On The Road

Kalymnos - Rest Day

Yesterday was our rest day from three straight days of climbing and I suggested to Brad that we take a little walk around Telendos, the islet off of Kalymnos. I didn't want to ask Brad to go on a hike, because I knew he'd say no, but he seemed OK with a "little walk." It was raining in the morning, but we took the ferry over to Telendos anyway, sat in a cafe reading, drinking coffee, eating lunch. Brad seemed content and I think it was secretly his hope that it wouldn't stop raining. But it did, so we asked the cafe owner about walking around the island. Because the islet is steep and rocky, getting around it wasn't as simple as we thought. He drew us a vague map, telling us that there was a clear path to a monastery, about an hour's walk away. From there, he indicated that we'd have to cut inland, then across the island. Based on his map, we assumed there was an actual path. We learned the hard way that this wasn't the case.

The walk to the monastery was very pretty - and well marked. When we got there, I could tell Brad was satisfied with his "little walk," but I suggested that we continue to the next ridge to see what was around the corner. Despite seeing through my ruse, he agreed, so we set off on a faint path. After another twenty minutes, we got to the ruins of an ancient wall, overlooking a huge, steep, (intimidating) valley. We couldn't see a clear path, but far above us, we could see a pass, definitely the only possible way to get to the other side of the island. I said nothing. After a few minutes, Brad described how he'd get to the pass. Then next thing I knew, he was putting on the backpack and we set off across the valley.

At this point there was no longer a well-defined path. There were actually many paths created by the many goats on the island. The trick was to find a well-trodden route, often marked by large quantities of goat poop. The route to the pass was much harder than we'd anticipated, but after an hour of scrambling uphill, we reached the top. Our fear, at this point, was that we'd find a cliff on the other side, but although the descent looked steep, it looked doable and we didn't want to turn back.

The route down wasn't too hard, although it involved some short sections where we had to climb down easy rock faces (we were entirely safe, moms). We were pretty certain that it would be easy going once we got closer to sea level, but ended up still having another 1 1/2 hours of serious bushwacking and scrambling over boulders, which took a toll on our legs, my pants, and very sadly, my engagement ring (the band broke, but it'll be easily fixable in the US) until we reached our starting point.

When we got back to the cafe, desperate for water and beer, the cafe owner looked at us surprised. He later told us that he didn't really think we'd make it around the island. Many people ask him about walking around the island, but most return after a couple of hours (probably after seeing that daunting valley and pass - sorry, we can't provide any visuals just yet...). Several other people asked us how we got around the island - we felt like minor celebrities for a few minutes. We quaffed two large beers and ate a half pound of peanuts and returned to our hotel exhausted from our rest day.

Tomorrow morning we head for Turkey. We've had a great time in Kalymnos, made some local friends, eaten a lot of good food. We will definitely come back here sometime in the future.

j & b

Posted by jacqueline at May 29, 2003 07:29 AM