Greece
Karystos
Dragon houses of unknown origin crouch on windswept ridges above Greece's second-largest island.
The dragon houses sit on the windswept ridge of Mount Ochi — megalithic slabs weighing several tonnes, fitted without mortar, built by someone nobody can identify. Below, the harbour town of Karystos looks across to the mainland, where the Romans once quarried green-veined cipollino marble from these same slopes.
The dry-stone drakospita have prompted competing interpretations, so their uncertain date and purpose are part of the fascination. Roman demand for Karystos’s green-veined cipollino marble left quarry traces in the hills. Dimosari Gorge offers a substantial route that requires local planning, while the harbour supplies accommodation and food below.
Friends
A planned gorge or dragon-house walk followed by harbour food and an easier coastal evening.
Solo
Archaeological questions, quarry landscapes and mountain walking without pretending the mystery is solved.
- The drakospita are heavy dry-stone structures whose precise date and purpose remain debated.
- Ancient quarries above Karystos supplied green-veined cipollino marble across the Roman world.
- Dimosari Gorge provides a substantial mountain-to-coast walking route with local planning.
- The harbour town adds beaches, food and accommodation to the archaeological and hiking story.
Cavo Doro, the town's traditional cookshop, runs to lemon rabbit with celeriac; Agoni does the fish.
Grilled lobster at the harbour when the boats have been lucky, oregano-charred goat when they haven't.
Vale do Paúl
Cape Verde
Sugarcane and coffee terraces pour off a crater rim into a valley threaded with running water.
Chapada do Araripe
Brazil
Diggers call this rock pedras de peixe, fish stones, and that is exactly what is inside.
Olmoti Crater
Tanzania
A waterfall slips out of a grassy crater where cattle graze beside eland.
Lesbos
Greece
A petrified forest of 20-million-year-old trees stands upright on volcanic hillsides above olive groves.
Agiofarango Gorge
Greece
Three hundred hermits once lived this gorge — a cave chapel and the Libyan Sea remain.
Rhodes Old Town
Greece
Medieval stone streets sealed inside fortress walls where Knights of St John once marshalled for crusade.
Ioannina
Greece
Ali Pasha's lake fortress — silversmith workshops and Ottoman mosques on an island reached by boat.