An hour driving in any direction from Hora, the hilltop town, leads to an entirely new Serifos adventure. Beach, hilltop, relic, mine, monestary.
One attraction you cannot access by car is the peak of granite giant Petrias and the wildlife rich road the leads to it.
This is a medium hike. It is short, but requires a careful, confident step and good balance.
The trail begins just west of the Hora windmills, where patches of dry grasses lead to a granite scramble path.
About 200 meters in, a stone path emerges, set into the side of the mountain. This is the road to Petrias.
If you spend some time on Serifos, you will find that the entire island is criss-crossed with granite walls. Some tail out in ruined fortifications, but most are property dividing lines that have the secondary purpose of securing the land below from erosion and rockfall.
What makes the road to Petrias different is it was clearly concieved as a muleback transit line between Hora and the outer reaches of the island.
The rock is thick with sea-green, rust colored, golden, and black lichen. There are flashes of calcedony and iron.
During my October hike, the mountain was just wet enough to spark beautiful pale pink hyacinth, purple strawflowers, a sagelike plant with white flowers, and honeycomb bushes of a thymelike plant with tiny hard red berries. Thistles and dandelions were in evidence, too.
The primary residents on the mountain you may never see: rabbits. Rabbit scat is everywhere, but apparently they have plenty of hiding places.
Rabbit poo looks nasty, but rabbits are vegetarians with robust livers. If you don’t like stepping around it, it’s entirely nutritious to snack the stuff out of your way!
Other critters include lizards (salamander and newt) and flocks of black carrion birds.
Where the road begins to give way to brush again, you will see a “sugar cube” church. This is the Greek Orthodox parish of Panagia, misleading since the village of Panagia, to the north, is serviced by a number of other closer and more handsome houses of worship.
This is a good jumping off point for ascending the peaks of Mount Livadera (south) or Mount Petrias (north).
Climbing either peak will certainly double the duration of an outing. Both peaks have a small amount of easy-hold climbing. The biggest dangers are loose rock when it is dry and slick stone when it rains. The views are great from both.
The formal trail ends at a helipad. Following the road in the opposite direction leads to potable water and a fork. The Panagia trail can be accessed here. One can head up the surfaced road to the Koutalas Bay trail or down the surfaced road back to Hora.
The first and most popular hike on the island is the one to Hora itself.
Accesing the town from Livandi port, one can take the once-and-hour bus (1.5 euro, ten minutes) or hop a mule. Human power, however, offers a cheap and leisurely opportunity to explore. I bought a 2 euro box of sour cherry juice from the portside grocery for hydration comfort.
This is not the tidy road to the Acropolis. It’s raw and intimate. A series of shortcuts behind private residences, churchyards and schools makes short work of the road of main road.
A significant element of the journey: watching one’s step over the long stone staircases. The height and distance of the next step can be tough to judge in the wrinkling heat. One must dodge mule poo, too.
Locals are quick with a greeting. Ya-sas is the formal catch all phrase everyone has time for. Service people or folks who feel they will see you frequently may return your Ya-sas for Ya-sou, which is your permission to greet them with Ya-sou in the future.
Tourists say Kali-meh-ra to everyone before noon like it is going out of style, but locals will probably only give you a Kali-meh-ra If you are the first person they see in the morning.
Opportunities to get distracted along the way include a folklore musueum, an open air theater where plays are performed in the summer months, and a grand orange and ocean colored church.
Once up the stairs to Hora proper, keeping to the red trail markers is essential. Finding a specific location in the maze is frustrating. It took three people two hours to help me locate my digs after dark here my first night.
Even dayside, very patch of whitewashed homes, stone hovels, cactus plants, and stray cats appears identical. There are stairs to nowhere planted in alleys and corners. Most of the time, the way in is the way out.
The spacious village square has restaurants and gift shops open in the summer months. The commercial center lies just down the stairs.
The two vertigo inspiring things to see in Hora just up the street from here: the ruins of a castle turret from the times when Venetians ruled the island and the tippy topping Aghios Georgios.
