusaders and because it once had the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven ancient Wonders of the World. Rhodes looked like a very successful port. Brightly painted well-kept fishing b0oats embellished its harbor and everywhere the streets showed evidence with their wall plaques and courtyards of a prior foreign presence. The Crusades. What a strange 300-year war! How organized religion controls and damages our lives – and how we now see the aftermath more than 600 years after the west’s defeat at Nicopolis that surely, finally, ended the Crusades.

If Mandraki Harbor at Rhodes Town is depressing because its history suggests we never learn from the mistakes of the past, somehow Lindos, farther south at the other end of the island is uplifting because the Acropolis at Lindos brings us back into earlier history, the glory of Greece. Lindos was birthplace of Charis the Lindios, the architect of the Colossus.

About 180BC a relief of a Rhodian warship was carved into the wall where a series of steps leads up to the cliff top. It’s a hard climb up them especially when tourists are already tired from the earlier part of the ascent. We stop at intervals to study the humble small houses that line the slopes. “Fifty dollar hovels with million dollar views,” says an obese, perspiring fellow passenger struggling up the slope ahead of us. On top the view is spectacular: the tiny white houses of Lindos sparkle in the sun below us, St. Paul’s Bay and the beaches in the distance would normally have beckoned on such a hot day. Instead history calls. Lindos was founded in the 10^th century BC. It’s height and imposing position made it important to the ancient Greeks, then the Romans and the Byzantine empire then the Knights of St. John (the Crusaders) then the Ottomans themselves. Just to walk amongst the ruins and survey the world below is an exercise in contemplation of the ancient Greek empire.

Your thought continue at the next stop, Crete itself. You really are now deep in Greek legends. The famous labyrinth where Theseus fought and killed the Minotaur; (that monster that had the body of a man and the face of a bull), the island where sat Knossos, and its Minoan palace – and now the largest Bronze Age archaeological site in Greece, still a mystery to some degree despite the devoted diggings of British archaeologist Arthur Evans and his dedicated attempts to decipher the different forms of the Minoan written language. A mystery to an explorer who died in 1941 and still an enigma and a joy to passengers on cruise ships two generations later.