Yes, I know it's been a while since we've been able to update our blogs. As you can see from the above photo, I was busy making new friends in the Greek Isles. :-) Email was sporadic, laborious, and in some places ridiculously expensive in East Africa (surprise, surprise), and the few times we've been online, we were usually scrambling to research our next destination or responding/writing emails to various folks. Hopefully you haven't all given up on me! So without further ado, I'll attempt to get caught up today. (We're holed up in Manali, India, on a cloudy but lovely cool day in the mountains.)
After too short a time in Turkey (we both agree it's a country we'd revisit in a heartbeat), we forged our way to the Greek Islands via an early morning ferry from Turkey's port city of Kusadasi to lovely little Samos. As our little boat pulled into the glistening harbor, I knew we'd made the right decision to steal 10 days from Africa and donate it to further explorations in Greece. We found a decent enough guesthouse for the low price of 26 euro run by a nice local man named Stelios. We caught a town bus for a 20-minute ride to the laid-back seaside colony of Kokkari, where we bought a cheap picnic lunch and planted ourselves on the warm stone beach. Thirty minutes later we were taking our first of many dips in the sparkling cool waters of the Aegean. This felt like paradise...and it really was. I floated all afternoon in the lovely sea and frolicked with a passing duck. This simple life couldn't have been any tastier.We were blown away by the islands, and our grand plans to visit 4-5 of them were quickly put aside when we fell in love with one little gem. After a five-hour ferry the next morning from Samos to Mykonos--where we ate a quick bite and were appalled by the throngs of tacky European tourists--we changed ferries and headed south for Naxos. It was there that our love affair with all things Greek began.
We've always told ourselves that the beauty of the way in which we're doing this trip is that--despite the challenges we encounter at times when winging it--we can stay longer or shorter in places that either really appeal to us or that don't strike our fancy. We've experienced both situations. With Naxos, we knew pretty quickly we'd stumbled upon a great find.
We soon befriended the strong and respected Despina, who runs a little tourist office near the port. In ten minutes she'd found us one of the best hotels of our journey, located just five minutes' walk from an awesome beach, and run by a lovely Greek man, his very detail-oriented (think clean and orderly) Swedish wife, and their mixed-blood daughter. We made ourselves at home, and what started out as a few nights in Naxos turned into a week of beach-time bliss.Since I'm behind in my posts anyway, I'll do my best to be succinct here. We gorged on great Greek food, drank a ton of really good red wine, made new friends all over town, and spent a lot of time lazing on the warm beaches and swimming in the sea. Despite the euro still hammering the dollar, we got by pretty modestly here. Over the course of the week, we explored the island by bicycle, dune buggy (what a riot!), and car, barely covering half of what Naxos has to offer. Highlights included a seaside lunch and swim at a secluded cove on a deserted beach in northern Apollonas; a visit to a 4th-century hillside monastery; and an afternoon of skinny dipping on another mostly deserted beach in the south.
It was a tearful goodbye to our Naxian friends, but you can't really complain when sublime Santorini is your next stop. We were both blown away (pun intended) by these "cities" nestled atop an impressive volcanic caldera rim. Our insanely large Blue Star Ferry cruised into the hole of the crater (you really have to see it to believe it) alongside gigantic cruise ships and modest sailboats. Our guesthouse (compliments again of Despina) wasn't exactly great, but it was clean, had a decent pool, and was only about a 20-minute walk to the main town of Fira.We befriended a few local dogs when I bought one of them a much-needed chicken souvlaki and then wandered around Fira's narrow lanes with our new four-legged guides as sunset approached--an impressive sight. The next day we took a local bus a half-hour to the black-sand beach of Kamari, where we floated in the deepest water I've ever been in so close to shore and so clear. It was just another tough day in the Greek Islands.
Later that afternoon we embarked on a three-hour rigorous hike along the caldera's rim from Fira to the northernmost town of Oia, arriving in time for a tasty pasta dinner and an awesome sunset. What an amazing journey! The pictures speak a thousand words, as you can see above.
The city didn't do much for us: Most of the Parthenon was under scaffolding, the skies were grey, and (dare I say this?) the sights not as impressive as we'd expected. But we did enjoy a great dinner with our close SF friends Cathy and Hashem, whose April wedding we'd just missed due to our March 20 departure. What a great coincidence that they were starting their honeymoon in Greece and we were there later in June due to our having postponed our departure to Africa. We had ouzo shots, drank a lot of wine, and feasted well that night in Plaka.
That's Greece, my friends, in a nutshell. Despite our not indulging in the more historic side of things, we thoroughly did justice to immersing ourselves in the culture and beach scenes. I really miss Mama's pasticcio, friendly Mike from Mike's Bikes, Waffle House ice cream, the gang at Hotel Argo, and most of all, the Aegean. Who ever knew you could fall in love with a sea?
