Wow! Lots to share from the last few days. It’s Saturday evening as I write this, but
have no idea when I’ll have Internet to post.
We are anchored next to a monastery on one of the outer islands just
north east of Skopelos. Today was the
first real day of sailing where the wind and weather cooperated. When we finally turned the engine off and were
just under sail power, I couldn’t help but smile. We did a good bit of training today tacking,
jibing and trimming. My duties are
becoming a little more specific, as I pretty much just focus on trimming the
headsails and the foresail, and everything related to anchoring. If something goes wrong, I try to fix it,
which so far has mostly involved me running out on the sprit and pulling the jib
free from the staysail as we come across upwind (lots of sailing jargon there,
basically I walk out on the part of the boat that sticks out in front and pull
on some ropes while trying not to fall in, or the latest danger brought to our
attention: castration). The students
have done a fantastic job of learning their tasks and becoming fast and
exact. On Monday, the three teams will
all switch sail stations so it will be a little bit of a learning curve at
first, but we should do fine.
Backing up a couple of day…. Tuesday afternoon I had free
and decided I wanted to hike up to the monastery and check things out. Being on a boat with 14 other people
definitely means solitude is tough to come by so I was excited when I was freed
up around 16:30. I walked out of the
harbor and started along the path uphill.
Two little dogs followed me out of the harbor and would be my companions
for the duration of my hike. Every
switch back they would run ahead and then wait for me. They would even come if I whistled, and
waited for me outside of the monastery when I made it to the top. I was a little crunched for time but was
pretty committed to making it up to the top, so I paced it out pretty
quick. Fortunately it was cool and there
was even a slight rain/mist, so nothing too extreme in the physical exertion
category. When I finally made it the
monastery door, I definitely confess I paused for a moment and contemplated the
chances of me being stolen by some witches and cooked in a stew. I was on top of a hill I had just hiked
without passing another soul for the past hour, and no one knew where I
was. It was misty and overcast, perfect
witch weather. The monastery looked like
an old castle. The sign on the door said
ring once and wait patiently. I had just
hiked for an hour uphill and certainly wasn’t going to stop at the doorstep so
I rang the bell, and waited for what felt like an eternity as I replayed all
the witch movies I had seen in my head. Sure enough, an old hobbled nun limped over to
open the door, barely up to my waist in her state, with teeth coming out every
which way and long whiskers on her face. “Great,” I thought, time to get thrown
in a big pot with some frogeyes. What’s
worse was that this witch/nun was offering me some sort of food from a
jar. Fortunately, I was too smart to fall
for the "candy from an old person that’s really poison" routine so I politely
declined. If my facetious account of a
witch has run too far, I wasn’t in any danger of being tossed in a cauldron,
and the old nun who greeted me turned out to be named Miriam, and had lived at
the monastery for six years by herself (she did look exactly like a witch
though). Miriam only spoke Greek, but
fortunately another man who was visiting the monastery, Thanneus spoke Greek
and English. Thanneus grew up on
Skopleos but had since moved to Sciathos and was just visitng. Thanneus was very friendly and helped
translate what Miriam was saying, and asked lots of questions about why an
American was visiting a monastery alone at the top of hill on an island in the
middle of the Aegean Sea. The monastery
was pretty incredible, an outer wall with rooms for visiting pilgrims to spend
the night and inner structure that was the main chapel. The chapel was ornamented to the extreme,
with every surface being carved, painted or plated. After spending a few minutes marveling in the
middle of the chapel, I was startled (more like scared to death) from someone
coughing a few feet behind me. I had
walked right passed a pilgrim sitting in the shadows quietly. Eventually the lady, who happened to be
Russian and a Greek Orthodox, told me in broken English that she was visiting
for religious purposes. The two
visitors, Miriam and myself managed to talk for a little bit through the
translation of Thanneus and the broken English of the Russian - one of the
stranger conversations I’ve been a part of.
Thanneus offered me a ride back down to the port, which I happily
accepted, since I would have been late for dinner if I had neede to hike back
down.
Wednesday we had free all day, so after breakfast and
packing our lunch all the students and I headed into to town with the goal of
renting vehicles to explore the island.
I had my eyes set on an ATV or dune buggy, but most of the rental places
required an international driver’s license.
After checking about 5-6 places and always being denied for lack of
proper paperwork, we went up along the main road a little further to one of the
last rental places in the area. Nikolas’
Rental Shop seemed pretty sketch from the get go, which meant we probably had a
good chance of renting our vehicles there. Sure enough after a few minutes, my
American driver’s license and a friendship discounted price we tore down the
road in two dune buggies and one ATV.
Some of the girls had rented two cars so together with our three vehicles;
we made quite the envoy travelling around the island. Our first stop was the monastery I had hiked
the day before. The ATV made quick work
of the rocky switch backs and we all spent a few minutes walking around and
greeting Miriam. Next we travelled along
the coast for almost an hour to another beachfront village for lunch. Taking
the ATV on the road was fun, but the handling sucked, so I had to take turns
pretty slow but I was able to go about 70-75 kph, which was a lot of fun. After lunch we somehow managed to navigate up
into the hills of Skopelos to another old monastery. After a quick walk around we rotated through
the vehicles and I ended up in one of the dune buggies. Although not as powerful up hill as the ATV,
the buggies handled really well and could drift corners like a dream. We found a big puddle at the bottom of one of
the hills and decided it would be fun to go through it. It was probably only 6-8 inches deep of water
but was more then enough to completely soak us and cover us in dirt and
mud. Since we were already filthy at
this point we figured we might as well go through the puddle again, and again
after that. We ended up at this cliff
with a walking path down to the beach and an off road path to a light house at
the very tip of the island. At this
point I was driving a dune buggy, which were “supposed” to stay just on the
roads, but figured any path made for vehicles could be a road, so we went
tearing down this mud filled bumpy path to the light house. Between driving right next to a vertical
cliff and getting thoroughly soaked several times while drifting around some of
the corners, the path was an absolute blast and the views from the lighthouse
spectacular. After a quick swim at the
beach to wash off and regroup for our trip back down to the harbor, the guys
left on dune buggies and the ATV while the girls took the car to the Mamma Mia
church. I’m sure the church would have
been cool, but being able to fully open up the throttle on the way back down
without having to wait for anyone else was too much fun. Later that night we all dressed up a bit and
took the vehicles to Theo’s house for a great home made meal. I was able to sneak out for a bit later for a
late night ride back to the coast, but the headlights on the ATV weren’t strong
enough for me to be able to drive fast and safe so I headed back to the
ship. That's all for now. Check out my other post about sailing to the outer islands.
Keep Well
-BG
No comments:
Post a Comment