Santorini & Naxos

I still don't have the blogging procedure down, so please go to the bottom and scroll up to get the time line correctly. Marble is still a big industry here and has been since 700 B.C. I toured several of the old sculpting sites and unfinished works. It's impressive what someone with a little creativity and 10,000 slaves can do. This is one of the current quarries. It would be interesting to be able to take a tour of how they do this.

I am now in Naxos, two islands to the north of Santorini. I rode the boat up with a young couple from Sacramento that had spent a week here. I was going to rent a motorcycle, but it was overcast and cool so I picked up this Smart car. It's a hoot to drive with a really different transmission. I never did find the engine to see what it was, but it was spunky enough. Naxos is the largest island in the Agean group and it too seems to be quite tourist dependent. I met up with a frustrated Greek marble sculpter who had married an American, moved to her home in Oregon and then she left him. He said it had been four years since he had seen his 8 year old daughter. I thought his work was so so, but he is also a farmer with fruit trees.

This is Costos who ran the only coffee shop that was open at 7 in the morning. Everyone else waited til 10 or so to open up. Two boys, 4 and 8, and he works in the winters at a restaurant in the capital of Fira. My hotel was just down to the right.

The wildflowers on Santorinio and Naxos have been spectacular. Then toss in all of the flowers that the residents grow and its a colorful place. These red poppies were my favorite. This shot is from the excavated roman city above Perissa and it's black beach.I stayed 5 days here in Perissa on the southeast coast of Santorini. The price was still 25 Euro a night and it was just off of the beach. I walked a lot. There was an ancient roman town that had been excavated on top of the hill overlooking the sea. An hour hike to the top and 2 Euro to get in and it had lots of explanatory signs in English. I rented a bicycle one day and rode south on the beach road to the fishing marina. I had had dinner one evening with a man from Athens that also had a rental property on Santorini and then ran into him again for lunch overlooking the marina. He was riding an 1150 GS. The beach was great as well as the swimming pool and I continued to water paint. Three Rumanians ran the corner hamburger stand and they were quite informative about different parts of the EU.

This is mama of Mama's restaurant in Fira, a joyful and entertaining hostess. I had pancakes there and when she brought them to me, the top one was cracked open and showed raw dough. I brought to her attention and she exclaimed loudly, 'That bitch!" and returned it to the kitchen. I chuckled for days.

The Santorini sunsets are supposed to be the best, but without any clouds, you only get the marine layer and a hazy sunset. I spent a week here, but I'm not sure where the time went. This was the view from skallos, a rock point looking out over the caldera of an old volcano. I only spent one day and night in Fira, the capitol and largest city on the island.

Leaving Crete

Leaving Matala, I hiked Ibros Gorge as Samaria, the big hike, had not opened yet. It was a dry canyon, 8 Km long and quite green with some narrows 10 feet across and 60 feet high., almost a slot canyon at places. The taxi wanted 20 Euro to take me back up the 16 Km to the bike, but I caught a ride with a young couple from Amsterdam.

Crete was not clear to me at all. It's either on its way up or on its way down. Iraklio, where I spent last night is certainly no Portland, but it's not Trenton, NJ either. There was way too much traffic in the Center and around the port, grafiti on abandoned buildings and public buildings, but some really nice hotels and restaurants intermingled in it all.

The country is definitly a mom and pop place. No mega stores that I saw, no malls either. The restaurants always seemed like a family affair with one doing the cooking, the other out front, and usually a son or daughter working also. I saw a couple working together as tree pruners and another doing a small construction project. The hothouses seemed to have only one vehicle parked in the employee lot and I thought they must work as a couple also.

I turned in the motorcycle on Friday after falling off of it in Agios Nicoloas. Just hit the brakes a little too hard at an intersection and the front wheel slipped out. No damage except for smashing the LCD on the camera that I wear on my belt. The owner of the shop where I bought another camera recognized my MicroAge jacket as he used to work for Tandy/Radio Shack in Canada. We then discussed business a bit and he is concerned about the Greek outlook. They keep comparing today to the time before joining the EU saying how cheap things were then and how expensive they are now. I don't understand how just switching currency can do that. Men and women here smoke incessantly, second had smoke everywhere. I bought a croissant at a bakery the other morning and the store stunk of a customer's smoking cigarette rather than the desired bakery aroma.
I met and chatted with three young Somalians at the hotel in Iraklio. They were surprised I knew where Somalia was and we joked about the high jackers.
Sunday morning I took the fast ferry to Santorini. The regular ferry was much cheaper, 16 Euro vs 45, but it didn't arrive til 10:30 at night and I like to come into a new place in the daylight. Two hours later I was gazing up at this story book island. All of the travel brochures are true! The views are fabulous. Hotel rates are still at 25 Euro and I spent one night in the capital of Fira.

Matala

I am now in Iraklio, returning the rented bike to Ierapetra this evening. Then off to Santorini on Sunday. See if you can translate the greek sign using the greek alphabit. I knew my math education with all of the alphas and sigmas would come in handy someday.

Always a surprise around each corner. The sheep are frightened much more by the motorcycle than they are by a car.

The week before Easter, the whole town spruced up with cleaning windows, painting buildings, moving plants outside. You would think that Jesus was coming, but it was only the opening of tourist season. After midnight mass, the pagans came out and lit this humongous fire underneath the wicked Judas hanging from a scaffold. The men would toss in pints of gasoline that would throw up a big flare and the boys would toss in firecrackers. Then the band started up around 1 am and played til 5.

The village of Matala, where I stayed for a couple of days. If you zoom in the the rock walls on the far side of the beach, you can see the caves there. Originally Roman tombs, then used over the years by others after the Romans were evicted. German Army in WW II and the hippies in the 1960's.