32 OCTOBER 2017 / TRAVELANDLEISUREASIA.COM
/ discovery /
A major pilgrimage site for Orthodox Christians,
the Greek island of Tínos has long been overlooked
by other travelers. But, as Gisela Williams
finds, this ruggedly beautiful, deeply spiritual
place is a revelation. PHOTOGRAPHED BY JULIAN BROAD
An Island Blessed
IT WAS OUR SECOND MORNING IN TINOS,
Greece, when we saw our first
pilgrim. The woman, who appeared
to be i n her 60s, was crawl i n g on her
hands and knees along the street
that leads from the port up a hill to
the majestic Our Lady of Tínos
church. Though it felt disrespectful
to watch her intimate struggle, it was
impossible not to keep turning back
to follow her excruciatingly slow but
deliberate progress.Ever since an icon of the Virgin Mary credited with
miraculous healing powers was found at the site of the
church in 1823, thousands upon thousands of Christian
pilgrims have made their way to this raw and beautifully
pristine island, often to present the icon with silver and
gold votive plaques and pray for a blessing. The greatest
number of believers arrive in March, for the Feast of the
Annunciation, and in August, for the Feast of the
Dormition of the Virgin. Many of them crawl almost one
kilometer up to the Renaissance-style church, the most
important Eastern Orthodox pilgrimage site in Greece.
“The Virgin Mary has saved Tínos,” I was told by Maya
Tsoclis, a Greek television personality who is based in
Athens but spends more than half of the year on the island.
And though she laughed, she wasn’t really joking. Almost
everyone I spoke to credited the Virgin with protecting
Tínos from the fate of tourist-packed Mykonos, a 30-
minute ferry ride away but a world apart. “The pilgrims
have scared both foreigners and Greeks away from here,”
Tsoclis said. “When I was growing up, everyone associated
Tínos with being dragged by their grandparents to the
Virgin Mary on smelly boats with food packed in
Tupperware. The people on the ferry going to Mykonos,
which is the next stop, were happy to pass Tínos by.”
Tsoclis’s TV show, Traveling with Maya Tsoclis, ran
from 2007 to 2013, and during three of those years she also
served in the Greek parliament. Now she and her husband,
Alex Kouris, own the successful Cyclades Microbrewery
on Tínos, and she puts out an ambitious annual magazine