Greece Trip - Day 14

9 July, 2009 – Naxos

We had an early start this morning to go on our hike. It was only Theresa (leader), Donnal, Linda and I that ended up doing the hike. We set of at 7:30 in a taxi to the village of Apiranthos in the centre of the island to start our hike. The taxi driver was such a lovely fellow, his family have always lived on Naxos and they have farm land with crops on it; and he told us the history of the island, how the island has changed from people trading their produce with others just to live and how now it all for money. He also told us how tourism has changed the island, and he was so positive – if there was a negative to the story he would always end with the positives or a hope of better times. We bid him farewell at the village and sat down to check the map – this is the first time that Theresa has done this trip and it is only the 3rd time overall for Intrepid, so we up for an adventure! While we were reading the instructions and looking at the map, an older gentleman rode past on his donkey – it was very sweet to see some of the old ways still in practice. Our taxi driver was telling us that when the village was first built, there were no roads to get in and out of the village so the builders had to use donkeys to carry all the building materials up the hill into the village. Obviously, some locals still like to use this mode of transport.

We set off climbing through the streets of the village until we reached a road that lead out of the village and towards our mountain. Once we had climbed about ¼ of the way up the mountain we thought we should take a photo of us trekkers with the mountain behind us. We were nearly up to the summit when our hike instructions were not too good and we took a straight, when we should have taken a left. We backtracked a bit and then took the other road and then found the rocky path that lead straight up the rock cliff to the church at the summit. The path up there was rock and gravel, and then steps were built for the last climb up the side of the rock face. We finally made it to the summit and to the church. The view out over the Apiranthos village was breathtaking – the islands and sea looked surreal as they were covered in a haze and it looked like the sea was covered in clouds and the islands were mountain poking up through the clouds. We looked down over the other side of the mountain to the village that we were going to next – at least the rest of the journey is mainly downhill. We had to go back down the path we came up and continued along the pathway until we found the pointer to lead us along the track down towards the village of Moni.

We zig-zagged along the narrow, rocky goat track down the other side of the mountain and could hear the clanging of bells as a herd of sheep trekked up through the valley. Once we got closer to the bottom of the mountain, the terrain changed and flattened out a bit. We looked back up to where we had just walked and were amazed that there was even a track there – it just looked like a rocky cliff. This track was actually a little trickier, the rocks and dirt moved at times when we were climbing down and it was easy to lose your footing – you wouldn’t fall a long way, but you could land on some very spiky bushes. There were hundreds of goats living in this area of the mountain, and we could hear them scurry as we approached. The younger ones were quite curious, as they would scurry away but then come back and have a look at us – they were probably thinking something like: “what are those fools doing in this weather!” It was really hot and we were all getting quite tired. We each bought 1.5 litres of water each and we were thankful that we did, we were sweating out more than we could put in. There was very little shade on the hike and when we did find some, we had a pit stop and cooled down for a bit before moving on. We could see the village but couldn’t find the right way to it. We stopped seeing our hike markers and realised that we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere along the track.

We were now hiking in full sun, through low scrub and had to avoid the spiky little bushes, so slowed down quite a bit. The properties surrounding the village were all fenced off and we had to climb up a steep dirt hill to get to a part of a fence that was open and had a path way beyond it. We had finally made it to the village. The path took us between farm land and past cherry trees with little cherries hanging from its branches; plum trees, vegetables patches with artichokes ready to pick and the entire pathway was lined with fennel. When we reached some houses there was a water pipe pouring cold fresh water into a trough and we thought we had just gone to heaven. The farmer was there and we asked him if we could have some of his water – Linda put her whole head under the running water and we all splashed ourselves with the water to cool down. We told the farmer where we had just hiked from and he just grinned at us and was probably thinking the same thing as the goats.

We came across a little store in the village and got cold drinks and ice blocks and enjoy a seat in the shade. It was now midday and later we found out that the temperature was about 38 degrees and extremely humid – we could feel it for sure. The lady at the shop was very friendly and came and had a chat with us while we sat outside, she gave us some plums and told us where we could go to get a taxi called for us. We said goodbye and then found the cafe she had told us about and the ladies there rang a taxi for us. Our timing wasn’t great though, the ferry had just got to the port so the taxis were all there, so would have to wait. We didn’t mind. We went and sat in the terrace that was covered in grape vines and had another cold drink. It was too hot to walk to the next village - Halkia; it would be another 1.5 hours (according to the notes) in the full sun and it was just way to hot.

The taxi eventually came, and we got him to drive us to Halkia and to wait while we visited the Citron distillery. We bumped into Patrick, Heather, Steve and Jo in the village too – they having lunch and had just been to the distillery also. We jumped back into the cab and went back to our hotel in Naxos town. Sheeba had my room key, as I had left before her and she was off on a bus tour that wouldn’t be back until late in the afternoon, so I had to wait while the hotel arranged to get a spare key for me. I wished I had worn my swimmers on the hike so I could just strip off and jump straight into the pool. Instead I had settled with dangling my hot, swollen feet in the pool water until I get to my room and get changed. We spent the rest of the day at the pool, we had a bit of a snooze on the sun lounges – Linda said that Theresa, Donnal and I were all a sleep on our lounges so she took a photo of us – we were probably snoring too!!

By dinner time we were starving – Donnal and I had a toasted sandwich at the pool when we got back from our hike, but we were still famished by dinner time. We went to a restaurant that was close by and was recommended by the brothers at the hotel – Oasis. The waitress was so friendly and helpful and the food was great. I had a Chicken Marcello – not very greek, but I was hungry and that sounded good, and it was delicious and a fruit salad and honey for dessert.

Note: the bottom photo was taken from just outside the village on Moni, and is looking back up to where we hiked down - the rock mount at the top second from the right has a small dot on top of it - that is the church at the summit. The photo above it is a zoom in from that same spot to the church.