The Adventures of Mactowne

Posting from Cairo now... it's been an adventurous time getting here, being here, and planning to move on. But back to Greece for the moment. Let's see, I left off arriving in Amorgos. Okay, so according to Lonely Planet Amorgos is considered by some to be the "jewel in the Cycladic crown." (Cycladic refers to the Cyclades, the island group we were visiting). I'm not sure who wrote that, but it was probably someone who enjoyed a lot of hospitality from people that wanted to be included in LP. We landed at the first of two ports, got off the boat, and found everything pretty much full as far as lodging. Not just full, but we were flatly ignored and denied by more of the lovely hostile Greek people that are so easily bothered when you ask them to briefly operate their businesses in the middle of the day. The only bite we had was from a big family that was eating a meal on the patio outside what we think was a guest house. Ian went there and I went elsewhere, but he told me they had a room available. So, we looked around furthyer, came back, and as Grandma was ready to take us in, her daughter (?), who was much less welcoming, told us to hit the road and that someone else had taken the room. In the last 5 minutes. Without them moving. Right... so on we went. We eventually sat down at a cafe right on a tiny beach and pondered sleeping in someone's boat, but instead we caught a bus (after an appropriate amount of struggling, waiting, and interacting with rude Greek bus drivers) to the other port town (Aegiali) and showed up around 2pm. I think it was 2pm - whatever it was, it was during the time that Greece takes a four hour siesta. So we settled in at another cafe to wait for things to open. We got some drinks, waited, then finally re-emerged in the early evening. At that point we were able to get into the town dive shop, sign up for a dive the following morning, then inquire about a room at the only open travel booking place. The only room they had left, they said, was at a nice ass hotel. The Aegialis Hotel. Don't think I'm recommending it, but that's the name. So, we got a quote for 90 euros (way more than we wanted to spend), then deliberated a while, thought about sleeping on the beach or at a local camp site with no gear, then finally decided we needed to get a good night's rest before the dive, so we took it. The lady called a van driver to pick us up because the place is about ten minutes from the main town center. You can see it across the harbor, but it's kind of a long walk. So, eventually this guy shows up, takes us up there, and we leave our bags at the desk while they get our room ready. Our room was the "Pool Room." Everyone else seemed to have a room number. Hmm... So, they show us the spa, whose ground floor facilities are included with the room, and things are looking pretty good. It's actually a really nice facility, just a bit much for the likes of us. We had a look around, got into the room, found it to be a very basic room with a full size bed and small bathroom next to the pool (former chlorine storage space?), then immediately went back to the spa to enjoy it before it closed. They had a weight room too, so we took quick advantage of that to get some honest exercise in. I went to a dry sauna after that and endured ten minutes (according to a cool hourglass that you spin), then rinsed off and went out to the pool. The pool is salt water and has a huge curtain shower thing that you can turn on and off to massage your shoulders, or something like that. That was fun. The hot tub was full of loud Greek men and a bit chilly for a hot tub, so we eventually returned to the pool, sauna, and pool again. At that point they closed up so we went back to the room, changed, and headed back to town for dinner. We were falling asleep at the table by the time we finished the meal (typical service in Greece - I'm pretty sure 20 minutes went by before they even approached us with menus), so it was a brief bite to eat and then we walked back home. We slept pretty solidly that night, got up and got showered up. Showers here are increasingly faucets that stick out of bathroom walls with a floor drain. So it's like you and the toilet are taking a rinse together and it all just happens in that one room. Our drains were pretty clogged (infrequent use of the pool room, methinks), so I showered second and managed to flood the bathroom and most of the room, getting my bag a bit wet and causing red ink from a paper folder to stain all their towels. Oops.
So, we headed for the dive next (on foot - the bastards wouldn't put us in a van down the hill because it was already "full"), got there all nice and sweaty, and spend the next 4 hours doing lots of waiting and a single 45 minute dive. It was a nice site between Amorgos and a smallisland off its north side, and we did a swim into a big cave, touched some coral (surprisingly flexible - we didn't hurt it), saw some ancient amphoras that were nearly covered by sea grass, and those were the main highlights. It was funny watching these guys try to run the dive. We got to the site well before our gear showed up (something about running out of gas), did the dive, then couldn't leave because the van was parked in by a guy who was out on a little boat adventure. Sweet. It was a lot of fun though.
After that we decided we were camping that night to compensate for the previous night, so we had some lunch, then headed to the camp site and checked into a tent. Barely big enough for two of us to lie down inside, but it worked. We ditched our stuff in there, got cleaned up, and went back out to the town for the evening. We found ice cream along the way, which always picks you up, so we wandered the harbor and ate that before settling back in for the night. It's a pretty small town without a whole lot going on, so it's hard to be out for the night. We also had to get the next boat out at 6:50am, so we wanted to sleep.
And sleep we did. The next morning we were up and out and crowded onto a huge ship with lots of other people from various islands (multiple stops), then disembarked in Paros. Paros is cool, I think, but we decided to head to Antiparos as soon as we landed. We did that on a small boat that runs back and forth several times a day, and when we landed on Antiparos we found that it was a much smaller and laid back version of Paros, but not so small as the port towns on Amorgos. That meant it still had enough shops and cafes and stuff to keep us entertained. Again, most places were full, but we were eventually stopped by a guy on a moped who interrupted his cruise along the harbor to try to put us in a room. He led us to a pretty nice little place and we negotiated the price to a reasonable-ish number, then dropped the bags while the cleaning lady finished up inside and headed out to find beverages. Greece and Egypt both have been incredibly hot... we're downing water and Coke like they're going out of style.
We found that the dive shop opened after a siesta or whatever somewhere during this time, so we went in and got details about the Antiparos scene. We signed up for a dive for the next day, then went back to the room. Somewhere in there we discovered that the room was plumbed with salt water, which is not nice for drinking. Weird.
We were sort of realizing at this point that we also had little else to do on these islands besides dive. It's so bloody expensive that we couldn't afford to drink much of anything alcoholic, so we would eat, walk around, eat some more, sleep, and dive. That was pretty much it. Good thing we had diving to keep us entertained.
The next morning we got up and went to the dive shop, which was run by some really cool guys. Mostly English fellows, and entertaining ones at that. We were told that the weather might've been clear enough to dive a sweet reef, which is usually precluded by too much wind, but we crossed our fingers. As we headed out with some other people they told us we were first headed to a wreck dive, that neither instructor had been to before so we had to find it with GPS. That was really cool. We did some circling, but eventually found a spot where we thought it could be. We couldn't see the bottom and we weren't very far off shore, so we knew it was quite deep. Visibility was in the neighborhood of 75-90' probably, so not being able to see the bottom is kind of weird around there. To be sure we had the right spot one instructor went in and dove down a ways solo to mark the wreck, then came back up to us to invite us in. It turned out to be my favorite dive so far. Not to mention my deepest ever. We were down at about 32 meters at the deepest point (more than 100'). You'd never know it if you hadn't descended for so long. The wreck was an old shipping boat of some kind, probably at least 100' long, and pretty degraded. It was swimming with fish and had lots of crusty crap all over it to check out, and it made for a fun start. Originally we had planned to do only one dive, but they eventually said it was too windy for the reef and so the wreck would be first, and a site called "Red Rock" second. They weren't going back to the harbor in between, so we decided to just do the second dive as well. It was a very reasonable price and we were on the boat with the gear anyway, so... what the heck? When am I going to dive in Greece again? The Red Rock site was awesome. Basically a big red rock that sticks up out of the sea and has spots for exploration and swim throughs with about 100' visibility. Just gorgeous. We basically free fell to the bottom, which one of the instructors mentioned as being particularly fun here, then explored the bottom all around the rocky island for the next 45 minutes or so. It was really cool to see these little diver bodies scattered around with the streams of bubbles rising up through so much water to the top. The sun penetrates so far that it's really beautiful to just look around you and see whatever you can when it's cast with this blue, rolling light. Makes me want a waterproof camera. So, we did that one, then surfaced after a lengthy safety stop (these guys were really responsible with that, which was good to see), then headed back to port. They let us store our bags in the dive shop for the rest of the day because we had a boat out that same evening, so we did that and then wandered to some cafes to see soem Olympic broadcast action. The first place we settled into had a nice big screen out on their patio and no one sitting in front of it, so we settled in. Along the way we realized that it was probably empty because of the sewer gas that kept wafting past us. I don't think Greek plumbers know about traps. I've expereicned that in several places now, most of them in Greece. Nasty, nasty, nasty. A second place gave us a better experience, and we got to see some solid track and field time between the two.
Oh, I think it was actually before the Olympics and after the dive when we decided to go up to this cave on the top of the island in its interior. It's full of stalactites and stalagmites and is a pretty standard cave, according to Ian, but it was very deep and fun to explore. It also kept the heat off for a bit. The bus we caught up there was the last for the day, so we were lucky to make that. We took another back afterwards, then settled into the cafes, then caught a boat back to Paros. We planned to stay in Paros that night, but were had to leave the next morning, so we didn't really have time to explore it. A Greek guy took us to his little hotel, where he showed us a room and we proceeded to break his balls by haggling the price down (the first time I felt guilty about this), and we checked in for the night. We went out that night to get some food and check out the port town. The town is actually really nice and I was kind of sorry we didn't have more time to explore that island. It is supposed to have good diving too. It might be one to return to. I kind of wanted to get some more octopus (I had some the previous night on Antiparos), but it's kind of expensive and the portions are small, so we actually ended up with gyros one last time. We were settling in to eat them on a stoop in front of a bank and this old man started chattering away in Greek and insisted that we sit at a cafe table on the sidewalk. Not the same place we bought the gyros, so we didn't want to sit there. After a while it seemed he was trying to tell us that he owned the place and wanted us to sit there while we ate, so we did. A few minutes later a waiter appeared and I tried to explain why we were there. He never looked at the old guy I kept pointing to, but eventually left us alone. Then 5 minutes later (after a team of people inside put together enough English to tell us to get out) he told us just that. Meh... so we finished up while standing on the sidewalk, then went exploring. We found a church that is kind of well known (according to LP) and strolled through it, lighting a couple of candles for our late uncle along the way. It was a nice little place. We browsed through some shops after that, had a lady briefly convinced that we wanted to buy Greek property, saw some good toy stores, drank fluids, watched a Greek soccer game at a nice cafe, then went back home to sleep. The next morning it was up and out again to head back to the mainland. Goodbye, Greek islands. I hope to return one day, but it will be after a lot of other destinations. Maybe Greek people will become polite between now and then.
The boat we booked was a cheap one, and we found that we had "deck seats" as soon as we got on. So did most everyone. So we found some uncomfortable chairs, eventually changed to uncomfortable floor space next to a door that never stopped slamming (windy conditions and unaware people), and spent the ride that left an hour and a half late, took an hour longer than it was supposed to, and arrived 2.5 hours late just waiting for it to end. It did, eventually, back in Piraeus. We took the metro back to Athens, got an internet fix, then checked into a hostel I had stayed in previously. It was cheaper this time, which was nice, and we shared a room with some cool Canadian kids from Vancouver. It was a brief stay and an early night, and we got up early the next morning to catch our flight to Cairo. So we did that, then landed in Cairo that afternoon (2 hour flight but we still got a meal and comfortable seats - it was a non-American airline). And that was the beginning of the Egyptian adventure. We had no guide book, cannot read Arabic, and there is no signage whatsoever in that airport to get English speakers into the city. So... we headed outside. And think I'm going to cut it off there. Too much excitement for one post. Tales from Cairo, up next. Cheers.

posted by Matthew MacLeod @ 5:10 AM