Yassis
Yasonas is Jason in greece
Sorry signore
Parakalo - your welcome also means please
Goodnight kalinitha
Kalemera good morning
Fay it too food
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| Airport Shuttle with fun as Nova meets a ton new people |
This place was totally different from any other place I’ve been to. From a geographical point of view, it is basically a crest of a volcano where parts of the crest are underwater and the other parts above. This means the land is super steep, near cliff (much of it is), 980 feet tall. The major cities are built on top of the crest, which is narrow in width at its peak elevation. This means that you have a panoramic view, many times 300 degrees, almost all around you. Basically its like a city on top of a very steep knife-like mountain surrounded by Sea. The food is amazing. The views majestic. The shopping the best we have seen so far on this years trip.
One challenge: moving the stroller anywhere. It’s basically tons of stairs, cobblestone, etc, so the stroller becomes pretty much not worth it to manage in this type of landscape. With that in mind, we took off on foot the first morning, ditching the stroller and putting Nova into the baby backpack carrier. Dining right on the cliff-face, we had an awesome breakfast at Volcan. Some of the types of food we had never had before including some kind of sandwich-open-face-calzone that consisted of mostly amazing cheese & bread. We took turns doing a meditation further down the cliff face, and then moved on from the restaurant to an epic walk through town, along the path to the city of Ola.
Along the way, we kept getting glances of Skaros Rock, a jutting plateau out past the cliff face that rises like the anvil of a hammer facing the sky. Apparently there is a path to get there, and it had good reviews on TripAdvisor, from what I remembered skimming through. Although not the plan originally, we had already come that far and so we figured that we should give it a go. Taking a couple wrong paths attempting to find the route to take down to it, we finally decided to stop at a restaurant on the cliff face and ask how to get there. The restaurant owner, a younger gentleman, told us the way, yet immediately after said to us “but absolutely not”. We both looked at him - “What?” He said “Not in her condition and not with those shoes, its 589 steps. There’s no way.” Candace was wearing some new “pretty” sandals we had bought yesterday, and of course is 6 months pregnant. And we had Nova. Plus it was hot. We walked out of the restaurant “so what do you want to do?”. We went back and forth about it, and Candace was indifferent/leaning towards no. I knew what we were capable of though and swayed the vote to give it a shot! I had positioned it so that I would carry everything: the backpack on my back, with all of our stuff, and then Nova in the front, harnessed in the Baby Carrier. We slammed a bunch of water, I bought more and loaded it into the backpack and we began the descent. And then the ascent…
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| Skaros Rock above Nova's hand |
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| Skaros Rock in the middle-left
As we passed along by people, an interesting recurring conversation continued to take place. They would stop us and tell us two things - One is that they turned back from getting to the top of the plateau at the point where it got too “hard”, blaming their sandals or some other thing, saying that it got crazy, and telling us that it’s ok to not go to the top. Two, is that if you follow a path down from near the rock face to get to the plateau then you will reach a church built into the side of the cliff. Soon, we had reached the place they spoke of where people would turn back. There was a Chinese couple there turning around to go back when we arrived. For someone who has never rock climbed before, I understood now what was freaking people out. It was a literal wall of stone - no ladder, just a vertical rock face, about 15 feet high to reach the plateau top. Looking at the rock face and surveying the grips, it was like a 5.6, on the scale of rock climbing. Basically the easiest of easy. But until someone has ridden that bike, until they know how, it is scary. Well, this was a bike that pretty much anyone could get on and ride right away, no falling. Like training wheels. They just needed a bit of confidence. So I ascended with Nova on the front and the backpack on the back. Very carefully and very easily, no risk. The Chinese guy was flabbergasted. Candace, who has climbed 5.9 routes, was soon on top, and we looked down and gave the Chinese guy a pep talk and a couple of pointers and he was soon up top with us, overcoming his fear! We all walked the plateau, taking pictures, checking out caves, and soon were back down, giving encouragement to another couple who had just arrived and were intimidated by “The wall”. We scoped out the church down along the cliff-face, which was semi-interesting, and then headed back to the top via a shortcut path I had pieced together after I had eyed it on the earlier descent, figuring it lead from the Church. It DID connect back with our main route and we were soon up top, Candace commenting how glad she was that we made the trip!! =)
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| Our new friend who overcame his challenge |
Time to catch the World Cup game!! It took us a while but we found a cool spot to watch it Cafe Di Vinci. It’s the only place to catch a sports game in town, plus they have great food and a view not often seen (the other side of the island from the volcanic side). It was fun hanging out with some people from Mexico, cheering on their team, while Nova played with the waitstaff. Soon it was sunset time from the rooftop of our hotel and another episode of Vikings from the bed as Nova crashed out.
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Time to catch the World Cup game!! It took us a while but we found a cool spot to watch it Cafe Di Vinci. It’s the only place to catch a sports game in town, plus they have great food and a view not often seen (the other side of the island from the volcanic side). It was fun hanging out with some people from Mexico, cheering on their team, while Nova played with the waitstaff. Soon it was sunset time from the rooftop of our hotel and another episode of Vikings from the bed as Nova crashed out.
Another day in Santorini: off on a Freediving adventure. Leaving Nova and Candace to have fun for themselves for the day, I headed out for a early breakfast at this awesome spot called Galini. Manthos picked me up, an ex-Greek Seal special ops dude, who has ran a dive shop for 20 years in Santorini, and we were soon at the shop while the scuba-divers geared up. Being scuba-certified, and having done many dives in the past, I have nothing against Scuba, and it truly has it’s time and place, but I’m more of a free diver now and so I just smiled as they asked if I was just “snorkeling”. “Yep” I replied, as I tried on a wetsuit and some fins.
We hopped on “the boat”, which I could call a “dinghy”: a larger inflatable raft with a medium horsepower outboard engine on the back. Used them all the time growing up in the Great Lakes. Due to the winds, which were crazy (Candace said she was almost blown over once while I was out freediving), we were restricted in where we could go to do our dive. We headed to this cliff-face with a cave and a pretty sheer drop underwater. Our guide gave his usual speech, and off we were to explore. I checked out the cliff face underwater, explored the cave, and considered how to climb up the cliff to jump off (rocks far too sharp without vibrams or gloves or both so no go at this spot). It was good to be in the water. The cliff face extended about 12 meters underwater, before it hit bottom and then began a continued descent at a more moderate rate. The cave was nothing substantial to talk about, it only extended underwater about 5 meters into the cliff. Soon the scuba divers were all geared up and in the water heading down and around the cliff. I followed them around, diving into their bubbles as they floated to the top. Its fun to swat them around, capture them, play with them as the bubbles shoot in big circular mushroom-like shapes to the surface. After about 10 minutes as the divers were getting deeper and deeper I decided to do a deep dive to say high. Lowering my heart rate with a breathing technique, I continued to relax as I looked down and could barely see the divers anymore. I’d say visibility about 60 feet. After about a minute, I took a deep breath and started my descent to the bottom. Upon arrival I swam in front of them, twisted around and gave them a wave. They gave a kind of start, then waved back confused and I ascended back to the surface, like a whale, for more air.
The second dive site was more shallow, with a bunch of rock formations, some of them even jutting out of the water like boulders laying on one another. I decided to remove my wetsuit and fins for this one and just go with the mask+snorkel. The water temperature wasn’t really too bad and I would be alright for about 40 minutes. Plus, there is something about just being in the water and connecting. With no wetsuit, it is easier to sink down. With no fins, it makes for a more challenging/different style. After my Ironman the year before, my swim style on the surface has changed and I have far more confidence, technique, endurance, and appropriate muscle for continued mobility. Underwater none of that matters, but combine them both and it makes for a great time in the water messing around. I eventually found myself finding a decent boulder, without sea-urchins combing all over it, to climb out of the water on. Hopping on a couple of boulders I found the darkest one and lay down on it, feeling the heat of the rock fusing my back and body with warmth. After a meditation for a few minutes, I hopped back in the water and was the last one on the boat, ready to head back.
After all was said and done, Manthos was driving me back home and we got to chatting as I told him about the swim I was considering…. There is a bay which I wanted to go along for an estimated 5 kilometers to get from the city of Firostefani to the city of Oia. I tried to recruit him along, but he mentioned that the swim was no good right now, being that the waves, wind, and conditions in the bay would be unmanageable. Not to mention that its quite impossible to enter the water where I want to, due to the cliffs (which I had been noticing), so it would have to be done south more at the port or just use a boat. He talked about his 12 mile, island to island swim that he did elsewhere in the Mediterranean in around 7 hours and I decided it probably smart to heed the advice of this guy, and canned the idea of this particular “bay swim” for this trip.
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| WIND!!! |
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| Another Church in the cliff-side. Found after a wrong-turn on one of my runs and ended up dead-ending here. |
The rest of the day was a shopping and exploration day as we went the opposite direction from Skaros Rock of the day before and found ourselves winding through the curvy streets from place to place. Candace got some “royalty” earrings as I’ll call them, a scarf, and I got a sweater, tee-shirt, and a custom hat where they imprinted my name in greek on the side. Dinner at Mylos was amazing. I’ve had grilled octopus about a dozen times before and have only been satisfied twice (attempting to find the same thing I first had in Cinque Terre, Italy). This time was excellent. They said that the secret was to first boil it first with water and wine before THEN grilling it…
The morning found us on a ferry to Crete in some pretty hairy seas. I found myself on the toilet after I had secured Candace in an upgraded, air-conditioned section of the boat. Growing up on the water, I found this surprising, but at the same time, my body wasn’t used to these types of swells: it just needs more experience with the motion in order to adjust. Nova slept all the way. Our Taxi to the Village Heights Golf resort dropped us off around 10pm and we just caught dinner before the kitchen closed. We are staying here in Crete through our timeshare exchange, so it’s a 7-day thing and what we like to call our vacation from our vacation. A less “mobile” type of day happens on these and its more of a chill and relax type of thing so we could get some good quality time before our trip to Jerusalem. Of course, Crete is a well-known Freediving spot, is the 4th largest island in the Mediterranean and is home to the largest freshwater lake of any of the islands, among other things. So we will see about all of that!!
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| One of the best in the world |
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