Relaxing on the beach

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When I discover a nice, relaxed, less touristy perfect place on my travel, I am always two minded about blogging about it. The blogger in me wants to record every moment of that, but the nature lover wants me to keep it a secret and preserve it from rampant tourism that has destroyed so many other places. So as a compromise, I am going to talk about the place but not actually name it, though most of you will probably recognize the place as though it is not as full of tourists as Santorini, but there are a fair number of them here, probably more packed in July/August.

Getting off the boat I had already decided to go for the less jazzy campsite without pool and bar to get some solitude. It was definitely a great choice. The campsite van was there, we approached the driver and said we want to stay. It was free transfer to and from port. The beach is right in front of the campsite, and its a HUGE space with camping spots, campbeds, apartments and everything. The van also picked 2 women from France who have been coming to this place for years and stay for a month or more, and everyone knew them. They seem to have a very stressful job (the driver said they are in French police), and probably come here to get away from noise of their daily life. The camping area is super-shaded and during this time there were not many tents there. I immediately loved the place and could see myself staying there 4 nights. We picked a spot with some good chances of morning sun and set off to swim before setting up the tent.

It was a SANDY beach! It felt like a boon after the beaches of Santorini, and I could not wait to get into the water. After selecting a nice spot we got in the water. There were some fishes also in water. After swimming for some time, we got out and needed to setup tent. Nice campsite staff had brought 2 chairs for us at our camping spot. Setup took about 10 min, and then shower and then off to finding some food. The campsite stay allows us to get some discount on a nearby tavern. It looked as good as any other and had seats right on the beach. So we decided to eat there and view the sunset. It was a perfect spot. We ordered pretty much the same stuff - stuffed tomato and greek salad. It was great, all fresh, great taste. Eating slowly we watched the sun go down into the ocean - umm dreamy. Then back to campsite for a nice long sleep.



Day 2: June 19

Getting up slowly, there was no real agenda today. We wanted to go for a hike up at a place described as worthy of God's view. The day was cloudy, but I guess we had already decided that we were going to go. So we set off, first to town and then from there a bus to starting point of the hike. It was not very well marked, but started on the road and the bus driver gave us some information. We had lot of time, so we started walking. Soon reached a turnoff point which had some "directions", here the actual hike started. It was easy uphill walk with nice views. We soon started seeing other people who probably came from a different direction. There was also a very large group ahead of us. We caught up with them on a plateau little bit below the summit. At this point the weather completely changed. It was all covered in cloud with some drizzle, and big temperature drop. The cloud was so dense that you could not see your hand in front of you. The group decided to turn around, but we wanted to reach the summit. Wind was howling at this point, but we reminded ourselves, this is nothing compared to patagonia winds that we survived. So we matched ahead, trying to find signs of trail. Finally someone we managed to reach the peak. Of course there was no view at the peak, fully covered in cloud. We carefully came down, out of the clouds and back on road to take the bus back to town.

In the town we ate at a very nice place which served mixed vegetable platter, good food, we decided to take the same for lunch on ferry on way back.

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Photos

Dinner
personalised good made for us

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Good to see you blogging again.
Yes, hush, keep it a secret.... it can be difficult to share a quiet location. We understand.