Naxos, Greece

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The ferry arrived late in the day, but we bumped into the owner of a nice hostel with good rates at a bookstore (where we found the hiking maps that we wanted) so he gave us a ride to his place and it was all very easy.

The busses to the hiking trails weren´t running the next day (Sunday) so we hiked to a couple of the ruins near town and tried some of the nearby trails on our new map. They turned out to mostly be goat trails or even less distinct wending their way through goat pastures. We saw lots of cute baby goats and sheep and discovered how many spiny plants we hadn´t noticed in Greece, having mostly stayed on paths up until now. Later we hiked along the beach with my snorkel gear looking for a likely place to take a swim even though it was chilly enough we were walking in our jackets. A good portion of the water in the first big bay was a flourescent green color that came, we discovered further along, from a good sized river feeding into that was a vile, semi flourescent green soup. It looked like toxic waste . . .but it didn´t smell bad. I suspect it came from farming products (fertilizers etc) as the river was running through many miles of farming land. We eventually got to an area with clear calm water, so I popped into my mask and snorkel and swam along for about 20 minutes or so until I got too cold. I saw a few good sized fish that blended in well with the sandy bottom, but mostly a little sea grass here and there. The water was cold enough that it took me about five separate tries before I could breath (without gasping from cold) through the snorkel . . .but it actually felt great once I got used to it.


The next day we hiked to the top of Mt. Zeus and poked our noses into his birthplace (a cave) partway down the mountain. We´d forgotten flashlights, so we couldn´t venture in too far. The clouds parted perfectly when we were on the top and we had wonderful views of the ravens playing in the updrafts. We saw Ravens grabbing each others feet and free falling hundreds of feet before breaking apart not far from the rocks to fly up and do it all over again. I don´t know if that is mating protocol for ravens or not . . .it certainly looked like a rush regardless - bungee jumping for birds.

We took a Blue Star ferry from Santorinni to Naxos

Remains of a temple to Appolo in Naxos.

We hiked to the top of Mt Zeus.

More cool Greek goats.

This is one of many caves where Zeus is perported to have been born.

We had a little Kitchen in our appartment in Naxos which we enjoyed.