Pythagóreio is a small fishing harbour on the south-east coast of Samos, a Greek island that lies so close to Turkey that the strait between them is barely two kilometres wide at its narrowest. The village sits on the site of the ancient capital, which in the sixth century BC was one of the richest cities of the Aegean under the tyrant Polycrates. He built a great mole to protect the harbour, a temple of Hera that was among the largest of the Greek world, and a water tunnel that astonished the ancient world. The island was also the birthplace of Pythagoras, the philosopher and mathematician, and a statue of him stands on the waterfront.
The tunnel of Eupalinos is the thing to see. About a kilometre long, it was dug through the base of a hill by two teams starting from opposite ends, to carry spring water to the city, and they met in the middle with only a small error in height. The engineer, Eupalinos of Megara, used geometry, and Herodotus counted the tunnel among the three greatest engineering works of the Greeks. Part of it is open to visitors, who bend and shuffle through a narrow passage lit by lamps. A few kilometres west, at the Heraion, a single standing column marks the sanctuary of Hera in a flat marshy plain, among fields of olives and vines.
The riding on Samos is a surprise to people who expect only beaches. The island is mountainous, with Mount Kerkis rising to about 1,430 metres in the west, and the roads climb through pine forest and past terraced vineyards, with views of the sea and Turkish mountains. The local sweet muscat wine is made in the villages on the northern slopes. The surface is generally good, but there are goats on the road, gravel in corners and the occasional blind bend, and in summer the heat is strong, with the meltemi wind blowing from the north.
Pythagóreio is small, so you will find cafes and tavernas on the harbour, but for full services and a choice of fuel stations the larger towns of Vathy and Karlovasi are the places. Fill up before heading into the mountains. Grilled fish by the harbour in the evening, with a carafe of local white, makes a good end.