The Greek Islands: Hop 'til ya Drop.

The Greek Islands are a trap. We have met so many people during our travels that have planned a trip to the Greek Islands for a few days, and stayed there for weeks. It was easy to see why; with all the beaches, party life, beautiful old towns, sunny climate and warm seas, life is easy in the Greek Islands. It’s the kind of trap we would happily sail into, if we had enough money to blow on things like that. But we don’t. We really, really don’t. Instead we decided to do a two-stop hop from the top of the acrop’, to Santorini and Rhodes, arguably two of the most beautiful (and consequently the most touristey) islands.

 Phoebe was dropping before we'd even started hopping. Traveling is tiring for a Phoebe.

Santorini is a postcard (metaphor alert: it’s not actually a postcard it’s an island but it’s so beautiful that it looks like a postcard). If you haven’t seen pictures of Santorini, it’s basically the remains of a huge crater rising out of the Aegean Sea, left over from one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the history of volcanoes. The island is all volcanic rock, so it’s pretty barren, but what really gets the tourists going are the white-washed houses and the blue-domed churches that are found mostly in the main towns of the island.

We stayed in Perissa, the cheaper, more lively part of the island. Had a few too many drinks with a bunch of kiwis we met from Taranaki (are there any kiwis left in New Zealand???) which was a laugh. We regarded the hangover we had the next day as a sort of sacrifice to Dionysos.

It seems that the thing to do in Santorini is to hire some sort of motorised vehicle and hoon around the island. Given our lack of funds and basic license level, we went for the quad bike option.

Felix found Phoebe's driving a bit scary.

 

Told ya Santorini was a postcard. One of the classic white-washed buildings of Oia perched on the cliff, looking over the caldera and turquoise sea.

The only disappointing part of Santorini was the Red Beach..It wasn't particularly red, and it was littered with rubbish.

The sunset in Santorini is a huge deal. All the bars and hotels on the western side of the island advertise "the best view of the sunset" or better still "the most unique view of the sunset" (lol). Missing the sunset in Santorini would be an insult to Apollo himself.

Next stop on our hop from the acrop’: Rhodes. Rhodes is so close to Turkey you can almost hear the call to prayer from the Turkish mosques, bit greedy on Greece’s part to claim it as one of their islands, really. The old town of Rhodes is the main reason tourists come here; it’s the largest inhabited medieval town in Europe, completely surrounded by walls and a moat. Being so large, it’s easy to escape the crowds – the tourists mostly mill about the entrance to the old town where all the market stalls are, like a herd of baffled sheep who have too much money to spend and loud American accents (or worse, Australian). If you wander a bit further into the town you can get lost in the narrow streets for hours without seeing/hearing another tourist.

 

 We got a bit lost in the middle of nowhere, trying to find our hostel in Archangelos, a tiny town halfway down the island of Rhodes. The owner of the hostel happened to drive past on his scooter and ask if we were the two kiwis he was expecting, and gave us a lift one by one on his tiny scooter, bag and all.

 

Archangelos was pretty bangin'. So much quieter than the town of Rhodes, and hardly anyone spoke English which made it quite interesting. It even had its own acropolis, which was infinitely less crowded than the Acropolis in Athens.

One of the Knights of the Order of Saint John, patrollin' the walls in the medieval town of Rhodes.

 Rhodes is meant to be the Greek island with the most sunshine hours, and the most flowers.... Good on ya Rhodes. But seriously, it was pretty lovely.

We love the Mediterranean. We'll miss ya.

Next time: Gobble gobble gobble!

Mainland Greece: Hermes Watch Over Us?

From Podgorica (in Montenegro) we caught a night bus to Skopje (in Macedonia), which unfortunately went through Kosovo and meant far too many passport checks at hours of the morning that we didn’t even know existed. Grumpy, we arrived in Skopje faced with the challenge of how to get to Greece by the cheapest means possible (our Eurail passes ain’t valid round these parts). Surprisingly, the answer was a taxi ride. Nove the Macedonian taxi driver drove us the 230km to Thessaloniki for the same price as a bus, only he drove faster and engaged in better banter than any bus driver would. To save money on petrol he turned the engine off in the queue to cross the border, and got us to push the car over into Greece. If ever anyone needs a taxi driver in either Macedonia or Greece, Nove’s your man.

We only spent one night in Thessaloniki, and didn’t really get up to a whole lot other than cower in fear in our air-conditioned room, afraid to step out into the 40 heat (by the fire of Hades!).

The White Tower, possibly the most famous symbol of Thessaloniki (though nobody has actually heard of it, we think it might be a museum?). The waterfront seems like the place to be, especially if you like frappés: people drinking frappés sitting down, people drinking frappés standing up, people drinking frappés on a boat, people drinking frappés with a goat.

 Pigeons rule the streets in Thessaloniki. Keep yo kids on a leash, they'll get 'em.

 
Our next destination was Trikala, a small town in the centre of Greece, very close to Meteora. Meteora is possibly one of the most underrated destinations in Greece, one that doesn’t feature in many tourist guides (Hermes be praised) but should probably be one of the wonders of the world. Words won’t do it justice, but we hope the pictures might:

 We met some pretty cool peeps at the hostel and had the most beautiful picnic just below this rock. Thanks to Jowe for her amazing camera and photography (and amazing singing!). And thanks Apollo for the beautiful sunshine.

 Meteora has 7 of the most epic monasteries you will ever see. They're all perched on top of enormous rock formations, and the only way up is via steps which wind up along the sides of the cliffs. Or via the pulley system...

 Monks and nuns gotta take time off to enjoy the panorama and be tourists too!

Of course we couldn’t visit Greece without staying in the mighty capital of Athens. Greece (and Athens in particular) has received a lot of bad press in recent years about the effects of the recession. Sadly it did seem to be the case in some areas with lots of abandoned buildings, graffiti everywhere and people on the streets, but it seems the tourist industry has not suffered much at all, if the crowds at the Acropolis were anything to go by.

After getting lost in the 'burbs of Athens we managed to meet up with some of Phoebe's family for a delicious Greek meze dinner! Lots of food from the sea, nom nom.

Behold how she sprawls, the mighty city of Athens! A messy city, but definitely worth a visit. If the history doesn't fascinate you enough, surely the gyros will win you over - they're cheap, delicious, fatty and filling, and sometimes make you want to vomit after them. We can't speak for the nightlife, but from what we've heard it's probably best to head to the Islands for that.

Gazing upon the Parthenon was probably worth it in the end, but by the power of Athena we had to wade through a lot of tourists to get there. It's times like these where owning a cattle-prod would be fantastic.

Next time: Across the Aegean Sea!

Montenegro: Beaches, Monks & Canyons.

Kotor, Ostrog, and Durmitor; 3 places that we knew nothing about a few days before going there, all in a country that we knew close to nothing about. Montenegro is in the heart of the Balkans, one of the countries least affected by the recent Yugoslavian war. Considering how small it is, it manages to pack a bunch of cool stuff into it: beaches and bays to match Croatia’s, mountains as rugged and beautiful as the alps, and food as good as anywhere else in Eastern Europe.

Arriving from Croatia, we spent a night in Kotor, a small town at the tip of the Bay of Kotor with an old town which was reminiscent of Dubrovnik, but surrounded by mountains that rose straight up out of the sea. No lack of beautiful scenery here on the Adriatic coast, let us reassure you.

The view over the Bay of Kotor from the ruined castle. One cruise ship away from perfection. With views like this, we were in love with Montenegro from day one.

 

We had heard whispers on the wind of a sacred monastery in the heart of Montenegro, a monastery built into the cliff on which it stands, a place of pilgrimage and solitude called Ostrog. Determined to get here we tried our hand at hitchhiking from Kotor. 2 hitchhikes, a bus and taxi ride later we made it to the upper monastery. We decided to go for the full experience and spent the night sleeping in front of the monastery with other travelers and pilgrims, almost all of which were Serbian or Montenegrin. We definitely felt spiritually out of our depth, but it was a unique experience. Something different.

The gleaming white monastery is visible the whole way up the Ostrog valley, but you can't really tell what it is until you get to the foot of it. Also there's no public transport to the monastery, only the odd tour group during the day. Hard to think of a more peaceful place to build a monastery.

The only bad thing about spending a night here is that the monks begin their chanting when the sun rises, at 5.30am...

What happens when you want to prepare salad-in-a-sack, but your sack has hole in it? 

We present to you: salad-on-a-sack. Much messier.

From Ostrog we hitchhiked further north to Zabljak, the main centre in Durmitor national park. We were mainly drawn to Durmitor when we heard there were heaps of bears and wolves in the forests (we laugh in the face of danger). We didn’t encounter any fluffy carnivores, but we did do some exceptionally beautiful hiking, and even a spot of canyoning to keep the appetite for extreme sports sated. Durmitor is home to two impressive canyons: The Tara Canyon which is the second largest canyon in the world (after the Grand Canyon), and the Nevidio Canyon which was the last canyon ever traversed by man, in 1965. We chose the latter for our canyoning expedition

 The Black Lake. All the best things in Montenegro are 'black', hence the name. It looked decidedly green to us, but maybe they named everything at night time.

 Meet Ragnar, the cutest puppy in all of Montenegro/the world (told you the best things in Montenegro are black). Born on the 3rd of July, Ragnar is a resident at the Hiker's Den Hostel in Zabljak. The hostel was awesome and reminded us of the Ginger Monkey (see: Tatras Mountains blog).

 

Tramping in Durmitor! We crossed some kiwi blokes from Southland (we didn't ask for more details) who were tramping up the highest peak in Montenegro in their jandals. Absolute top blokes.

We found some snow and pretty beautiful ice caves... Montenegro has it all! Felix was so stunned by the beauty and magic that he turned into an ice prince, hence the white face.

The man who guided us through the Nevidio Canyon was none other than the son of one of the first men to traverse this canyon. They did it without wetsuits and spent a month in hospital afterwards (the water is ~7 degrees). The whole experience was enhanced as the guide didn’t speak a lot of English, which made it feel like an authentic Montenegrin experience. He had the basics: “Stop”, “go go go!” and “photo”. “Go go go!” was easily his favourite. It was our belief that what happens in the canyon, stays in the canyon, until we found out the guide had a go-pro… We're trying to work out how to capture still shots from the videos he took, but these are a bit of a taster:

 

 

 

Next time: We head to the land of Greeks, Gods and gyros.

Croatia: A Very Sweaty Birthday Boy.

Money-saving initiative #8: When booking a night train, don’t pay the extra fee for a sleeper carriage. Instead the carriage full of non-reclining seats will be fine, right? Here is a photo of Phoebe, reading a Eurail pamphlet with pictures of what your typical Eurail customer is meant to look like. As you can see, expectation and reality are often very different things:

Needless to say, we arrived in Split at 6am bright and ready to face a day of exploring in 30 degree heat, and rapidly rising. Our decision to skip inland Croatia and head straight to the coast seemed to be a good one - Split is a pretty beautiful city. It’s typically Mediterranean in climate and culture, and has an old Roman style town centre. We went on another free walking tour, which was great for learning a bit about Croatia’s varied history. Every day we were told the next day would be even hotter, which seemed totally ridiculous when we were already consuming at least 3.5 litres of water each day, sweating about 2 litres of that just wandering around, and desperately searching for any opportunity to cool off in the ocean.

Split was originally built as a retirement palace for the Roman Emperor Diocletian. Do we get retirement palaces in New Zealand?

 

 We hobbled up this hill to get magnificent views over Split. It was too hot for anything other than hobbling.

Felix, getting really excited at the market we found inside the old city walls. In truth, the excitement probably stemmed mostly from the fact that this was a place to escape the heat for a bit.

After Split we headed down the stunning coast, to the  ‘Pearl of the Adriatic’, Dubrovnik. As anyone who has been to Croatia/any Game of Thrones fan will tell you, the old town of Dubrovnik is a place like no other. It makes Split seem like a bit of a chump. The blue of the Adriatic Sea, the striking brightness of the sandstone buildings and the orange terracotta roofs make for an extraordinarily beautiful walk around the old city walls, which entirely surround it. No, we’re not authors for the Lonely Planet, we just found Dubrovnik really lovely, ok. Felix turned 22 on our last day in Dubrovnik, an occasion which called for much celebration, and served as the perfect excuse to sign up for the Dubrovnik Pub Crawl. The 30-degree temperatures in the evening meant that crawling between pubs probably would have been the easiest way to do things. DIVIDED WE STAND, UNITED WE CRAWL.

 Our walk from the bus station to the hostel was brightened when we stumbled across a little hedgehog. Sometimes it's the little things that count.

Dubrovaz the stunner. A view from the city walls. Money-saving initiative #9: Remember your student card. In most places this will give you a half-price discount. We don’t have student cards.

Felix walked round on his knees all day pretending to be Tyrion, yelling things like "Did ya send the raven?" and singing the Game of Thrones theme music.

We managed to find a sick jumping spot, where the locals Barbeque little cevap sausages, jump off rocks and throw around a waterpolo ball.

 Hey look, it's a starfish! Lol just kidding, that's Phoebe again. (Back to our old tricks.)

 The birthday boy in his new birthday singlet, which may or may not have been fashioned from one of his old t-shirts.

 Phoebe executes a perfect scuba entry. Splish splash hohohoho. Scuba diving somehow seemed to trump the birthday singlet.

A beached whale.

Next time: Kotor, Ostrog and Durmitor.. We had no idea where these were either.