On our first day to stave off jet lag thought to take a challenge and walk up to the monastery and church St Antonios at the top of the extinct volcano behind Piso Livadi. Didn’t look that big for us experienced Camino walkers. Headed to town for an explore and a coffee.
Refreshed with a dose of good coffee and second breakfast decided to check out the town and found an empty beach that’s not really overlooked by houses and it had really warmed up. Soooo, we found a cliff to shelter under, stripped off and plunged into the crisp Mediterranean. Beautiful clear ocean with no sharks, stingers, blue bottles or waves. Perfect. I swam out deep enjoying the lack of current or rips. Then along the cliff top came a scooter but it passed without even noticing two pale middle aged naked swimmers. Just starting to get cold and a car pulled up and a guy in a uniform got out. The back of his shirt said Security. OMG I thought someone has complained. He proceeds to fiddle around in the car, meanwhile we both have the giggles and getting colder. Eventually he makes his way down to the beach carrying a wetsuit, spear gun, fins, float and other equipment. Strips off to his shorts and with painful slowness gears up. We are stuck in the water getting numb with cold and pretending to enjoy ourselves waiting for him to enter the water. Finally with his head under the water we scuttled out of the sea to our shelter to dry off. We’d neglected to pack towels either. So had wait till the sun half dried us so our clothes weren’t soaked too.
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Planning and research, the lack of it, finds us in an idyllic village on Paros over Greek Orthodox Easter weekend. As we walked, observed a lot of preparations in restaurants and houses and thought it was for the summer season. We asked our waiter at dinner last night and he told us that they are for Easter. Immediately i had some concerns because we hadn’t booked our ferry to Athens on Monday!! Our journey to Greece was long and we managed to bookend each leg with a beer. Etihad isn’t the best airline I’ve flown and the seat cushions became really uncomfortable after a few hours fourteen hour flight forced us to get up and walk around. During our layover in Athens Airport, Manny craving something fresh bought a Greek Salad, after 24 hours of airline stodge was wonderful to taste real Greek feta and olives. With time to fill wait for the plane to Paros we found an exhibition of the artefacts found during the construction of the airport. Away from the tourist traps is what we sought, Piso Livadi and Logaras beach are small, quiet and peaceful on the opposite side of the island to Parikira the port and main entry to Paros. Our accommodation has seen better days but it’s only a few steps down to a lovely beach.
Tired, probably not the best start time to write my first blog post but will loose internet access soon, so it’s happening now. We had a frantic day. Drove back from Bluesfest, cleaned the van, did loads of washing, dealt with last minute panics. Such as Manny’s mother getting a $300 Telstra invoice for disconnecting the internet she hasn’t got. Fun, fun. Wouldn’t be the same without some drama. Train selfie ~ looking forward to a refreshing drink when we get to the airport.
I'm reacquainting myself with blogging before departure on our next adventure. Did walking the Camino change our lives .... well, not really but it was a fantastic experience and I'd recommend it to everyone - we had a fabulous time. We are gearing up for our next trip, which is completely unplanned, unlike our Camino in 2016. The plan so far is..... straight after Easter we are heading to Greece for a week and then to London to attend the 40 year reunion of student nurses I started training with in 1979. After that there are a few ideas of which include walking Hadrian's Wall and catching up with friends and family.
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AuthorMy interests are photography and family history research. And I like to cycle and travel. We are walking the Archives
May 2019
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