The breeze passed through the small, beachside taverna on the island of Naxos right as the waiter was bringing our drinks. Rachael ordered a carafe of dry, white wine and the rest of us were having ice cold Alfa – the king of Greek beers. This particular taverna was tucked into the beach at Mikri Vigla, on the west side of the island, and it’s noted for the rolling sandstone formations that protrude from the bright blue waters of the Aegean and protect the beach goers from the southwesterly winds. It was peak season for tourism in Greece, and Naxos was no exception. The beaches were packed with visitors from all over the world, and from our taverna, that day, there were at least ten languages in the air.
Patrons walked directly off the beach, still damp and salty from the sea, sand on their feet, and most of them, us included were only wearing our swimming suits. The restaurant’s 20 tables were entirely situated outside on a large patio that opened directly onto the sand, facing the Mikri Vigla beach, and its kitchen was broken into two parts. The first half was a huge open fire, coal grill directly next to the patio manned by a 65 year old Greek owner named Yiorgos. Every freshly grilled or fried dish passed through his blazing furnace and came direct to your plate. The second half of the kitchen, was tucked away inside and was run by his wife Popi, who spends her mornings cooking the stewed, baked and braised dishes that are available until they run out. Each of them commands a staff of young Greek boys who run in and out, taking orders from their sun kissed customers and ensuring that your beer stays full, and the ice bucket for your ouzo never fully melts. At this particular lunch, we decided to keep it pretty light so we ordered: a big Greek salad, grilled octopus, shrimp saganaki, fried anchovies, pork souvlaki skewers, an order of stuffed tomatoes and of course, a heaping plate of tzatziki for the five us. In true Greek fashion, we took our time as we methodically worked through each plate and multiple rounds of drinks, and of course, we never once felt rushed to turn over the table (note: pictures don't necessarily match, but the vibe isn't far off).
Perhaps a result of the lack of pressure from the wait staff, perhaps a result of a few beers on a lovely summer afternoon, but what followed our feeding frenzy was a lengthy, at times philosophical, discussion on the topic of “blue zones” and human longevity. Both are topics that have come into vogue in the recent years, especially given the recent launch of the Netflix docuseries that heavily features the denizens of Mediterranean islands.
A “blue zone” is a community whose inhabitants have a significantly higher than average life expectancy; the term was coined by a National Geographic journalist in 2004 named Dan Buettner. In an effort to better understand why people in these regions live so long, the folks at Nat Geo performed an extensive observational study of the five communities and found a set of nine common denominators that are now being morphed into a philosophy or lifestyle craze that can be prescribed to the masses as a recipe for longer life.
To quickly summarize what these Nat Geo folks preach, the five known blue zones in the world are: the Barbagia region of Sardegna, an island called Ikaria in Greece, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, the Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California, and the island of Okinawa in Japan. The nine identified commonalities between them are: 1) they have natural movement and exercise built into their daily lives, 2) they understand their sense of purpose in life, 3) they have ways to effectively cope with and manage stress, 4) they don’t gorge themselves at meal-time, 5) their diets are plant heavy, 6) they drink alcohol regularly but in moderation, 7) they belong to a faith based community, 8) they put family first, and 9) lastly, they have live in small, isolated communities that promote these behaviors.
I’ve read a good amount about this topic in the past few weeks and even watched a bit of the Netflix series featuring Dan Buettner as the host and now firmly believe that their nine tenets are reverse engineered marketing nonsense meant to sell t-shirts, cookbooks, and Netflix subscriptions. Their entire goal is to get people to live to the incredibly arbitrary age of 100; their content is formulaic, loaded with generalizations and reads much like click bait, and potentially worst of all, the show’s host Dan has absolutely no business being on camera, parading around as a wannabe Anthony Bourdain, but with as much charisma as the flamingo exhibit at the LA zoo. Rant and “blue zone” movement aside, there is undoubtedly something fascinating happening in these areas. The average lifespan for these communities is up to 25% longer than that of an average American, despite their limited access to technology and the best medical care available, and after spending four weeks on three separate trips in the Mediterranean this summer, I like to think I’m quite the expert myself.
We unintentionally circled these “blue zones” on amazing trips to Crete, Salamina, Ios, Naxos, Paros, Syros, and the Italian island of Sardegna, and we got firsthand exposure to these ancient cultures filled with large quantities of ancient people, who were actively participating in day-to-day activities. We saw very elderly people walking from their homes down to the local beaches for their daily “Med-dunk” (I’m sure they don’t call it this), we saw elderly folks in bakeries in the center of town, buying fresh bread for their home cooked meals later that afternoon, and we saw older people out drinking and smoking at local cafes. It was very unlike what I’m used to seeing at home where the older members of society seclude themselves from such activities, and prompt discussions from their loved ones about whether they can get by on their own, or where they should be stashed, against their will, to prolong their final years via the classic American procedure of medicate and resuscitate.
As I witnessed these lifestyles unfolding around me, I began to see threads of how these communities were different than what I knew and what I’d seen traveling around the planet in the last year. The first was obvious, these are isolated communities. The places we visited were all islands whose citizens maintained a relatively small sphere of influence, but as a result these folks have an incredible sense of presence and mindfulness where they recognize the most important thing is the here and now. Second, is the prioritization of mealtimes. Plain and simple, when it’s time to eat, these people sit down with people they care about and eat. While I do think there’s something beneficial to their diets, which focus mostly on fresh, seasonal foods, I believe the more life-enhancing element is the sacredness of the hour (or two) where people get together to laugh, argue, eat, drink, and sometimes just be with other people who care about them. Lastly, and something that I’ve found to be the hardest to pin down and communicate, is the idea that these people don’t wake up every morning thinking about how to live to 100. They wake up and think about the pleasures of the day, and it was exactly these things that made me realize how special this place is: the frothy frappe at a beachside café, the enormous hug from the restaurant owner you met earlier that day, the dunk into the Mediterranean at 4pm when the sun is at its strongest. The important things.
We spent a lot of time at cafes, and it’s here that the zen and mindfulness of the Greeks is so clearly on display. Cafes in Greece are different than what you see in the US. Here, they are oases open at all hours of the day. They are meeting points, hang outs, casual places to occupy time, to facilitate conversation, and importantly, to drink Nescafe frappes.
The frappe is a Greek staple. You’ll find these at every café in the country, and regardless of the time of day, someone in said café will be succumbing to a caffeine craving. They are served in tall glass cups, always over ice and with a straw to get through the several inches of instant coffee foam covering the potable coffee at the bottom. It’s a symbol for taking your time, because when it’s served, the frappe is basically a cup of foam with a handful of ice cubes suspended somewhere in the middle. As the ice melts, it melds with the foam to create drinkable coffee, but for some number of minutes there’s nothing to do but sit back and wait. The frappe necessitates patience, and just when you think you’ve finished your last sip, after your ice is melted and there’s nothing but a layer of that same foam at the bottom of your glass, you can add a splash of water to revive your drink and keep your experience alive. Frappes are a creation meant to bridge conversation topics, to outlast debates and facilitate the philosophical musings of the Greeks consuming them. In short, they are a symbol for enjoying the moment.
It's difficult to be mindful of the present moment at all times -- to avoid invasive thoughts about paying bills, whether family and friends are doing ok, or even which country to visit next on the trip of a lifetime. This is exacerbated by smart phones and social media where we’re notified of breaking news in real time, even if that news is unactionable or unrelated to who I am and what I'm doing. Obviously there are enormous benefits to this network of information, like creating a sense of shared responsibility and accountability for climate change, homeless, mental health, etc., but at the same time it’s critical to shut the noise off every once in a while and make space for self-nourishment. In the Mediterranean, this happens at least three times a day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Meal times are truly sacred moments and we learned this 100 different times, from different people on different islands.
The best of these lessons was at a restaurant called Rakomelo in the town of Elounda on Crete, where Rach and I were traveling with four other friends, George, Sarah, Nick and Kelsey. Elounda is on the east side of the island, about an hour’s drive from the main port of Heraklion, and is known primarily for amazing beaches, quiet hotels, and a very eerie ex-leper colony island named Spinalonga that’s been preserved in time, casting haunted shadows over its neighboring beaches since it was abandoned in 1957.
We stopped at Rakomelo for no particular reason; there were a few other restaurants on the main drag, but for some reason this one spoke to us. Perhaps because it had a few open tables, perhaps because the edge of its service area, truly hung over the Mediterranean Sea. So much so that a few times the wait staff came over and reminded us to be careful with our chairs because they didn’t want to fish us out of the water below.
Shortly after we sat down and got situated, the owner, Manos, came over to our table in a blaze of energy and enthusiasm. He pulled up a chair in between two of our non-Greek speaking friends, sat down and began hurling Greek in every direction. I quickly jumped in to placate the scene, and when he learned that I could actually speak Greek, his frenzy intensified. He stood up, walked around the table and began massaging my shoulders asking where I was from, where my parents were from, and of course, why my friends didn’t speak any Greek. In proud defiance, when I translated this back to my friends, they uproariously called his bluff and rapid fire threw out as many words and phrases as they knew, which admittedly wasn’t that impressive, but it did the trick.
“Bravo,” uttered Manos, “Ti thes na fas;” satisfied, he gets down to business and asks what we want to eat. I started the order, which I always do with a ‘horiatiki salad’ (traditional Greek salad), and Manos immediately got this look of dissatisfaction on his face, and begins to tell us, now in English: ‘This is Crete, not Athens, here we eat the Dakos salad.’ He then pulls a pair of Morpheus-esque, armless glasses from behind his right ear, props them on the bridge of his nose and starts writing down what he’s going to bring us for dinner, apparently uninterested in our perspective, and then walks away hollering to his kitchen staff. The table erupts and we accept our fate, which starts with three carafes of white wine and three beers – this was going to work out just fine (note: that's our only photo of Manos and his Morpheus glasses).
The plates may as well have been frisbees flying out of the kitchen, one after the other, of different Cretan dishes, most of them familiar, but a few unfamiliar. Particularly the Dakos salad which is a fresh, tomatoey, feta cheese blend served on a thick brown bread they refer to as rusk, but is similar to a thick crouton. We started fighting back wave after wave of food, eating everything that came our way, and washing it back with a Mediterranean tidal wave of wine and beer. We ate octopus in two different forms, the first was grilled with a beautiful char on thick pieces of tentacle, and second was a boiled variety served with a hefty dose of olive oil and balsamic vinegar that melted in your mouth with each bite. We took down fried anchovies, fried calamari, grilled souvlaki – chicken and pork, stuffed tomatoes, stuffed vine leaves (dolmades), shrimp saganaki, mussels in white wine, and true hunks of feta cheese.
About two hours into the battle I tried to tell him to stop sending stuff, and to bring us the check because we couldn’t handle another plate. Then Manos gave me a bit of a wave from across the restaurant, and then brought out two huge plates of watermelon and two carafes filled with mystery liquors to the table. One was clear, and the other was a dark yellowish color. The clear stuff was raki, and the other was rakomelo. Both are common liquors consumed as digestifs in Crete, and they're notorious for their generosity with the stuff... The raki is relatively dry, and flavored with anise, whereas the rakomelo is sweet and syrupy, and we learned both were made in-house by Manos and his crew.
In a foolish attempt to move on from the restaurant and go to the next bar so we could experience more of Elounda, we finished the two carafes relatively quickly, and again asked for the check. Manos again interpreted this request in his own way and instead, he refilled our two carafes of raki and rakomelo, and this time, grabbed a third bottle of mystery liquor and a chair for himself to join us. There was legitimately no escape, and at this moment, it all clicked. We were supposed to be here. Why were we thinking about some other bar, some other place to sit and drink when we had so closely assimilated with this man, in this restaurant, in this moment. So we leaned in. At this point we were drunk enough to engage in a fully multi-lingual conversation involving all parties at the table, stories were told, backgrounds were shared and importantly, a lot of raki was consumed. We stayed another hour, until well after midnight when Manos remembered he had other patrons to talk to, and deemed us worthy for the bill.
Finally, as I was counting out the ridiculous, 110 euros to cover the entirety of the tab, plus the tip that I already knew he wasn’t going to accept, Manos walks around the table, pulls a small tin container out of his pocket and fingers a huge dollop of some salve out of it and rubs it into Nick’s beard as a sneak attack from behind. He goes in for the full, two-handed face massage, as he tells Nick, in Greek, that this will make his beard smooth and shiny for the whole next day. Kelsey has tears in her eyes as she sees her boyfriend getting greased up like a Thanksgiving turkey, and with that Manos hugs each of us and implores us to come back for coffee the next day so we can chat and learn more about Elounda.
Meals like this one are the reason I feel so proud to be Greek, and why I feel so appalled at Nat Geo’s nine steps to live to 100. In that four hour dinner, surrounded by a group of people I truly love, I transcended beyond a single life span, and in the process I think I broke nearly every rule that the Blue Zoners preach. I ate meat excessively, I drank excessively, I blasphemed, and I shared existential crises of meaninglessness. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
I’ll close with two last thoughts. First, how lucky I am, and we are, to be able to experience these cultures in a la carte fashion. While there’s so much that’s amazing to living on a Greek or Italian island, I also learned from speaking to a friend who lives there full-time, that there’s an incredible amount of hardship and challenges to living in an isolated community 365 days per year. I learned that in the summer everything is easy and what we see is as good as it looks, but when the winter comes, and tourism dies, so does access to the mainland, as ferries come once per week instead of 3x per day. I learned that if someone gets sick and needs to get to the hospital in Athens, they’re shit out of luck until that ferry comes, and that might mean holding that person’s hand telling them they’ll be ok, even if there’s no guarantee. In that conversation with an old friend, we started happy and shared loving memories of playing soccer in the street when we were kids, but it got real, and I learned how grateful I was.
Lastly, if I haven’t been clear on my perspective on longevity already, then perhaps my final anecdote from a novel I just finished, called The Empire of the Vampire will be the piece de resistance. The novel is about a sacred order of half-vampire assassins, called Silversaints, who are trained in combat to hold off the advance of the full-blooded, immortal vampires who are attempting to imperialistically conquer the known world, enslaving humankind as nothing but a food source. In the novel, the oldest vampires are the most powerful, and the cruelest, most bloodthirsty. Whereas, conversely, the Silversaints, who are half-vampires themselves, reach the pinnacle of their power just before their own bloodthirst consumes them, and they ultimately commit ritual suicide, in the name of the preservation of humanity, to prevent themselves from becoming part of the undead horde. During this trip, as I thought about longevity, I thought more and more about the sacrifice of the Silversaints and how they foreswear this gift of longevity in favor of what they think to be their best possible life. They were kind of like the Greeks and the Sardegnians, who say "maybe we'll live to 100, but we'll do it on our own terms."
My point spelled out: maybe living forever makes you bloodthirsty, brutal, cruel and bored enough to pursue a global takeover. Instead, I try drinking a second martini before dinner, quitting my job and travelling the planet, and importantly calling the people around me to tell them that I love them.
I'll wrap this with a small collage of images from our three trips! We visited Athens, Crete, Naxos, Ios, Paros, Syros, Salamina, and Sardegna.
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