179 Paros

Day 52, 20-08

Another crap night’s sleep – why is this becoming regular?? We had to get up at 5.15am to be on the bus to the ferry by 6! Today we go to our first island of Paros. The ferry ride was quite possibly the worst trip of my travels. We had to find our own seats up on the upper deck which was sheltered from the wind by clear plastic sheeting. However it was soooo hot (30 degrees at 6.30am) and it just created this glasshouse effect trapping us all in this massively hot bubble. An hour later we moved down to the lower deck which was not sheltered – great breeze but it all became a bit too strong and we were getting whipped by seaspray. So we moved inside, where we had to make do sitting on the corridor floor outside the prebooked seating cabins. This was ok, but not great for sea sickness. I had eaten a handful of not very good stuffs and I was so tired I could feel the bags under my eyes, and really needed to pee but Anushi had gone and in those 5 minutes she had seen 4 people throw up in the bathrooms! This one girl ran towards us with her hand over her mouth and Phoebs had to violently gesture for her to go outside away from us as we were right in her line of fire. Yuck! Moving on,.. we arrived at Paros just before midday. Our hotel was quaint and traditional right on the waterfront, just opposite the beach. Now begins the great Greek Islands plumbing where you can’t flush toilet paper down the loo! We checked in then went with Zoe to the main necessities in walking distance – post office, supee, shops etc. On the way home stopped for lunch two doors down from us which has an extremely good reputation. I got cumin meat balls on rice, which was great. Not amazing, but great? We were quite distracted by all the mozzie bites we were getting and the stray kittens freaking Shalini out! Later we found out one of the girls got food poisoning from her meal there which was a bit bad!! The afternoon was hot – we went for quick walk through town to look at the shops and food. Phoebe was trying on some cheap glasses at a souvenir store and the owner, clearly out of it comes up and starts repeating to us “Obama is here Obama is here! You know, the President of America, go see him go see him!” He then puts on a pair of mirrored lensed Ray bans and stands there staring at us while we politely excused ourselves and hurried away. We were drained and exhausted in the heat and had to force ourselves to go across to the beach for a while, where a few of the others from the tour were. It was a hooot and helpless sunbathe and swim which we couldn’t hack for very long, but the water was extremely refreshing. I had this brilliant nap afterwards but woke up so ridiculously drowsy. For dinner Zoe took our group out to a local Greek place where we had the most delicious meal, the best of my Greek dinners so far. They made wood-fired oven bread, which came out hot and with fresh tzatziki and hummus was the most to die for combination! For main I had honey grilled pork which was fatty, tender and flavourful and there was so much of it. It came with nom cous cous and salad, and there was so much pork I couldn’t even eat it all (which is a pretty big deal). I was still really tired. We had a couple wines and then they brought out shots for all of us of a Paros specialty. Zoe took us out to a waterfront bar afterwards (the loudest of them all) and we ended up having a great night.

Day 53, 21-08

Most of the group did the Paros day trip today. It started off walking to the “one hundred gates church” named after the number of openings it has. It is one of the oldest Greek orthodox churches in Europe and is still used today. We then took a private bus up to the village of Lefkes, up in the mountains of Paros. It is a small little traditional town hardly touched by tourists, full of little alleyways nothing like France or Italy – beautiful blinding white concrete houses with blue (or sometimes green) trim. Lefkes was used as a strategic defence village when Greece was under the attack of pirates – as communication was not developed then the village was built like a maze so that if they came under attack, the pirates would easily get lost. We visited the church built from won pirate gold, and a world war two monument in the square, where Zoe told us more about Modern Greek history. It was interesting and also quite unsettling to hear just how much Greek society has been affected in the past few decades, most recently the boy who was accidently killed by police in 2008 which revived a much bottled political rage against the military. We walked around more of the town (souvenir shops) then took the bus to the port of Naoussa, a small fishing village with clear water and fresh octopus catches out on display everywhere. We got wet from thrashing waves running across the rock wall to Barbarossa’s (famous pirate) fort, which was a little cubby spying spot out from the port. Finally we took the bus to Kolymbithres beach. Here we had an average but much needed lunch, before finding a possy in one of the quiet mini bays which made up the beach area. The water was amazing, and we did a bit of snorkelling, although there wasn’t much to see. The view across the other side of Paros was amazing – full of white traditional houses lining the water. We didn’t last long in the heat so went back up the café for drinks and ice cream. Came back to our hotel at 6.30pm. We walked along the waterfront to a beautiful hotel above the sea for dinner (amazing view of the sunset) – where they had prepared an amazing barbeque buffet for us all. The best spread with good salad, pastas, lots of meats and oregano chips. Mmm so great and endless!