A Greek Odyssey (Part 1)

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As Del woke him up, Gkee looked at his watch.
It was 4.30am - there was still another hour-and-a-half til they were meant to all get up - what was Del playing at? He of all people would never wake up this early - they all needed as much sleep as they could.
This was when he realised that Del and Sags had actually just got back from wherever they were partying.

An hour and a half later, Gkee had real trouble getting the other two up.
"Yeah, I'm awake" mumbled Sags, before immediately settling back into a snore.
Del, who he'd managed to coax out of bed, then had a go.
"I'm coming" grumbled Sags.

Waiting outside the dorm door for Sags, Gkee and Del cracked up as soon as Sags emerged.
"What? Have I forgotten something?" asked Sags.
Del cracked up.
"Yeah" replied Gkee, "you haven't got a shirt on".
"It's hot" was Sags's zombied reply.

Down in the foyer, and back in the first person, John and Joy were waiting to catch transport to their ferry.
As Sags stumbled into the foyer, Joy looked incredulous.
"Are you still drunk Steve?" asked Joy.
Sags slurred back unconvincingly that he wasn't.
"Where's Aaron and Adam?" asked Gkee.
"Dunno" replied John. "I banged on their dorm door but they didn't come out. I'm not even sure if they were in there".

We wished John and Joy good luck in finding them while we looked for a taxi to take us to our ferry.
While John, Joy, Aaron and Adam were catching their ferry from Athens's main port in Piraeus, we were catching our ferry from the secondary port of Rafina, which was much further away and unconnected by metro, but a cheaper ferry fare.
Like Sags, I was pretty zombied myself - slowing down on the tequilas near the end probably saved me. I drifted in and out of conciousness in the taxi.
While waiting to board the ferry, Gkee and I looked back at Sags. He was standing up, sleeping, with no shirt on. Hilarious sight. Once we had found some seats, I lied down across a row of seats and passed out. It didn't matter that there were armrests on all of the seats as I uncomfortably contorted myself to squeeze underneath them.

I awoke a couple of hours later just as we were making our first stop. Gkee receives a text from John.
"Aaron and Adam missed the ferry" he told us. They had stayed out later than us and paid the price.
This meant that they would also miss our tour boat, as we were leaving within a couple of hours of arriving in Myknonos - not enough time for them to catch another ferry here. They would have to catch up our boat somewhere further along the tour. What a disaster.
Grabbing a ridiculously expensive baguette and ice-coffee for breakfast, it wasn't long til we arrived in Mykonos.

We knew that we had to get to Mykonos's new port, but had no idea which port our ferry was actually pulling into. We were trying work out bus schedules but decided it would probably be easier to get a taxi.
I then get a text from Davies asking where we were. Looking out to my right, I see a crusty-looking boat, dwarfed by our ferry, and looking like it had seen better days. There was a massive Travel Talk banner on the side of it - it was our boat.
"See you in a couple of mins" I replied.
Disembarking our ferry we walked 50m to our right and promptly embarked our tour boat - perfect.

Davies greeted us as we boarded the boat, chilling in one of the white leather booths at the back of the boat. He was sitting with a South African couple, Justin and Sarah.
We were then greeted by our tour leader Kyriaki, which incidentally is Greek for "Sunday". The only other person that I know called Sunday is former Nigerian international midfielder Sunday Oliseh who scored with a rocket against Spain in France 98'.
We were then given the keys to our cabin, which I was sharing with Davies. The all-in-one shower/toilet/vanity would take some getting used to as would the no-toilet-paper-down-the-toilet rule. You really wanted to know about that didn't you.
The boat also came with a non-English-speaking, sour-faced crew as well with a bar and a top-deck full of white, plastic sun loungers. This would be our home for the next eight days.
Our tour party was complete when Ruth - John and Joy's flatmate - arrived from the airport.
As we had our first on-board lunch and meeting - where Kyriaki set out the house rules ("you are allowed to have sex on the boat - just don't put the condom down the toilet please") - we set sail for our first island, Naxos.

It was so hot. It has been a while since I have been anywhere so hot that it was literally impossible to wear a shirt. Our bathroom was literally a sauna. The hallway down below was the coolest place to hang out, as the wind tunnelled through from the front of the boat.
The fact that I was now also feeling severely hungover - on a moving boat - after lunch - meant that it wasn't the most enjoyable boat ride I had ever been on. And I had eight days of hot, hungover, seasick days to go. But I was looking forward to every minute.
We had quite a collection of people on board - four separate parties of South Africans meant they were the second-most represented country on-board after New Zealand, of which there was nineteen of us. Kiwi representz. There were only five Australians on-board - a rather nice surprise.
Word got around that two more Kiwis were finally on their way to join us in Naxos later on.

We arrived in Naxos just as the sun was setting and looking out at the harbour and the Temple of Apollo, it was actually a really nice sunset.
Kyriaki then took us on a tour of the old town.
To say that Naxos Town is compact is a bit of an understatement - trash-compacted more like. The people who built this town must've been pretty short too. The old town was pretty much your quintessential Greek Island town, the walls awash with white and the buildings so closely packed together you would be forgiven for thinking the whole town was in fact just a really big building. In the all the the nooks and crannies would be doors into houses and shops - our 41-strong tour group was pretty much blocking up the town passages.
Kyriaki's knowledge of the place was very good as she gave background to everything that we were seeing. Her theory was that the town was painted white and built close together to disorientate any invading pirates. How well this worked I am not so sure. In one of the crannies, lived an old Greek granny who had her own theory - that the walls were built close together so that people could stumble home safely after a night on the wine.
The tour ended at restaurant in a rather romantic outdoor setting. For Kyriaki and myself however, our appetite had to be delayed a little while longer as we went back to the port to pick up our two latecomers who had finally arrived. Kyriaki had no idea what Adam and Aaron looked like, see.
I don't remember what I ate for dinner, but I do remember that they had run out of the most interesting dish that everyone wanted, and that the food didn't quite match the setting in the end.

Then it was our first night out.
The bar Kyriaki took us had the quite pun-tastic name of Escobar, a Latin/Mexican/saloon-themed bar that were doing cocktails for 5€. Still hungover from the tequilas in Athens and with my alcohol appetite at the opposite end to everyone else, we set ourselves a team goal of drinking every cocktail on the menu. Starting of course, with a Long Island Ice Tea - two of them. They went down surprisingly easy and within twenty minutes, we were on to number three, a bright blue number that was a bit sweeter than the ice teas.
Then came the most disgusting cocktail ever - the Red Devil. It was kind of fruity, but the overriding taste was the lead that they put in it. It was pretty bitter. It took me a while to finish it, but I defeated it in the end. I was often double-parked as the boys kept getting the rounds in during my epic struggle with the Red Devil. I couldn't honestly tell you what else I had to drink that night.
More than a little lubricated, it was then time to bond with our fellow boat-mates. No, not like that. Yet.
Among the crew I talked to that night were four Kiwi girls - KD, Rebecca, Claire and Bronwyn; four South African girls - Marguerite, Michelle, Zelda and Yda; another pair of South African girls - Loren and Robyn; Aussie couple Cam and Orinda; and Steve Anstis, (also known as Stevie 3, being the third Steven on the boat) a guy I did a project with at uni - how random!
There was also a Brazilian (I say Brazilian simply because he was very tanned and wore a Brazil top) guy working at the bar whose main job was to entice people - girls in particular - onto the dancefloor. His supergyration seemed to work as he soon had all our boat girls on the dancefloor doing that most infamous of dances, the Macarena.
Things get fuzzy after that - I remember doing loads of those-photos-where-everyone-gets-in-a-circle-and-looks-down-at-the-camera-on-the-floor; jandal pile; Gkee looking at me with one eye, while his other eye is looking out the side (that's when you know he's hammered); and deciding to walk back to the boat around 3am. Considering the long day that we had, the fact that I had got in at 4.30am the previous morning, the fact I was barely hanging on on three hours sleep, and my state of hangover - I thought it was a pretty good effort.

The next morning a posse of us went to Agios Prokopios, one of the beaches here in Naxos.
A busy family beach, the water looked beautiful and the sand was hot and slightly shelly. Immediately behind the beach is a slew of shops and cafes. One of the shops sold beach accessories and Aaron and Adam made the most of it - Aaron getting the now legendary High School Musical towel and Adam getting a Spongebob Squarepants towel/small-child's-hooded-cape. Alas, Adam's head was too big for the hood. Even then, the cape only went halfway down his back. Hilarious.
As mentioned, the water looked beautiful - once we all "Hasselhoffed"/"Baywatched" into the water, we discovered it was absolutely manky. With bits of plastic and a boatload of cigarette butts floating around, you didn't really want to linger in the water. We were almost half-expecting a turd to float by. It was a shame because the water temperature was almost perfect.
Instead, Gkee and I took to a game of beach tennis instead, equipment provided by the shop. With Hannah Montana's face on each bat, it was quite satisfying smashing her face into the ball - until the bat fell apart.
Back in town, I spent my last half hour in Naxos taking pics of the old town and picking up some seasickness pills - and then it was back on the boat to our next destination.

The best way to rid yourself of a hangover is to sleep in a bit, and then jump off a 15m high boat into the ocean. You'll at the very least clear your bowels of the alcohol as you shit yourself while jumping off the boat .
It was our first "swimming stop", where the captain pulls into a random bay to give you the opportunity to raise your adrenalin levels and to cool off in the water.
I found that you actually hang in the air for a lot longer than you think - a whole two seconds after you've jumped you're like, "shit, I'm still in the air!". Concentrating on closing my legs on entry, I didn't even think about pinning my nose and for the rest of the afternoon I had tap-nose - y'know when you're talking to someone and then suddenly without warning a torrent of sea water comes gushing out your nose.
The water was beautiful. I don't know if it was becuase I hadn't eaten breakfast, my hungover state, my lack of fitness, or all of the above, but after about ten minutes trying to keep afloat in the water, I was absolutely exhausted. Siesta time. I was also wary about the people on the boat - wouldn't want anyone to flush the toilet at the swimming stop...[apologies again, I seem to be full of shit this entry].
John was the only one brave enough to dive head-first from the top of the boat - he was revelling in it. He must've had at least half-a-dozen jumps.
Some great photos were taken of the jumps - the perfect opportunity to use the burst feature on my camera.

Our stop for that night was on the unheralded and rather sparsely populated island of Iraklia.
Apart from a calm, picturesque harbour with a lovely tree-backed beach, there really isn't much to the island. On the way into the harbour we passed a small island that in Greek mythology is supposedly the rock that Polyphemus killed a cyclops with.
Davies, Gkee, Sags and I skipped the tour of the island before getting a little lost, meeting up with tour-goers who had got separated from Kyriaki, and then finally finding the restaurant we were dining in.
There is just about nothing commercial at all on this island - it really is a get-away-from-it-all kind of island - you could hear a pin drop here. The epitome of a sleepy town, there are no clubs or bars or anything like that - and in a way I really appreciated the peacefulness of the place.
Once again, the restaurant had a lovely outdoor setting, but then came the news that we had an hour to finish our meal and get back on the boat. You see, Iraklia is so small an island, that it doesn't have it's own water supply and the locals in fact import their water by boat! This literal water-boat doesn't have a schedule - it just rocks up when it can, and it had decided to rock up tonight. There is only one dock in the harbour and the Viking Star was in it. Like Schwarznegger said in Total Recall: "give these people water !"
The rush didn't help the kitchen - the rabbit that I ordered was really ordinary - shreds of meat in a bland red sauce served on fries. It was agreed among most people that it was probably the worst meal of the trip.
If we didn't make it back onto the boat, we would definitely be left behind - some people hadn't even been served when we finished our meals and left - it was a bit of a joke as we were among the last people to arrive at the restaurant.
Everyone did make it make eventually - no man was left behind.
Iraklia was nice - just a shame we had to leave so soon.

Having had two heavy nights in a row, I was quite happy just to chill tonight. I ended up talking with a couple of Kiwi girls on the boat, Cushla and Kerry as we sipped wine under the stars.
It wasn't that cold, but the top deck was getting dewy as the Viking Star sailed out of the harbour - we then all called it a night, tucking ourselves in for a night on the ocean.
Tomorrow - Santorini.

Yamas,
Derek

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Photos

Boat Diving
John's spectacular head-first dive off the top off the boat. Score: 9.5

Church Bell
Orthodox church bell.

Moonlighting
Taken off the shore of Iraklia.

Streets Of Naxos Town #1
With classic blue tables and window frames.

The Viking Star
Our trusty, crusty home for the next eight days.

Sunset Over Naxos
Best sunset of the trip so far.

Catholic Church, Naxos
One of the town's landmarks.

Red Devils
Worst cocktails ever.

Macarena
I thought I saw the last of it in 93'.

Agios Prokopios, Naxos
Our posse chilling at the beach.

Boat Jumping
Sags makes the leap of faith off the top of the boat.

Top Deck
Sunbathing deck aboard the Viking Star.

Iraklia
Beach and harbour in Iraklia.

Dinner In Iraklia
Shame the food didn't match the outdoor setting.

Welcome To The Old Market
Classic Greek sign in Naxos.

Venetian Castle, Naxos
The town's other major landmark.

Streets Of Naxos Town #2
Pretty.

Streets Of Naxos Town #3
They say everything was painted white to blind and disorientate invading pirates.

Davies, Sags, Me
Only cool people wear sunglasses at night. Obviously.

Swimming Stop
Our tour group, chillaxin' in the sea.