Back to the Big Smoke

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We’re on the move again today, this time to the island of Kalymnos, which is about a five hour ferry ride north-east of Astypalea. It feels like we’re on a real Greek ferry. It’s small, some might say cosy, and makes the Blue Star monsters we’ve been on to date look like cruise ships by comparison.

Issy and boats have sometimes not been a good mix. But it’s OK, there’s a small cafe on board. My beloved’s led me to understand that ginger is a good remedy for seasickness, so no great surprise that she asks me if I could buy her some ginger beer. The man behind the counter doesn’t speak a lot of English, but enough to respond that he doesn’t have any of that, but lots of Heineken and Mythos. I’m not entirely sure either of those were quite the remedies Issy was looking for. Anyway, no matter, it seems I’m the problem. I’ve apparently misheard, it’s ginger bears she was after, not that it makes a lot of difference, he doesn’t have any of those either. I try to clarify that I’m looking for something to stop my wife feeling seasick. Now we’re getting somewhere; he’s clearly heard and understood the word “sick”. He scampers quickly behind the counter and hands me … well that would be a small white paper bag. I get the giggles, but I’m not sure my beloved's quite seeing the humour.

The ferry ride seems like it’s longer than it should be for the distance we’re travelling. Sure enough we‘re going vía the cape, this time in the form of the island of Kos. At last count one car and three people get off here, so I hope the ferry company thinks it was worth the lengthy detour. Kos looks very cute. The standout is what looks like a large and very impressive ancient castle wall running right along one side of the port. Perhaps not quite so cute is the large Turkish freighter that looks like it might have been having a bit of trouble with its depth sounder. It’s stuck firmly on the seabed just outside the harbour, and a large fleet of tugs doesn’t seem to be having a lot of luck trying to pry it loose. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the captain rang his boss to try to explain how he’d managed to get the company’s massive rig grounded … in bright sunshine, on a windless day.

The port of Kos can’t be more than about five kilometres from the Turkish mainland; we feel like we can almost reach out and touch it.

We dock at the main port of Pothia in Kalymnos just as the sun‘s setting. The island looks spectacular - rugged, steep, barren looking mountains, and sheer cliffs rising up out of the sea. If the nearby Turks were in any doubts about who Kalymnos belongs to there’s no shortage of reminders - multiple blue and white Greek flags painted on rocks on the cliff faces. Pothia looks large and busy, and there seems to be a very serious looking fleet of fishing boats moored in its harbour. One thing that immediately stands out is that the buildings are all different colours. I think we‘d come to expect that all the buildings in every Greek island town and village would be whitewashed with blue trim, but not so apparently.

Our fearless leader Diana owns a house here in Pothia and lives here for about half the year. She confirms that Pothia is indeed a serious working fishing port. She says it’s a busy, vibrant town, where we’ll find mainly locals and not a lot of tourists. She says sponge diving used to be a big industry here. There are apparently still sponge divers based here, but sponges have been over-harvested in the Aegean, so they now need to go much further afield to find them, generally off the coasts of Libya and Tunisia. It feels a bit like we’ve come back to civilisation again after a week and a half on the very sparsely populated Amorgos and Astypalea. We’re told that there are roughly 15,000 people here on Kalymnos which makes it feel very much like the big smoke by comparison.

And with the big smoke comes traffic. We’re told that we’ll be staying on the opposite side of the island from Pothia in the smaller village of Myrties. Our bus is big, most of the roads are steep, narrow and one way, and it seems that the good people of Myrties aren’t the world’s greatest parkers. We come to a car parked halfway across the road, and the bus can’t get through. And the solution, well that would be a request from our driver for the men in our party, all four of us, to get off the bus and lift the offending vehicle out of the way. Hmmm. Anyway, all good there, just as we’re about to start lifting the driver of the offending car miraculously appears seemingly out of nowhere and drives casually off into the night.

Diana tells us that Myrties is a world famous mecca for rock climbers. It seems a Swiss climber came here about fifteen years ago, reported what he’d found back to his compatriots, and climbers have been coming here in their droves ever since.

Our hotel is up on the cliff overlooking the bay and the spectacular looking Telendos Island … well we assume it is, it’s a bit too dark to be able to tell for sure. We adjourn to the rooftop terrace for drinks and a meal. There’s even a pool up here, and I think I’ve got a fair idea where I’ll be spending a lot of my time while Issy’s off generating artistic masterpieces.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Turkey
It would be great to sail up the coast of Turkey.

[DaveandIssy]

Turkey coast
I think we might need to add the Turkey coast to the bucket list.