Kaparthos

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We hopped off the ferry at Kaparthos in a little village called Dahnia
before noon on Sunday. What impressed us the most on the ride over was
how the ferries came up to the docks and loaded and unloaded in record
time compared to what we are accustomed to with Alaska State Ferries.
As the ferry manuevers, in often such tight quarters as to have the bow
of the ferry miss the anchored fishing fleet by (it looks like from
deck) mere inches, it is dropping the gangplank (with two men up on the
end of it as soon as it gets horizontal enough for them to clamber up)
with docking lines in their hands. The passengers to disembark are in a
huddle right behind the gangplank, cars are being started and passengers
preparing to embark are in tight group waiting just beyond where the
gangplank will land on the (tiny in some cases) pier. The men throw
their lines as soon as they are close enough, ride the gangplank down,
passengers run off as soon as it is touching and the new passengers run
on as soon as there is room. It takes between three to five minutes to
unload and reload from the time the lines are secured to when they are
released again. Amazing.

Not quit as nice as Alaska ferrys maybe but still very nice. The ferries are practcally empty this time of year. This is the solarium.

Getting ready to land. Only one are two ropes are tied when the ferry stops and the traffic starts to flow as soon as the plank is down.

Lovely sunny weather, but we were tired from getting up early to catch
the ferry, so we just took a couple hour hike out to a nice beach and
slept in the sun. We found a nice studio apt for 20 Euros . . .but were
caught off guard by the lack of a working ATM in town, fortunately the
proprieter would take US dollars which left us just enough money to buy
a little food from the overpriced teeny market to keep us from starving.

We hiked south along the scenic coastline the first afternoon.

Looking north along the coast from south of town. The trail we followed the next day traversed the very steep headland in the background.

View from our apartment of the port and ferry terminal.

We started on a 25+ mile hike the next day (which we knew was overly
ambitious but we figured we could always get on a road and hike in the
dark in a pinch) but were saved about 10 miles by a fellow who was
working on the trail and gave us a ride partway back when he finished
up. This was one of my favorite hikes, the country it crossed looked
almost impassable because of steepness and general cliffiness from our
town, but the trail had been well constructed
and even had a rough staircase constructed up through a narrow chimney
that would have been pretty scary without ropes or protection of some
sort. We followed it through valleys and valleys of old terraced
farming country and the ruins of the associated villages. I have no
idea how old everything was but was amazed by the amount of work that
had been done in moving rock to create terraces and walls. The land
mostly looks like it would perform best as a rock pit . . .I can't
imagine how much work it must have taken to grow anything in such rocky
dry country. The path was littered with dead sheep, apparently quite a
few of them die after some rainstorms but no one really knows why, it
looks like poisoning or something like that.

Our trail the next day through the steep countryside.

The north end of the island has been extensivly terraced but isn't currently being farmed.

The trail loops to the south where it became an old stone road. It was a very well built and must have taken an extraodinary amount of effort but could only have accomodated foot traffic and perhaps sure footed pack animals.

We woke early to catch our ferry in the morning, and then had to wait an
hour and a half because poor weather had it running late, and then
discovered that it was headed for Rhodes, not Crete! It was going to
return in the evening and then going to Crete, but it wouldn't stop at
our little village first, only the other village at the other end of the
island - pigadia. With no other options available we started walking
(around 40 to 50 miles more or less) towards pigadia hoping to get a ride.
we were just starting when the fellow from the ferry office started
haranguing (it sounded like) some fellows doing some construction and
after some arguing with them told us that they were headed towards pigadia
later that day and would pick us up if they saw us, so we started out
feeling positive although a little uncertain about catching a ride with
people who didn't sound like they wanted to give us a ride. As it turned
out a fellow from the group picked us up just a few miles up the road,
dropped us at Olympos while he worked (a really neat village) to wander
around for an hour and then picked us up and drove down the spine of the
island (you could see ocean on both sides) for another number of miles
and then dropped us (to hike for another hour or so ) while he did some
more work and then finally picked us up one more time and left us at
pigadia. He ended up being super friendly and was able to speak english
pretty well . . . so I think maybe I don't know the difference between
greek people arguing and greek people just talking? Anyway . . .we got
where we wanted to go with hours of daylight to spare and had an awesome
day getting to see the island from another perspective and a great time
getting to talk to someone who could answer all the "greek" and
"karpathos" questions we'd saved up for a good english speaker.

The town of Olympos