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
We arrived in Kalymnos, in the port town (and main city) of Pothia on Thursday morning around 3:30am. We wanted to get to Masouri, on the other side of the island, about 8.5km away, but the bus wasn't going to start running for another 4 or 5 hours. We wandered around a bit, looking for a place to perhaps get some sleep, and managed to pick up a small retinue of stray dogs. We found a spot behind a church, sat down on our inflated thermarests, leaned up against our backpacks, and tried to sleep. After about ten minutes of listening to the dogs fight and chase cats, taxis and mopeds roaring by every few minutes, we knew it was a lost cause, so we decided to walk to Masouri (taking a taxi was out of the question, as (a) we're too cheap, and (b) the object was to kill time until places started opening up, and a 5+ mile hike with our packs would certainly do that).
We headed off down the road with a couple of our loyal new friends in tow. We tried to discourage them from following, but I guess we aren't mean enough. One of them gave up after we got to the next town over, but the other stuck with us the whole way. We got to Masouri around 7 and found a cafe that was open and serving breakfast. The cafe owner promptly shooed our now displaced friend away.
"Climbers" seems to be the magic word in Masouri. Our cafe owner was excited that we were climbers, as her son appears to be one of the founders of climbing in this area. We told her that we were looking for a place to stay, and she took us across the street to a very nice hotel run by a friend of hers. As we approached, we told her that it looked much too fancy for our budget, but she waived us off and after a few minutes talking with her friend, came back and asked if 15 Euros/night was ok. We were ecstatic, as the going rate for most places seemed to start at around twice that, and we had a large room with huge balcony overlooking the sea. (I think part of the reason we got such a good deal is that we are here pre-season, and their rooms are usually booked in blocks by package tours. But having a connection certainly helps here.)
We spent our first day (Thursday) catching up on sleep and walking around the area. Yesterday we got up early and went climbing.
Climbing is fairly new in Kalymnos, the first guide book having been published only a few years ago. They are clearly looking to gain recognition as an international climbing destination. The municipal government even has an official climbing information center in Masouri. They have markers on the side of the road indicating where the path to each climbing area starts. The path itself is marked by spots of color painted on rocks along the way. Then, believe it or not, the names and ratings of each climb is painted onto the rock at the start of the climb. This would certainly horrify a lot of environmentally-conscious climbers, but it is nice when you're as bad as we are (well, I am) at finding climbs.
The climbing yesterday was fun, although the area we were in had some very sharp rock. The climbs themselves are very well bolted--often not more than 5 or 6 feet between bolts. Encouraged by this, Jacqueline led a couple climbs, including a 6a (about 5.9/5.10).
Our climbing today was thwarted by rain--the first since we've been in Greece--so we headed to Pothia to see the town in daylight. The sun's actually out now, so hopefully we'll be back on the rock tomorrow.
We're not sure yet how long we're going to stay here...at least a few more days, possibly longer if we don't get kicked out of our hotel room by a busload of German tourists.
Hope everyone is well. Take care.
-b & j
After much prodding, finally a post from me (j):
We just bought two new ropes in Athens. We're at the port town of Piraeus, an extension of Athens, waiting for our ferry to Kalymnos, where we're going to spend a few days climbing.
We had planned to spend longer in Kalambaka, but ran into some problems with our ropes. Our first few days of climbing there were slightly frustrating. Our 20-year-old, 30-Euro guide book led us to climbs that either no longer existed or were closed to non-Monks. A lot of the climbs were originally set by old school Germans who thought that anything "easy" didn't need to be protected--no matter if you were hundreds of meters off the ground. Needless to say, Brad didn't feel too comfortable with that kind of climbing.
We finally met a fabulously helpful local climber - "Larry" - who suggested some climbs. We set out early the next day for a five pitch climb that would lead us four pitches up one rock face, where we'd then step over an abyss (ie. do the splits in the air if you are short like me) to another face, then climb another 15 meters to the summit.
The climb was one of the best we'd ever done. We were ecstatic at the top as we signed the summit book (there's a notebook, protected in a metal case at the top of some of the climbs). We noticed some writing in German at the beginning of the book that seemed to explain the rappel. All I understood with my two years of junior high German was "danger" and "abseil". Brad didn't understand much more. But we found the ring from which we were meant to descend. We tied our ropes together and headed down. Brad went first. Because our ropes were long enough, he decided to skip the first rappel station, which was only 20 meters down and would involve tying into a half-dead tree. When I reached the rappel station, we pulled on the rope so that we could begin the next rappel. We pulled very hard. We pulled and we pulled... for two-and-a-half hours we pulled. We climbed part way up, we climbed part way down trying to free the rope, but it wouldn't budge. Finally, after shedding many tears (I shed the tears, not Brad), we decided to cut the ropes. Because Brad had found a bolted climb below us, we knew we had enough rope to get down... and we did in two rappels.
Since we no longer had any usable ropes, we decided to go to Corfu so that Brad could do some diving with the Drinkies folk. Unfortunately, when we got to Corfu, we found out that there was no diving, but that's a whole different story...
-j (& b)
P.S. If you're wondering why we haven't posted any new pictures...we decided to just wait until we got back to the US in July, since the connections here are generally pretty slow. Sorry!
We are in Paleokastritsa, Corfu at the moment. We came here with friends from Drinkies (Eric, Renee, Chris, and Matt) with the intention of doing some scuba diving, but unfortunately, the "season" hasn't started yet, so no diving.
Sorry we haven't posted in a few days. I guess that's a good thing--less time in front of the computer. The problem is that they're much to tell and we've already been on the computer here for over and hour and half, catching up on email, doing research on where we're going to head next (possibly Crete), and trying to find a store in Athens that sells rock climbing gear (we need a new rope...long story which will be posted here sometime later).
Anyway, hopefully we'll get online again soon, and I'll be more inspired to write (and not under pressure to do it quickly because we're paying 6 Euros/hour).
Cheers,
-b & j
Picking up where we left off yesterday....
We went on a little hike with the intention of finding some climbs for us to do later. We ended up spending about 4 hours wandering around under and between giants cliffs, not really knowing exactly where we were until the end. We only spotted a couple climbs. We never saw any climbers. In fact, we've yet to see anyone actually climbing (although we did see some guys with climbing gear in our camp this morning). I thought this was supposed to be a climbing mecca?
Yesterday evening we made the mistake of taking a little "nap" around 6 or 7pm. When we woke up it was almost 10pm. We managed to find a place that was still open (I thought Greeks ate late...but a lot of restaurants here seem to close at either 10 or 11). Unfortunately, so far we've been limited to eating at the more tourist-centric places, which have English menus. We've stopped in at a couple places that had only Greek menus, and decided it would be a lost cause. Between us we could probably figure out menus in 6 or 7 different languages, but Greek isn't one of them.
Today we got up early, packed our backpacks, left our hotel, and walked down the road about 1 km to cheaper digs. We're at a campground now (Vrachos Camping, in Kastraki, for any Drinkies folks that might be out there), living out of our tent, but it's a pretty nice campground. It has great showers, common eating areas, a swimming pool, a restaurant, and a small grocery store. We'll see how long we can handle sleeping on our ThermaRests. It's less than half the price of the hotel room, though.
After setting up in the campground, we grabbed our climbing gear and headed to a climbing area that Jacqueline had scoped out in our 30-Euro climbing guide. Did I mention that this guide was 30 Euros? Did I also mention that it was published 17 years ago? You'd think that wouldn't matter too much with climbing, as the rocks aren't moving anywhere. However, when we went to find our climb this morning, we came across a gate and a sign saying that it was land belonging to a monastery, and it was closed. Arg. We wandered around a bit to see if there wasn't a path we were missing, but couldn't find anything.
We headed back to another area that looked promising. I started up what we thought was the beginning of a nice easy climb. The climb was easy enough, but after finding only one bolt, then a rap ring about 5 meters later, then nothing for another 20 meters, then another rap ring, I decided that we probably weren't on our climb. I came down, Jacqueline ran up the climb on top-rope a couple times, then we looked around some more and finally found the real start of the round. We went up a couple very nice pitches, but decided that since not only was it getting too late for us to finish the climb (it was about 3pm and we had 8 more pitches to go), but we had also neglected to bring sunblock and were starting to get a bit crispy. So we rapped down and called it a day, going back to the campground to shower, and then here to get ice cream and my Internet fix.
If we don't find a better climb to do, we will probably head back up our aborted climb tomorrow morning. I'll let you know...stay tuned.
Cheers,
-b & j
We're in Kalambaka, Greece now, after a hellish "day" of travel. Our flight left Newark at 6:30pm on Monday. We arrived in Athens around 1:30pm local time the next day. We immediatly hopped on a bus to bus terminal B in Athens, then got on another bus heading towards Kalambaka. The bus ride was a bit longer than we expected. We thought it was around 3 hours, but it turned out to be almost twice that. We found a hotel room, showered, changed, ate a good meal for the first time in a long time, and then went back and slept for 12 hours.
Today we're just walking around the area, scoping out other places to stay (we might camp, rather than stay in a hotel, to save some money), and checking out the rock climbing. We just purchased what appears to be the only guidebook to rock climbing in the area. They obviously know they have a monopoly because the book was 30 Euros...about $35.
It's very warm here--much warmer than expected. Comfortable for Jacqueline, too hot for me. I think it's in the mid-80s. Normal May temps are supposedly in the high 60s.
Ok, we're going to go wander around. Hopefully in the shade.
Cheers,
- b & j
We--and the bus--made it across the country! We arrived at my cousin Greg's in New Jersey around noon on Saturday, and had a great weekend hanging out with my relatives.
Unfortunately, this has to be a quickie post as we have to leave in a few minutes to head to the airport to catch our flight to Athens. We'll try to post again when we get there. Hopefully we'll get more pictures up soon as well.
Cheers,
- b & j
We're at a rest stop on I-80, about 50 miles west of Des Moines. It's cold, grey, and windy out now. Hopefully it will clear up. At least, let's hope the wind dies down. Wind was the bane of my existence going across Nebraska yesterday.
First, Sun Valley. We took a slight detour to visit our friends Brian and Laura (and Laura's German Shorthair, Callie) in Ketchum, Idaho. It took us a bit longer than expected to get there; we left Seattle around 9am and didn't get to Ketchum until about midnight. We're still learning that the Bus takes just a little bit longer to get places than your average vehicle, but it does get there. The weather was beautiful in Ketchum, and we had a great day getting a tour of the area and playing with Callie.
We left Sun Valley early on Monday morning. Our goal was to get to Cheyenne, a bit less than 700 miles. Wyoming was windy, but fortunately it was at our backs for most of the trip, so we made great time. We actually made it past Cheyenne, into Nebraska, before we stopped for the night at a rest stop a few miles east of Bushnell, NE.
We were woken up Tuesday morning by someone pounding on the bus. Thinking that were were going to get in trouble for spending the night there ("No Overnight Camping" again, but it did say you were allowed to be there for up to 8 hours), I poked my head out and a very nice man just asked us to move forward a bit, as they were opening up soon and we were going to be blocking traffic where we were (I had pulled in behind a semi, rather than pull into one of the actually parking spaces). Jacqueline spent some time talking to him later and he assured us it was perfectly OK to spend the night there.
Nebraska is a fine state, I'm sure, but it was hell for us. There were strong cross-winds during our entire trip across. The Bus, being about 8 feet tall, with a wheel base no wider than your average Jetta, doesn't take too kindly to cross-winds. I'm sure our moms don't want to hear this, but sometimes it takes all the concentration I can muster just to keep it on the road.
The wind slowed us down a bit, but where we really lost time was in dealing with a few maintenance issues. First, I got tired of our stereo fritzing out on us, and gave it a good smack, and then it stopped working entirely. After driving along in angry silence for a while, I decided we had to fix it. We stopped and I spend an hour and a half mucking with it. I got it going again, although it still fritzes out every once in a while. Jacqueline did manage to get in a good run, so the time spent wasn't a total loss.
As we were pulling out of that stop, heading back to the highway, we hit a big bump. About 30 miles later, we realized that the funny sound we were hearing was the sound of our muffler dragging. We got off at the next exit and quickly rigged something up with a bit of wire, then went 10 miles up the road to a better-stocked truck stop and spend an hour coming up with something a bit more "permanent." Satisfied with my engineering job, we got back on the road and 10 minutes later we heard the dreaded sound again and Jacqueline could see it dragging in the side mirror. We pulled off on the side of the highway and this time managed to get it rigged "properly" (i.e. it's managed to last for 150 miles so far).
So that catches us up. I'll try to post more often so we don't have these massive screeds. We hope to get to Chicago by this evening, where we may meet up with a friend of Jacqueline's. More from there.
- b & j
P.S. As we passed an Ore-Ida plant in Ontario, Oregon, right on the Oregon-Idaho border, Jacqueline had the sudden realization that "Ore-Ida" was from "Oregon-Idaho". I really had never thought of that, either. We both always thought it was just a silly derivation of "All Right!" Did everyone else know that, or are we just clueless?
P.P.S. New photos are up!
The trip is finally on. Actually, it has been for close to a week now. We're in Seattle, at Jacqueline's parents' house. We're heading out early tomorrow morning, charting a course for Ketchum, Idaho, where my friend Brian has been practicing being a ski bum all winter.
Our going-away party last Saturday night was fun. It was good to see a lot of our friends. Fortunately, we're old and incapable of partying too hard, because we still had a lot to do the next day before our departure--clean the apartment (thank you Marie-Therese!), make a run to the dump & recycling center, another visit to Goodwill, and a final trip to our storage place.
We finally left Oakland around 3 o'clock Monday afternoon. We stopped for the night at a rest stop near the Rogue River, just north of Medford, Oregon. Depsite the many "No Overnight Camping" signs, we slept there anyway, in the bus, and weren't disturbed.
The next day, we stopped off in Portland, where J. gave me a tour of her alma mater, Reed College. It's a beautiful, quiet place, although J. assured me that it was only because it was right before finals. We even found her dissertation in the library. I was a bit disappointed that no one had checked it out. I guess there's not much demand for works on the blurring of autobiography/biography boundaries in Collette's works.
We got to Seattle in time for dinner--something that is not to be missed in the Turnovsky household. J.'s mom is an excellent cook, and we were fed very well the entire time we were here.
Finally, the update on the bus: It's been running very well; no overheating, no 20-mph going uphill. It is still burning/losing oil, though--seems about a quart every 200-250 miles. I think we can live with this, though, as long as it keeps rolling. We bought a case of oil today, which should just about get us across the country. I also changed the oil myself today--a first for me on any car. It was actually pretty easy, although I think I left a few big stains on the road in front of the Turnovsky's house. Hopefully they won't notice it until after we're gone.
Take care and see you in 600 miles or so.