Paxos found

This Greek island has no sandy beaches, big tourist hotels or classical ruins, which makes it a good place to unwind - or unravel, writes Stanley Stewart

The three women sat on the rear deck, their luggage piled about them like defence fortifications. They were 40-something. "Friends from uni," they explained. "We always promised we would take a holiday together. Twenty years on, we have finally managed it."

Twenty years on, freed from the enthusiasms of youth, it was clear that life had taken them on dramatically different paths. They now looked like people who would have trouble sharing a taxi, let alone a villa for a week.

The first woman was the human version of an advertising hoarding. Everything about her seemed to shout - the wild orange hair, the rainbow spectacles, the T-shirt with a slogan about GM foods, the flamenco skirt. Her earrings could have been melted down to provide gun casings for a rebel army on the Upper Nile.

The second woman was obviously a career professional, a banker perhaps - slim, sophisticated, understated in linen trousers and an ash-grey blouse.

"Marlene has been to Paxos before," the banker said. "Paxos was Marlene's idea."

Marlene, the third woman, peered up at me over the top of her spectacles. She looked so absurdly like the stereotypical librarian - the sensible shoes, the beige calf-length skirt, the earnest expression, the spectacles on a strap - she might have been sent from central casting.

"Paxos has a special aura," Marlene explained. "Partly it is the Venetian period, of course. But the Ionian Islands were also a British protectorate for 50 years and that has left its imprint on Paxos."

"We are hoping the men are more Venice than British colonial," the Billboard guffawed.

The engine of the boat dropped a notch. We looked round. We were approaching the harbour. Paxos was ready to draw us in.

With the tiny town of Loggos, it was love at first sight. The horseshoe harbour was lined with pastel-coloured houses, shops and cafés with outdoor tables. When the local bus trundles through, diners at one of the cafés are obliged to draw in their legs to let it pass.

A hire car was waiting on the quayside and I drove to my villa 10 minutes away on the east coast. The housekeeper was just leaving. She turned out to be an English girl from Devon who came to Paxos some years ago on holiday, and fell in love with the island and an island fellow. "It gets under your skin," she said. "It's dangerously romantic."

From the terrace by the pool, I gazed across to the mainland, where mountains brooded among baroque clouds. In the straits, white sails leaned into a westerly wind. In the other direction, olive groves clothed the hillside above the house, their leaves turning silvery green. Through the trees I could just see the three women emerging from their car at another villa. The hectoring voice of the Billboard drifted down to me on the breeze. "I have not come all the way to Greece to sit on my butt round the pool all day."

At first glance, Paxos has little to recommend it. It is the smallest of the Ionian islands, and there is the sense that most things have passed it by. There are no classical ruins and no great historical sites. There are no sandy beaches, little nightlife and few hotels. There is no airport; connections from Corfu take two-and-a-half hours by boat. Experienced Greek hands will recognise this as the recipe for the perfect Greek island.

For the first few days I didn't see much of the three women in the neighbouring villa, or anyone else for that matter. I walked between tiny hamlets in the interior, through olive groves, steeped in sun-flecked shadow, threaded by dry stone walls, and silent but for the rising drone of cicadas. Olives are the key to the Paxiot character. Olives have meant that, for centuries, no one had to do very much.

It was all down to the Venetians who ruled the island for 400 years until the Napoleonic wars. The Venetians had created an inflated market for olive oil by persuading the women of North Africa that nothing would make them so beautiful as bathing in the stuff. To take advantage of this market, they tried to persuade the Paxiots to plant olive trees. When persuasion didn't work they offered them one drachma, the equivalent of about £75 in today's money, for each tree. The islanders promptly planted a quarter of a million.

They have been living off this burst of industry ever since.

"In the old days, if you had 300 trees," a man told me over coffee one morning in Gaios, "you didn't need to work. Now the price of olive oil has fallen, people need jobs. They call it progress."

If olive trees were cathedrals, the Paxos trees would be Notre Dame - elaborate, vast, gnarled, very ancient, and heavily buttressed. They sprawl fantastically. Apparently their owners only bother with pruning every other decade at most.

Paxos's approach to the whole olive business is not so much laid back as completely horizontal. In most parts of the world, olive harvests usually take six to eight weeks. In Paxos, they can take seven months. The islanders don't pick olives. They spread nets and wait for them to drop, venturing out now and again to collect the windfall and send them off to press. It is an admirable approach.

On the third day, I abandoned the olive groves for the sea, renting a motorboat in Loggos and touring round the coast. The west and east coasts of Paxos are different worlds. The east is low and forgiving, offering harbours to the three island towns - Lakka, Loggos and the miniature capital, Gaios, with its Venetian square. The west coast rises to dramatic cliffs, which tower above small pebble beaches in aquamarine bays and caves, where Poseidon used to hide his lovers.

Mooring in one of the isolated west coast bays, I came across the women stretched out on the beach. The Billboard's greeting echoed off the cliffs. "Where the hell have you been?"

They waved me over to share a basket of grapes. The Banker, slim and perma-tanned, wore a neat bikini. Marlene was in a one piece that she might have inherited from her mother. The Billboard was topless. Her breasts were like independent provinces. She was eyeing the boatman, who was doing something nautical with the mooring ropes. "Will you look at those buns," she sighed.

I lunched on Anti-Paxos, a tiny neighbouring island a stone's throw to the south, which is reputed to have the bluest coves in the archipelago and some of the best snorkelling in Greece. The Bella Vista restaurant sits above Vatoumi Bay, offering magnificent views across the water to Paxos and beyond to the mountains of the mainland.

Half an hour later, the Billboard arrived with the boatman in tow. With a wave to me, she sat him down at a corner table on the terrace. There was no sign of the other two women; I wondered momentarily if she had thrown them overboard in order to get the boatman alone. Over lunch she was in expansive mood, hardly pausing for breath while her companion hunkered down over grilled kebabs and a bottle of retsina. As they left, she winked at me behind his back.

The following evening I ran into the banker in Loggos, in Taxidhi's bar. She was alone on the outside terrace gazing across a dark sea.

The university friends seemed to be splitting apart. I found her in reflective mood. The island's slow rhythms, the sea, the night sky, the meandering sun-struck days with no particular purpose, had all chipped away at her enamelled assurance.

"I have been looking at houses," she said. "It is time to stop running and do what I really want to do. I could spend four months a year with my feet in the Mediterranean."

The next morning, I met Marlene, the librarian, atop the campanile of the church of Ag Ipapandi, deep in the olive groves. Far below us lay the harbour of Lakka and beyond, across a white-capped sea, was a distant Corfu.

Something had happened to Marlene. She was like those librarians in films who remove their spectacles and shake out long locks of hair. She looked vibrant and alive. Her face glowed and her whole body had become graceful and animated.

"Isn't it wonderful?" she sighed, gazing down over the heads of the olive trees to the harbour of Lakka below us. "It's Byzantine, you know. This church. Paxos feels so remote, so set apart in its own little world. And yet here is a building that connects it to the wide currents of the Mediterranean."

Someone was calling from the olive groves below us.

"I must go," she said. "It's lunch. Are you coming to Lakka this evening? The Paxos Cultural Society are putting on a musical performance. There will be dancing."

And with that, the formerly mousy librarian skipped away down the curving stairs of the campanile as lightly as a girl.

Two days later on the boat back to Corfu, I found the Billboard alone on the upper deck, her blouse unbuttoned to get the last of the sun on that formidable cleavage.

"They have both stayed another week," she said before I had a chance to ask. "Looking for properties in the hills overlooking Loggos."

"I didn't realise Marlene was into buying houses abroad."

"Marlene?" she said. "Oh no. She is into a different kind of viewing altogether. She has run off with the boatman." - © Stanley Stewart

GETTING THERE:

There are no direct flights between South Africa and Greece but a number of airlines offer excellent fares on routes via Egypt or the Gulf. The cheapest option is on Egypt Air via Cairo to Athens for R5879, followed by Emirates for R6489. See www.skyscanner.net. From Athens, take a connecting flight or ferry to Corfu and then a boat or hydrofoil to Paxos.

WHERE TO STAY:

Most visitors stay in self-catering villas booked through tour operators. Try the Greek Islands Club (www.greekislandsclub.com); Travel a la Carte (www.travelalacarte.co.uk) in the UK or Routsis (www.routsis-holidays.com) on Paxos. There are a few B&Bs on Paxos. Try Zakspitaki, not far from Loggos. From R550 per night. Call 302662031243. In Gaios, the Paxos Club Hotel has self-catering studios and apartments (www.paxosclub.gr).

WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK:

Loggos, the smallest of the three harbours, and my favourite, has numerous tavernas on the quayside with Nassos probably the best. Taxidhi's is a wonderful bar with front and back tables overlooking the harbour and the sea respectively. The best bread on the island, possibly in Greece, is sold at the bakery two doors down. For pre-dinner drinks, don't miss the trendy Sunset Bar near Ermitis with spectacular views over the cliffs of the west coast. Not to be confused with the nearby and excellent Sunset Taverna, where you can dine in the garden or up on the roof terrace from about R110 a head. Lunch at Bella Vista, above Voutoumi Beach, offers lovely views. From R132.