EUROPE ’95 / Destination: Greece : GREEK CLASSICS : Beyond touristy Mykonos, a quartet of lesser-known isles with clear waters, blue skies and a taste of traditional Greece.

THE CYCLADES, Greece â€”  Applied wisely, the discipline of geography can bridge gaps between cultures, destroy prejudice, promote world peace, possibly even raise global standards of living.

Or you can use it the way I did last summer, and find some really great places to hang out by the beach.

The project began, as so many do, with an apparent anomaly in base-line data. Greece’s territory includes roughly 1,400 sea-splashed, sun-drenched islands, about 170 of them occupied. A handful of those, most notably Crete, Corfu, Rhodes, Mykonos and Santorini (also known as Thira), have become big names among travelers and are typically overrun in the peak months of summer.

Two of the most popular, Mykonos and Santorini, are part of the Cyclades (pronounced SIK-le-deez) group, 34 islands in the Aegean Sea that encircle the island of Delos, the mythical birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. Yet in a rough crescent fewer than 100 miles from Athens (and fewer than 40 miles from each other) sit four lesser-known, less-visited Cycladic islands, each favored by essentially the same advantages of sun, sea and landscape.

On one island, religious pilgrims daily crawl up a stone road on their bleeding knees to pay respects at a Greek Orthodox shrine. On another, crumbling mansions testify to a town’s now-faded prominence as a 19th-Century port. On all, inter-island ferries call at least three times a week in summer; the deep-blue sea laps against the dry, wind-swept shore; sun-drying octopuses hang in waterfront tavernas and tourism is an activity largely for mainland Greeks, Greek Americans and footloose European students.

Which leads to the crucial issue of my quest: What if an American scholar, armed with several hundred dollars and the Greek words for please ( parakalo ) and thank you (efcharisto) , were to choose four islands and spend a night or two on each, prowling side streets, reclining on beaches, roaring over hills on scooters and nibbling on fresh fish? Would it be fun?

Geography is serious business, so, of course, I used careful methodology. I consulted maps of the Mediterranean, perused guidebooks and ferry schedules and asked lots of questions. I flew to Athens, flew again to Mykonos, then put myself in the hands of the ferry services and passed eight days of rigorous research on Andros, Tinos, Naxos and Syros.

Andros

My ship came in on a late August afternoon. The Aegean lapped and roiled in postcard hues. Lambs bleated in a valley. Andros, the northernmost of the Cyclades, lay like a forgotten experiment in topography, the dry skin of Indio stretched over the shapely bones of Big Sur.

The port area, not much to look at, is known as Gavrion. I was there only a few minutes before catching a cab to the other end of the island. On the way south lay Batsi, the most popular beach of several on the island, lined by a row of restaurants and modest hotels. Blue sky, deep-blue sea, brilliant sun. On the shore, toplessness was endemic.

I had booked the Paradise Hotel, which turned out to be a well-equipped but charmless place with sullen service. It stood 20 miles from the port, about a mile’s hike from the nearest beach. But it’s a reasonable walk to the island’s largest town, known as either Andros or Chora. (Chora, roughly translated, means “principal town� and turns up on maps of many Greek islands.)

And a fetching town it is. For me, it was more memorable than the island’s beaches. The town’s heart, half a mile’s walk from the Paradise, is a long pedestrian street that’s just four paces wide at its narrowest, with two-story storefronts on either side. Most of the shops sell produce and hardware, and several cafes harbor coffee-sipping old men at rickety wood tables.

The street opens to a plaza surrounded by sea and dominated by an 1857 statue of the Unknown Fisherman. He looked like one of the Lenin statues formerly found in Russia, his cap at a jaunty angle, one arm raised, eyes gazing bravely into the future. Judging from the abundance of seafood on local menus, however, no one is likely to drag this fellow off his pedestal any time soon.

The next morning, I put myself in the hands of taxi driver Leonidas Astras, son of a seaman and lover of animals. Astras left the island for Athens a few years ago and ran a pet store there, but it failed and he had to come back. Now he drives a cab to help support his wife and two vipers.

“Children,� he explained, “are too expensive.�

We stopped for a snack at a coffee shop on the main road under a shade tree near the ancient town site of Palaiopolis: candied walnut and thick, dark Greek coffee in a demitasse, with a glass of water to dilute it. Then we rattled up the hill to Kastro, site of castle ruins more than 400 years old. (Ruins are about as common on Greek islands as skaters on the Venice boardwalk, and the government can’t afford to excavate them all or even to fence them off.)

It seemed like a very windy day to me, but Astras was unimpressed. At least once every year, he said, the winds get strong enough to knock you off your donkey. Then he led me in a windblown scramble across loose rocks to the castle ruins, high on an exposed ridge.

“I like that there are no security measures here,� Astras said. “If you want to kill yourself, you can do it.� At the most precipitous point, surrounded by wind and stark hills below and blue sea beyond, Astras found himself thinking about animals again.

“If I could be an animal on this island,� he suddenly volunteered, “I would be a hawk, so I could see the wonderful views all around.�

Tinos

Splock! Splurch!

I was anticipating a quiet, dignified arrival at Tinos. This, after all, is the island that draws thousands of Greek Orthodox pilgrims every year, the place where, after a nun’s vision, workers unearthed an icon of the Virgin Mary in 1833. And sure enough, as the ferry drew near, there was the yellow facade of the Panagia Evangelistria church at the top of the hill.

There were dozens of religious accessory shops on the path to the church. And there were old women crawling up the stony street, passersby scarcely noticing. For every crawling pilgrim, another 50 ascended in stooped pairs and family huddles, occasionally outfitted with crutches or wheelchairs. In Europe, Tinos is often described as “the Lourdes of Greece.�

But what about that sound?

Pilgrims notwithstanding, the waterfront of Tinos is an elbow-to-elbow, work-to-be-done sort of place. I found myself next to a grizzled man who wore a straw hat and held a dying octopus. He slammed it to the pavement, cradled it in his hands, slammed it again. Finally, he paused, ripped it in half and shambled off, resultant semi-octopuses in hand, presumably to become someone’s dinner.

You want food for the soul, you crawl up the hill; you want food for the belly--splurch!--well, here you are.

I was staying in a 75-year-old white mansion called the Tinion Hotel, half a block from the waterfront, five or six blocks off the pilgrims’ principal path. On its pleasant veranda stood a desk man who greeted me cordially. The tile floors and high ceilings made the place feel a little stark, but the warmth of the welcome compensated.

Once I had rented a scooter (about $10 a day) and zoomed up and down a few hills, I had a sense of downtown Tinos and the striking way in which pilgrims have shaped the city’s workings. In town, budget travelers can find plain, clean rooms (bathroom down the hall) for $12 nightly, but scores of the faithful prefer to spend their nights in the church courtyard. The visitors reach peak volumes in spring during Holy Week and mid-August, but throughout the year the path is well-trodden: first the ascent up the street called Leoforos Megalocharis, buying six-foot candles and holy water receptacles along the way; then the squeeze into the crowds within the church walls; then the loop-completing descent down the street called Evangelistrias, which is lined by many more vendors of icon-inspired souvenirs.

Outside town, the slopes of Tinos are strewn with hundreds of aged and scenic dovecotes, which house pigeons that have helped feed generations of islanders. (I didn’t find anything that looked like pigeon or dove on local menus, though, and was happy to stick with seafood and lamb.)

About three miles northwest of town at Kionia is a four-story tourist hotel and swimming pool next to a beach with gentle tides. On the backside of the island stretch several more calm-water beaches with modest towns close at hand.

One of those spots is Panormos, 18 miles northwest of town on a regular bus route. The beach there is unremarkable, but it is faced by a classic string of island taverns, sleepy, shady places enlivened only by the stirring of stray cats and children. Hand-lettered signs offer cheap rooms. Fishing nets await mending, and shutters are painted blue, green and orange.

But my favorite discovery was about two miles up the road: the inland town of Pyrgos, which must be one of the most handsome villages in the Greek islands. It has no hotels (though one was said to be under construction), but there is an outdoor cafe, a market, several artists’ studios, two small museums specializing in local artists’ work and an art school. Homes are well-tended, whitewash is lavishly applied, bougainvillea spills wildly.

Naxos

My original plans didn’t include Naxos. But as I compared notes with other travelers in Greece, the name kept coming up. Someone said it had a striking monolithic ruin on the edge of its waterfront. Someone else said its shops were quartered in a maze of buildings dating back centuries. All agreed it had good beaches. I rebuilt my itinerary and wedged Naxos in.

The payoff was immediate. As the ferry approached port, the ancient marble doorway of the Temple of Apollo rose on an islet northwest of the harbor. Historians say the construction of the temple began in the 6th Century BC. What remains is a marble pi symbol on a hillock, surrounded by stray stones and connected to the main island by a concrete breakwater. As the sun sinks, couples scramble up the breakwater and alight on the stones, happy as ants atop an overdecorated wedding cake.

My hotel, the Chateau Zevgoli, was a well-kept old building with 10 homey rooms just a short stroll from the waterfront and shops. A few blocks away stood the archeological museum. On its rooftop terrace, a mosaic peacock bakes on sunny days while pottery fragments and busts repose at odd angles in the shade.

Near the museum and just a little up the hill from the shopping area, the residential Kastro area, historically the home of the island’s Venetian Catholics, abruptly begins. Prowling there in early evening, a stranger begins to suspect what all these islands were like before mass tourism.

I also walked on the beach at Agia Anna, a long stretch of sand with a gentle tide, a restaurant at one end, low dunes at the other. (Agios Georgios and Agios Prokopios are more convenient to town, but more crowded.) And I took a winding bus ride to Apollonas at the other end of the island, an hourlong, 12-mile journey through low mountains, terraced slopes and semi-green valleys that ends at a smallish beach town.

The big draw at Apollonas is an ancient kouros --that is, a statue of a Greek young man--which lies on a hillside, weather-beaten and 35 feet long. I made the obligatory hike up to the site and was disappointed: The features were barely discernible, and the scale wasn’t all that imposing. But on the way back, the scenery sunk in a bit more: the scrub-covered hills, the pungent odor of green and purple grapes drying on rooftops, the shaded tavernas, the hand-lettered rowboats at rest by a seawall. I climbed an intriguing set of stairs and stepped into Atelier Hermes, the studio and gallery of German-born artist Lilo Tackenberg.

Tackenberg came to the island eight years ago and opened her atelier last year. Her rooftop terrace was exploding with flowers and packed with myth-inspired ceramic art, from two-faced maidens to a sunbaked centaur drawing back his bow and scanning the beach below for enemies.

Syros

A century ago, Syros was a center of wealth and commerce, home to Greece’s most important ports and crucial shipbuilding facilities. Its principal city, Ermoupolis, had a population near 15,000. But as the port of Piraeus outside Athens grew, Syros slumped. With nearly 20,000 residents, it’s still one of the most populous Cycladic islands, but many of the mansions are crumbling, and tourism is a trickle.

I liked the idea of that, but to reach the reality I had to endure the worst five hours of the trip: the night ferry to Syros. The ship was littered and dismal and stank of the day’s cigarettes. The water was choppy, and by the time we staggered out onto the dock and I found my way to my uncomfortable loft in one of those 19th-Century mansions, the Villa Maria, it was 1 a.m.

Still, in the morning I was encouraged. The Villa Maria had panoramic views, a friendly yellow exterior and a drape of bougainvillea over its front door. The main square was full of children chasing pigeons. Downtown, neoclassical columns outnumbered the whitewashed cubes, and an alley was dominated by fishmongers and produce stands.

Atop one of the town’s two hills stood a blue-domed Greek Orthodox Holy Church of the Resurrection of Christ, with three old cannons awaiting invaders; atop the other, capping the steeply pitched Catholic neighborhood of Anos Syros, stood the Cathedral of Agios Georgios. I walked all over and found not one sign of false quaintness. Mykonos should be so lucky.

One evening, I rounded a corner near the Hotel Hermes and stepped, without benefit of either ouzo or retsina, into a sort of narcotic dream. A clutch of mothers crouched and chatted on a beach of shiny pebbles while their children splashed a few yards out in the sea. The water was dead calm, and the sea and sky were an identical luminescent gray-blue so that the children seemed to be floating in sea and air simultaneously. A hundred yards beyond, a fishing boat floated the same way. None of it seemed quite real. While the mothers clucked and chuckled, I scrambled around on the rocks trying to capture it on film.

In this I failed. But once I’d boarded the plane from Syros to Athens a day later, and then a plane home, the outcome of my larger mission in Greece seemed more encouraging. In the quest for fun in the lesser-known Cyclades, I am, frankly, a big success. I expect the honorary degrees will begin rolling in any day now.

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GUIDEBOOK

Island Hopping in Greece

Getting there: Delta, TWA, Swissair and British Airways all offer connecting flights several times a week from LAX to Athens. Through May 31, round-trip fares per person start at about $1,085; high-season fares start at about $1,225.

Budget travelers usually take a ferry from Piraeus, the main port of Athens, to the islands. If you’re aiming for the Cyclades, that’s a journey of four to 12 hours at a cost of roughly $12-$20 for the most-common “deck class� berth. The faster, more expensive way (which I chose) is a 35- to 60-minute Olympic Airways (800-223-1226) flight to a major island, such as Mykonos, Santorini (Thira) or Paros. Round-trip fares average $140-$160.

Getting around the islands: Ferries are frequent and affordable and usually offer three or four classes. Most travelers choose “tourist� class because it’s cheap--generally $20 or less for one-way passage between Cycladic islands. Journeys take from three to seven hours. Tickets are sold in waterfront shops on the islands and cannot be reserved in advance from the United States, but detailed recorded information about ferry service is available from the Sea Connections Center at (310) 544-7812. Hydrofoils are also an option among the more popular islands--they’re roughly twice as fast and twice as costly as ferries.

Where to stay: To get lowest rates, most backpack travelers wait to be accosted by entrepreneurs offering rooms when the ferry arrives. In addition, most islands have a central hotel reservation office within a block of the ferry landing. . Rooms under $20 nightly are common.

If you want the security of a reservation and a little more comfort, you may prefer the hotels below. Rates quoted are summer season, for a double room nightly.

On Andros: The 1931 Hotel Paradise (telephone 011-30-282-22-187, fax 011-30-282-22-340; about $95) has 41 rooms, adequate facilities, weak service, but not much competition. In the middle of town, Hotel Egli (tel. 011-0282-22-303, fax 011-30-282-22-159; about $50-$70) has 16 small rooms, seven of them with private baths, in an old building.

On Tinos: In town, the Hotel Tinion (tel. 011-30-283-22-261, fax 011-30-283-24-754; about $55) has 20 rooms in an old mansion near the waterfront. At a popular beach one mile from town, there’s the 200-room Tinos Beach Hotel & Bungalows (tel. 011-30-283-22-626, fax 011-30-283-23-153; about $65-$100).

On Naxos: Chateau Zevgoli (tel. 011-30-285-22-993, fax 011-30-285-25-200; $65-$100) is a cozy, well-run place with 10 rooms near the heart of labyrinthine Old Town.

On Syros: Villa Maria (tel. and fax 011-30-281-81-561; $70-$135) is a renovated 1873 mansion (renovated 1991) with bougainvillea outside, antiques inside, three apartments, eight rooms.

Where to eat: Waterfront tavernas are plentiful and affordable. A couple of notable spots: On Paros, Barbarossa (tel. 011-30-284-51-391) is a lively taverna on the Naoussa waterfront, dinner entrees up to $10. On Naxos, the Notos Cafe (tel. 011-30-285-23-780) is a trendy place in Old Town.

For more information: Greek National Tourist Organization, 611 W. 6th St., Suite 2198, Los Angeles 90017; tel. (213) 626-6696.