What do you do on your last day on a Greek island?

It’s your last day on a Greek Island before you go back to the mainland and prepare to depart for home. What do you do?
Drink OUZO! But before you do that, you must take one more adventure out to see what you can see.

Ilias and I pulled out the maps and took a look and what there was left to explore. We still had several options open to us. We had yet to visit either the far east of the island or the far west. I wanted to check out the very tip of the western part of the island called Mali. The maps showed that most of the way was paved and two lanes, but a big chunk of it was not. What we really needed was a topographical map.

Turns out that the western part of the island goes up, and then it goes straight down....switch back down. Tear your breaks up down. I was handling the ride fairly well for most of it because I was riding in the front seat. But the view from the back was scarey and eventually M called it quits. I was perfectly fine with that because I was wondering if we were going to be able to get a Volvo back up that steep incline with 6 people in it. We got close enough to see a small beach down below that looked deserted, but there was a good reason no one was down there. We decided that since we were on the north-western side already, we would head back to Panormos and do that rock-climbing and hiking around the church we had missed out on before. That turned out to be a great idea.

the other side of the beach

Since we were mostly familiar with where we were, it was an easier hike down to the beach. R had not accompanied us on the last trip here so she was seeing the beauty in those hard to reach places. We did not linger on the beach this time, but hiked right on through, around the church and to the outer part of the point. Here were some treasures that we did not expect to find! There were several stone carvings in the side of the large rocks. There was one of a sun/star image and another in the side of a large boulder of a face. I wonder how long they had been there. There were also more salt pools and neat little pools of water that L could easily play in.

 

Up across a rock jetty, you could see a small outcropping of a tower that had been erected there before. Ilias wanted ever so badly to swim across the small inlet and climb the hill. I would have gladly gone myself, but it was getting late in the day and we still had to return to the house to pack and get ready to catch a ferry the next day. Once again, we decided to take a dip in the ocean without our clothes and enjoy the energy of the ocean and the earth one last time.

Ilias climbs. His son cheers him on.

Days like this make me wish I could have stayed on the island a little longer. There were still villages and beaches I had not seen but that would have to wait for the next visit. Tomorrow is a traveling day, and just like everything else in Greece, it will need our full attention to detail.

steps from the church

Church of St. Nicolas

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