The Canadian Mancunian: The Search for Sea Urchins

It's quite childish, but I call sea urchins 'pokers' and I hate them. My ageing eyeballs are ever vigilant for those pokey little bastards and I refuse to step on one. In the Adriatic and other parts of the Med the devil's spines are everywhere, but I had yet to see one in Greece by the time we had left Santorini. I was quite ecstatic about this, however I truly believed they were lurking under the next rock shelf, just waiting to embed their quills in my sweet, tender feet. Well, I did find them on the rest of the islands and am happy to pass on to you the final score was: Colin 1, Pokers 0.

After Santorini we left the cruise ship/tourist beat and hit the smaller less tourist(y) islands of the little cyclades. We wanted to add a little spice too, so we didn't book any hotels and decided just to rock up on the ferries and take what we could get. Adventure! Yahoooo!

This story actually reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live sketch--It was one of those commercial spoofs that happened right after the opening monologues. It was a take on the Guess jeans adds of the early 90s, but it was for Bad Idea Jeans. I tried explaining Bad Idea Jeans to my softball team this summer, but it just didn't translate. I've tried looking for in on the internet too, but to no avail. So for those of you who remember it, Heather and I were both wearing Bad Idea Jeans when we decided not to book accommodations in advance when travelling the islands in the high season.

Oh well. It was still great, it just might have made for a few stressful afternoons.

The ferries themselves were fun. I like to call them cruises, so our cruises were fun. When we travelled around the lesser cyclades we were on a ferry/cruise ship called the Express Skopelites. The Greeks run their ferries a little bit more haphazardly than the safety conscious Canadians. Actually, I shouldn't say safety conscious, as the Greeks employ an anarchistic method of loading and unloading the ferries/cruises. This method is usually orchestrated by one man's heavily cigarette and ouzo influenced voice yelling instructions from a pulpit. He kind of sounds like a Greek version of Wolfman Jack (but with less cadence and more fear of capsizing).

Anyway, here is some unloading and loading. The second one isn't the Express Skopelitis, but the big ferry we took back to Athens. Strangely, they employed the same strategy of mass chaos when loading.

Our first stop was Naxos. The books said it was overrun with tourists and too busy. In reality, it was very Greek and filled with Greek tourists budging in line to get ice creams. I guess when the books meant touristy they actually just meant 'services'. We ate at a hybrid Thai/Indian place and loved it. The Greek food was great, but having those tastes sure made us homesick (for Vancouver and Manchester). We had a nice hotel with a great view for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, when looking for our hotel Heather tripped on the cobblestone streets and cracked up her big toe, which limited our hiking for the next week. Bummer. Anyway, here are some pics, but I'll have a lot more from when we returned through Naxos on our way home.

From Naxos we hopped on the Express Skopelitis---WAIT--Have I mentioned anything about Greeek service? I don't think so. I can do it quite quickly. There isn't any. We waited 35 minutes to buy a ferry ticket in Naxos. Time to buy the ticket? 2 minutes. We had about 7 Greeks budge in front of us. They most definitely do not know how to queue.
Well, off to Iraklia. We landed and wow--nice place.

Too nice. No hotels, hostels, homestays, or rooms on the island for the night. Adventure!? Boooooooooo. We ended up talking to a nice hotel owner who took us for a quick tour around the island to see if anyone had availability in his convertible---I love convertibles! We ended up deciding to go to the next island, Schinousa, and he hooked it up so that we would get picked up by his 'friend' at the ferry and taken to his hotel. We were very grateful and very happy that it all worked out, but let's just say it wasn't the nicest place we have ever stayed in our lives. We broke contract with them the next day and found a fantastic hotel for super cheap down the road and our Schinousa fun really took off.

Schinousa was our favorite of all the Greek islands. It was really quiet and laid back, and by quiet and laid back I mean llllllllaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiddddddd back. It was exactly what we wanted. The island is about 19 sq km'ish and it is mostly farmland for goats. Oh and beaches. Lots and lots of beaches.

We swam, snacked, read, and drank beers for 5 days. It could have been five years and we wouldn't have noticed. There was a great restaurant called Deli, which we frequented too many nights in a row (and breakfast once too--we are dorks). It was just so good. We mostly walked around and just explored looking for beaches for ourselves. One day we rented a quad. It made it quite a bit easier!

We then headed to Koufonisia. This time we ended up with a really nice place from a woman at the ferry! The only problem was it smelled heavily like sewer and had lumpy beds and paper thin pillows. Adventure! We got out of there the next day. Koufonisia was nice, but not as good as Schinousa. It was funny how we just weren't used to the hustle and bustle of Koufonisia---It had more than a 100 people.

We took a water taxi to a beach described as Caribbean-like. Unless they just meant windy, it wasn't very Caribbean like. We decided to walk back to town from this beach and found one of my favorite places in the islands! It's called the pisina--or swimming pool. I jumped into it many, many times.

It was so wicked. It was about 20 feet deep of crystal-clear water filled with fish and no pokers! The surrounding ocean was such a soothing color and it was so warm. A nice afternoon of jumping.

There was even a sea cave right beside it and we went spelunking!

This was a large cobbled beach just outside of town. I like the pebble beaches because you don't get so sandy, but man does your ass get sore.

On the last day we took a water taxi to Kato Koufonisia. It's a basically deserted island only 20 minutes away that has a giant campsite and a pub on it. It also has beaches. Lots of beaches.

From Koufonisia we went back to Iraklia and got to stay at the hotel of the guy who helped us out. We ended up with a swanky room with a fantastic view.

One thing Iraklia had more of than the other islands was cats! Somewhat healthy looking ones too. I tried to catch them all. They didn't want to be caught.

I don't know about most of you, but whenever we travel and read the travel books it always highlights festivals or events that seem to happen nowhere near the time we are there. Well, we lucked out on Iraklia as we were there on the one day of the year where there is something happening. There is this giant cave on the island that all of the islanders go to and light candles for some Saint (John the Baptist?) and hang out and drink wine and eat snacks all day long. It was supposed to be just an average hike to get to it.
It wasn't.

The cave, although cool, was super humid inside so all of my pictures fogged up. It was huge! By far the best formed stalactites and stalagmites I have ever seen. It was really neat.

On the hike back we decided to take a detour to a different beach and take a water taxi home. It might not have been the best idea...after losing our trail, rummaging through an abandoned village, and bushwacking down a mountain we made it to the water taxi with a whopping 10 minutes to spare! I'll tell you, though, it was one of the best swims I've had when we arrived. We had just sweat uncontrollably for five hours and then got to jump in the ocean.

These are some Iraklia sunsets.

Back to Naxos. We took the early ferry because I wanted to go to the Temple of Apollo. It was really cool. One of the most significant archaeological sites in the cyclades. The rest of the day we just wandered the streets. This is what we saw. Equally cool.

We had another night in Athens before we went home, but Naxos was mentally the end of our month in Greece.
There are not too many negative things I could say about Greece, even if I tried really hard. Oh wait--Pokers! I hate those bastards.