What a magical spot! There's Sangaris anchored off in the fleet, the ketch on the right as we look down from the owner's property on the hill. A handful of families owned the island for the past 600 years or so with only two left now. As it used to be pirate territory, brother Mihalis adopted that theme for his tavern - he's quite the character. You see us enjoying some of his mezedes - oh, ok, you caught us, that's a wee bottle of ouzo - but the fish and octopus are a-grilling and the ubiquitous goats a-roaming - more on that later.
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The top photos show the property from the seaside, with the dock out front and Mihalis' taverna behind, the family blue-domed chapel up top and other buildings tucked in the terraced rock-walled hillside. Top-right is a second taverna owned by brother Stavros and his wife Katerina with guest rooms adjacent, then bottom-left is the very attractive walkway into the property with a close up in the middle of the unique way they stack brush atop the walls - it actually keeps the goats from climbing over. And, speaking of goats, that's a mainstay of this family's livelihood as they slaughter about 50 a year - yep, that's what those hooks on the tree are for. And while this life is rustic, one of those "other buildings" we mentioned houses a commercial freezer that holds all those slaughtered goats and another houses the automatic standby generator. All the rooms have air conditioning.
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Christy, a woman who's a local charter operator out of Leros, happened to be at the dock , we chatted her up and she graciously invited Katherine to join her and her guests for a tour of the property - she's known the family for years. So the next day Kath gave Craig the tour: clockwise from bottom left are close ups of that hillside chapel with the flag and dome. It stands among the slowly deteriorating stone family housing (village) that was in use until about 20 years ago. There's Craig looking out to be sure Sangaris is behaving herself on anchor and then making his way through a way-too-low door. Actually it's only for the goats when they herd them into various pens for milking and shearing.
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Speaking of milking, here's the shed they've been doing it in for generations and still do today. Craig is sitting where the milker would be (that may or may not be a technical goat term - sorry). There's a small scooped out hole between his legs and one of those cracked milk pots Katherine's showing us goes there (there's a smaller pic of her from the outside of that room, to give you some perspective).
The goat, of course is presenting rearward (if you can say that). So why, you ask, are the pots half closed on top? Well, not to be indelicate, but you wouldn't want goat turds in your cheese, now would you? (Although some versions we've tasted suggest it may not be foolproof.) By the way, Kath's also holding a wicker basket and that's what they use to form up the feta cheese, after cooking. The other pics are about the grounds of the goat area and the circular flagstone area is where they bring grain to separate the chaff.
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The final stop on our tour is just over the top of those terraced fields, very close to the goat operation. It was recently identified by Archeologists who believe it was a structure from the Lycian period that ran from 2 milenia BC to about 100BC - this, they think, was likely toward the end of that period with strong Roman influence in the structure. How neat is that?