Month: October 2017

CGOAB link

Date: 2017-10-04
Start: Agios Nikolaus
End: Tsoutsouros
Distance (km): 92
Climbing (m): 1100
Route description: E090, then Epar.Od. Ierapetras-Pachias Ammou to Ierapetra, then coastal road to Tsoutsouros
Road condition & traffic: Overall traffic was very light, though heavy getting out of Agios Nikolaus. Almost no traffic along the south coastal road. Road was in great condition except for small sections of the south coastal road that was short stretches of gravel, rough concrete, or patched asphalt.
Weather: Sunny 21-31C, strong wind from the North
Stops: Ierapetra for lunch at a small place near the water for souvlaki pitas
Accomodation: San Georgio’s Hotel 25€
Notes: An incredible day of cycle touring, though the hills were a bit steeper than expected on the south coast (14-15% grades in places), and we had to walk some of them.

We found a cafe for a morning espresso and checked out. I asked the hotel manager about riding along the south coast, and he confirmed that there is a road following the coast all the way from Ierapetra to Tsoutsouros that we could use. I had originally thought we’d have to go inland from Myrtos and then come back out to the coast around Keratokampos. So I updated the route on my phone and GPS and found that it meant 200m less climbing, sweet!

We stopped in Ierapetra for lunch and asked a woman who was selling boat rides where to get the best souvlaki. She pointed to the place next to her and said it’s the best because the meat is fresh. So we gave it a try, avoiding the more touristy options overlooking the water. The souvlaki pita was good, and the tirokafteri was okay and for 11€ for two of us, quite a good price. Washed it down with a can of Alfa beer, and chatted with the woman a bit more. She’s from Romania and comes to Crete to work during season to sell boat tours of the nearby islands. She said it’s off-season now, so she mainly just gives advice to tourists walking around like us, and she has taught herself 5 or 6 languages! Indeed, we heard her speaking better French than me to a French couple walking by. This winter, she’s looking forward to reading more books in different languages to improve her skills. We told her about our trip, and she said “Bravo!” and said it was nice to see that we’d also given up the traditional life for one much more enjoyable on the road.

After lunch, we rode out of town, and I was surprised how industrialized the area was west of Ierapetra, with lots of businesses and greenhouses scattered along the landscape and lots of garbage along the road, which we haven’t seen anywhere else in the Greek islands. As we got further from the city, it became cleaner and less industrial, but the greenhouses continued all the way along the coast.

We passed a few small fishing villages and resort towns, some beaches with a handful of people, some deserted beaches, and a scattering of nudist beaches. Now this is the kind of quiet beach life we’ve been looking for! The road continued with some very steep 100m-200m climbs. With all the time off the bike, these took a lot out of us, and we started talking about maybe a rest day the next day if the Tsoutsouros lived up to our expectations.

When we’d asked a few locals about Tsoutsouros, the react varied from “meh” to an unconvincing, “yeah it’s nice”. It was described as a small fishing village with a decent beach, which sounded perfect to us, as it would be quiet.

When we arrived, it was exactly as we’d envisioned it, and since it was off-season, we had the pick of pretty much any hotel on the shoreline, many with ocean view rooms still available. We settled on San Gregorio’s and the owner of Taverna Anna next-door greeted us and called out the owner, Niko, of the hotel, who showed us a room with a partial sea view and agreed to let us put the bikes on our private balcony. And just 25€ per night, 10€ less than advertised online! Perfect! He offered us some appetizers and we had some beers overlooking the ocean, and he told us about his time in the navy stationed in our home town of San Diego in the 90s.

Later, he said he was making dinner for his family and that he would make it for us if we’d like, so we enjoyed a local meal of stuffed peppers, bitter greens, and tzatziki, along with some ouzo that I drank too much of! So with my hangover the next morning, we decided to stay an extra night and lounge by the beach!

I’m going to try to start doing a daily blog again as we begin to cycle in areas less commonly traveled by cycle tourists (e.g. India) in order to share our experiences with other cycle tourists and our friends/family back home. I will give this a try in Crete and see how it goes.

CGOAB link

Date: 2017-10-03
Start: Heraklion
End: Agios Nikolaus
Distance (km): 69
Climbing (m): 700
Route description: A90 / E090
Road condition & traffic: Car traffic near Heraklion was moderate. Pedestrian traffic was heavy along some parts of the north coast. Once we left the coast, the A90 had a nice shoulder, and the E090 was really pleasant low-traffic cycling through small towns. Roads were overall well paved with some small areas of potholes, patches, and heaves.
Weather: Very windy (mostly tail/side winds), mostly cloudy, 21C
Stops: breakfast in Heraklion at a nondescript waterfront touristy place for breakfast
Accomodation: Ikarus Hotel 29€
Notes: After nearly 2 weeks off the loaded bikes (we’ve been having a mini-vacation island-hopping in Greece), we finally began a 10-day tour of Crete. It felt great to be on the bikes again and also away from the over-touristy islands. We enjoyed Paros and Naxos, but Santorini and Mykonos we can only take in small doses. We found Heraklion to be a bit of a dull, gritty port city, and the north coast (east of Heraklion) to have many sections of super-touristy stretches by the beach, but we arrived at the lagoon in Agios Nikolaus, it instantly felt comfortable. Apparently it used to be a party town for the Brits, but it’s since become more sedate. We saw a cruise ship in port and heard a club playing music later that evening, but otherwise, it was pretty tame and quiet. We checked out a hotel with a straight-on ocean view first, but he quoted us 55€ despite it being listed for 30€ online, so I told him we’d rather go elsewhere. We ended up at Ikarus Hotel, where the kind front desk manager said the price online was right, 29€ for a double, and said it was no problem to bring the bikes up to the balcony in our room (just watch the walls!). The beach was just blocks from the hotel, not too busy this time of year, but we had a beer and relaxed before dinner. We thought about staying another night, but we were looking forward to riding more and getting even further away from tourists, so we left the next morning.

We’ve been island hopping through the Greek islands for the past two weeks, and our days have been defined by swimming, hiking, lounging, and eating. It’s a good life and a good place to unwind!

So far we’ve visited five islands, from the relatively obscure Chios (our gateway into Greece from Turkey) to the insanely popular Santorini and Mykonos, plus the moderately popular Naxos and Paros. Next up we will do a cycling tour of Crete followed by a week in Athens, where we will focus on bike maintenance and boxing, medical checkups and vaccines for India, and last minute preparations for the next leg of our trip. Oh and we’ll probably see the Parthenon and some other things too!

So here are some of the photos we’ve taken so far.

Chios

An intriguing blend of Turkish and Greek culture, you can order çay alongside moussaka in restaurants where everyone speaks Greek, Turkish, and English. The town center has a mosque mixed in with Greek Orthodox churches.

Ferries

It feels like we live on ferries lately. From Turkey to Chios, then Chios to Athens (overnight in a sleeper cabin), then an all-day layover, followed by Athens to Paros, where we finally rested for a few days.

Here we are as the sun was coming up, landing in Athens.

Damn Technology

My Nexus 5x smartphone spontaneously died while waiting for our ferry to Paros in Athens. It started to randomly lock up and restart. In its last dying breaths, I scrambled to upload all of my important info to the cloud, and literally 5 seconds after I completed the upload, it froze for the final time and never came on again. This is the same problem that Steve had with his phone, and when I called Google, they confirmed it is a known problem affecting many people, and they will replace it under warranty. We had two hours before our ferry, so I found the nearest cell phone shop to pick up a replacement to use in the mean time until I’m able to get the replacement sent to me somehow. The biggest downside to Google Project Fi is that the SIM cards only work with a few US-distributed Android phone models, so I have to get a replacement from the US.

Paros

We instantly fell in love with this island, with its small city center filled with white-washed houses and crooked streets, and lots of kitty cats. We began a routine of sitting by the beach doing absolutely nothing.

Kitty lounging

Sunset

Santorini

Santorini was astonishing, but we stayed too long, and it’s too touristy for us. This is a place where cities are literally built on bubbles. Granted, they are bubbles made of volcanic rock thousands of years old, but if you think about this island on that time scale, it is humbling and beautiful. I’ve heard it said that there are only a few places in the world where humankind has succeeded in improving on nature’s beauty, and I would have to say that Santorini is one of those places. Seeing the awe-inspiring volcanic caldera fringed with white-washed houses glimmering like icing in the sunset is simply mind-blowing.

A chilly sunset dinner

We hiked from Thira to Oia and just barely made it before hiking in the pitch dark.

We took a fun sailboat day trip, and here are some of the photos I took.

The switchbacks from the ferry terminal up towards Thira were not too steep but the traffic was horrible.

It’s always great to meet up with friends from back home!

When in Greece… Outdoor sunset movie theater!

Few clean cars on this dusty island

Ha!

Churches everywhere

Sunrise. I went back to sleep after snapping this photo.

From our hike

More churches

Our bikes  being lazy

Naxos

We took a fun around-the-island bike ride while here and enjoyed seeing the farmland and rural towns on the greenest Greek island.

Marble statue near Appolonas

Old and new technology

The terraced farmland and dozens of churches made for stunning contrast in the landscape

A very potent raki, similar to rakija from Croatia.

Terraced coastline

Lots of bees and honey

Church

Incredible sunsets from Naxos looking over Paros

More churches

Lunch on a beach that was almost deserted, being low season

Mykonos

The weather turned south when we arrived in Mykonos, and it is also a super touristy island, but we enjoyed our few days here.

Rented an ATV to explore the island

“Little Venice”

Windmills. The surf was so high, the waves were crashing over the wall on the edge of the town.

Blue and white everything

Cute bathroom gender sign

Tiny alley restaurant with incredible souvlaki

Food

You knew it was coming, so here is the food porn!

Greek salad, of course!

Many places had these meatballs with rice.

Gyros are our favorite quick meal.

Some kind of nouggat wafer they were selling on our ferry.

Souvlaki!

That’s all for now!

We’ve been totally lazy in Greece, and it’s been really nice, though we’ve gained a few pounds and need more physical activity. Our laziness is in part a reward for the challenges of the last few months and in part a way for us to plan what’s coming up. But it’s having an unexpected effect; we’re having second thoughts…

In less than three weeks, we’ll have our bicycles boxed up for our flight to India, Mumbai specifically. Yeah… Mumbai, formerly Bombay, the most populated Indian city, home to over 18 million people and one of the world’s largest slums. Poluted air so bad it’s blamed for the deaths of tens of thousands each year, over-population so bad that people get crushed to death when people move too fast in the metro, and traffic so bad you can be trapped for hours, and a city that is just barely recovering from a record monsoon season that killed thousands.

Yes, that city. Granted, it’s also home to Bollywood, arguably some of the best food in the world, a unique culture, friendly people, and has been named the number 1 city in the world.

But still, we are having second thoughts. Reading stories about streets and beaches litered with excrement, hotels filled with mosquitoes and only shared squat toilets, people catching amoebic dysentery, etc., we are understandably concerned about this choice of destination for our trip. But for every one of these stories, we read others of beautiful deserted beaches, stunning mountain scenery, relaxing backwater cruises, intriguing people, and food so good you will never be the same.

And that about defines India and the reason why we are going. It is an experience that will change us forever, and isn’t that the kind of thing we are looking for on this trip? The kind of thing we’ve already had, yes, but on another level in India.

I think Mark Twain said it best: “The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of traditions, whose yesterday’s bear date with the modering antiquities for the rest of nations-the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the world combined.”

So, how can we not go?? We have the opportunity, so we must.

Right?

No really, we need some validation to this decision… Right?

(PS: photos from Greece coming soon!)