As I write this we are being entertained in Aegina Town… its carnage!! Luckily we are snuggled into the liveaboard section opposite the main town out of the way but it does remind me that sailing and particularly parking is a great leveller and somewhat hazardous for those around the preferred spots… Shouting and yelling become the norm and boats whizz around randomly at high speeds while, blissfully unaware, a Greek fisherman, foot on the tiller, yapping on the phone and sipping his icy cool frappe serenely glides in and out of the sun ripened charterers as they cast their anchors optimistically into the water and zig zag back towards the quay. Ahhh it’s great to see the Saronic hasn’t changed a bit in 13 years.
But enough of this revelry and back to the blog…
Scummy old Samos
Pithagorian had been recommended to us by everyone we have met so it’s off to Samos we go. The sailing has been excellent and we enjoy another rocket trip across; so much so the Bavaria 50 we hunted down and left in our dust comes across to see just what make this pocket rocket is! Pithagorian turns out to be very busy but we squeeze on to the quay as we need water. We immediately wish we hadn’t. Hot and noisy doesn’t begin to cover it and we endure a night of sweaty heads and bellowing 70’s music until 4am. Early the next day we decide to walk to Evpalinos Tunnel (a feat of engineering; over 1 km of tunnel to connect to town with a spring dug some 2000 years ago by hand) and then stock up on food and push of the quay to enjoy the relative cool of the anchorage. We also catch up with Bruce and Leslie on board Midi. They have been across to watch NZ draw 1/1 with Slovakia… Go the boys!! Good to get some NZ gossip in and trade stories.
The outboard is spewing out heaps of water now but still refuses to be reliable… conversion to an anchor is threatened!
Yummy chewy Chios
For once the wind is in the wrong direction and very light so we end up having to motorsail most of the way to Chios. It’s a long day with a 5am start and a 7.30pm finish. Still we see a small pod of dolphins and we are heading in the right direction. Chios/Xios is known for its production of mastic gum. This rather bland (yes we tried it straight off the tree!) sap is bled from the trunks of the scrubby tree once a year and used in everything from chewing gum to aphrodisiacs to pharmaceuticals. It’s a strange crop but obviously a reasonably lucrative one even if it isn’t in so much demand now.
Emborios on the bottom of Xios turns out to be just delightful and once we have dived on a sunken mooring and attached a line we feel content to hire a car and visit the mastic villages of the south. What beautiful places… and hardly any other cars on the road. The first village Pyrgi is the classic black and white village. Black sand is mixed with the concrete then white washed before designs are scraped through the white to reveal the black underneath… very effective and the whole village has the air of ancientness. The next village, Mesta, is a fortified stone village of “Italian” descent. Again it is still, quiet and feels as old as the hills. From here we wended our way through the hills to Anavatos. This spectacular deserted village perches forlornly on a sheer cliff. It is a spooky place and with good reason the villagers here threw themselves off that very cliff rather than be taken by the Turks. I’m sure the Greek and Turkish relations have improved since then! Murray is thoroughly enjoying the drive including some offroading (lucky it’s a jimmy jeep!) so we put an end to that a make a run through the main town… We made it through alive (just) and retire to the boat for a breather and cool down. Then its Mesta village for tea (Orea atmosphera!!) and Murray finally collapses in a heap and sleeps like the dead!
A new day and no car just Shanks’s pony. We take a walk/bush crash around the back roads and olive tracks to the black pebble beach. A stunning spot but we did surprise a few nudist men who obviously didn’t know you could get to the beach that way… don’t think many people including locals know that either! Speaking of locals we have been much the source of entertainment to the dairy come bar at the dingy dock with our toing and froing without a motor. It becomes quite a game to see how many obstacles and boats they can put in our way as I direct Murray back and forward. They are lovely people here and Murray and I are not sure if we haven’t misjudged Greeks by the Athenian standard. Unfortunately we can’t stay here forever (the holding tanks nearly full for one thing!) so we slip our mooring and head up towards Oinnoussa. Again the weather gods are grumpy and we end up having to divert into the Xios “marina”. The marina is a classic example of an idea someone had but never got round to following through on. The quays and pontoons and even the odd lazy line are there but it all got a bit much and now it is full of tiny fishing boat and dead ferries slowly rusting into the sea. We manage to find a great spot well inside and dutifully ignoring the boat name inscribed on the tyre fenders we tie up alongside. It turns out to be a restful spot if a little dusty and the perfect place to to make a run up to Lesbos.
Lovely Lesvos
It blows up a brilliant southerly for our run up to Lesvos and we gallop along to the sounds of the ipod and our horrendous singing. (Enough to bring on a thunderstorm!) We decide to aim for Plomari rather than the main port and even though it seems a bit rock and roll we cheekily sneak on to the old visitors quay and pick up a lazy line. It turns out to be a neat little spot with friendly people and even the guy who’s mooring we have taken seems unperturbed and just rafts up alongside and wishes us a happy holiday… what the hell has happened to the Greeks since we were last here that they have been overcome with such thoughtfulness and positively friendliness?! Plomari has a faded charm reminiscent of Methena and we laugh ourselves silly over the old folks wandering the street. They appear to be involved in some sort of zimmer frame jousting competition. Two old men will start from opposite ends of the narrow cobbled street, sometime in the early morning we think, and then by about early evening they are within walking stick poking distance, they joust (or just nod if the exertions has been too much) and proceed on to fight another day!
Seeing as we have a safe spot we risk another car hire. A Chevrolet Maritz from a lovely young chap called Nikos… now just a word of caution for those of you thinking about trading up to one of these delightful small cars… the maritz does not a 4wd make but more about that later!
Armed with the ubiquitous hire car map we pootle about the countryside (dropping our laundry off on the way with a old greek man who spoke no English… hope it is there when we get back!) up to the main harbour (glad we didn’t go there!) around to Molivos (very pretty!) and through to the tourist mountain village of Agiassos and this is where the day gets slightly more exciting than expected…
To say the map was inadequate would be a slight understatement and we trundle up to the top of the hill to find a military post and a gravel road. Nothing mentioned on the map but bravely we trundle down the other side on the gravel (heartened by another hire car and a scooter passing us) and really feel like we are getting somewhere.
Then there is a turn and another turn and another turn but we are pretty sure we are heading in the right direction. The gravel becomes less gravel and more rock and steeper down and down and finally becomes dirt and a bit of a problem as we are now on a 35 degree dirt slope with no room to turn around a car with slick tyres and not enough grunt to back up!! Have to say it was a little nerve wracking there for a bit and the old Maritz took a bit of a pounding as we inched further down (down, up, back, down, up back) and around and eventually got it facing back up hill only to discover it wouldn’t go forward up the slope either!! Now we really are getting anxious (not to say the least we wouldn’t even know where to describe the car as being stuck!) and a change of drivers is required. With a longish run up and no regard for the car or Murray, who has to push, I floored it; studiously ignoring the steep drop off, and leave Murray floundering in a cloud of dust, pulverised rock, tyre rubber and exhaust, sucking in great lungfuls of Lesvos mountain air and waving me on, gasping “keep going” on his hands and knees. A lucky, lucky escape we agree and suitable hyped up we eventually find a village and the road back down and three new rules are born… don’t be a man; ask for directions, don’t allow Murray to navigate whilst driving and its OK to go back on yourself; occasionally! The laundry man unfortunately cops most of our excess adrenaline when we pull in collect our clothes as he hasn’t even dried it and still want 20 euro for the job… Malaaka!! Luckily no real damage is sustained by the car (at least nothing you can see from the top) and Nikos seems happy enough to have it back in one piece even if the brakes do squeal now from all the crap in them. We hit the local gyros shop and drink until we can really see the funny side of it all! Come back Jimmy Jeep all is forgiven!
Is that the track??
Definitely no cars today! We decide to take a walk instead and head off on a mission of approximately 15kms to another seaside town via the hills and back. Too bad Greeks don’t walk. No one seems to know where the walk starts from or even heard of it. Still we are undeterred and wander the olive tracks and donkey roads up and up from a couple of hours using topographical points to navigate by. The only thing you can say that’s good about tramping in Greece is that no one seems to care if you wander across their lawn, down the side of their house or appear unexpectedly in their garden. They are all happy to see you but just don’t have a clue where you should go or why you would want to! Eventually we are pointed in the right direction and follow a very poorly marked and random path up and down to the village and back. Only a 7 hour walk in the end but we met some lovely people along the way… particularly in the “uninhabited” villages mentioned in the track guide and feel justified in having another couple of “fix’s”(newly relaunched beer of old) in town!!
We love Lesbos and Plomari but sadly we have to make our way further towards the Ionian so we pootle out of the harbour and sail down/up the coast to Apothekes Bay through a hair raisingly narrow channel with invisible stone beacons and a mysteriously missing island! It’s great to be back in the bays and it is all very peaceful but we need to make one more town hop before heading for Skiros. Sigri turns out to be the only place we have been to where the town is shrinking. The “Australian Bar” is full of students studying the impact of tourism and the conversion to the EU on the place. I bet there are some interesting conclusions being drawn from that as they have been coming here for 15 years. Of note however is the huge new petrified forest museum… very well done but there were all of 10 of us in it!
We wander back to the bar and watch NZ hold off Paraguay… Go the All Whites… only team unbeaten in the world cup!
The Skiros’s the limit!
The day dawns early and the wind is getting up. The old steel boat perched high and dry on the reef at the entrance to the bay is getting a steady wash when we leave as the sun comes up. It’s pretty standard weather for around here at the moment with unstable weather conditions and thunderstorm forming and dissipating in rapid order. Last night we watched as thunderheads loomed ominously and attempted to spawn waterspouts. We start out with full sail but soon end up with two reefs and a scrap of foresail, racing along between thunderheads. Loads of shipping about but we still rocket along and surfing the bigger waves and enjoying every minute of it. We end up completing the 70plus mile run in 11 hours and it has been an exhilarating 2 hours on 2 off steering all the way across… top speed 8.77knts… a real rush!
Finally we pull into the quiet of an anchorage on the bottom of Skiros and catch some kip.
Skiros looks to have some great scenery and the south is very undeveloped and wild ponies are said to wander the craggy peaks. Our bay turns out to be popular with the nudists however and we are only treated to a display of strutting blokes and slightly more modest girls… most popular pose appears to be hands on hips, surveying the anchorage like Lord Nelson on the bridge… after cleaning out the outboards fuel system (finally cracked the problem) we chose to drift on down to Liniaria…
The town quay looks full so we anchor off and zip ashore in our newly reliable scooty puff junior. The quay is, as usual, a mish mosh of fishing boats and fizz boats. Thinking we might make more sense of it all if we ask about we head up to the port police. Well, you would have thought we had been asking if there is mooring space on the moon! “What, you want to go on the quay?” “Yes, are there any problems anchoring and dropping back on to it?” “Uhhh? You want to go on the quay? Hey, Costa did you know we have a harbour??!” Finally we all traipse down to the harbour (“Shit Costa there is a harbour down here, why didn’t anyone tell us?!) and discover the Port Police still don’t know anything but luckily the Coastguard chimes in with a useful tip as he waves vaguely at the seafloor… “Maybe you use a tripping line as it is anarchy down there!” Great stuff only the Greeks would have a harbour full of anarchy! We chose to stay where we are and come back in the morning and try our luck. After dropping our hook and trip line we catch to bus up to Skiros town… hugely disappointing… not only is it Sunday but the Greeks are grumpy and unhelpful here… possibly the Athenian influence… we cut our loses and decide to walk back to the boat. Turns out to be a lovely 10km walk and we get to play with a “wild” pony on the way! Having had enough of Skiros’s “hospitality” we recover our anchor (yay no problems) and head off to a quiet and pretty bay around the corner… So long Skiros… don’t think we will be back!
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