Κόκκινο νησί

hmmm.... so we were in pireus or however you spell that...and we walked around for a day and a half waiting for our ferry. Everything was closed, and while the area near the port was shit, the rest of the town was actually quite nice. Then at 9 o'clock the next day, we finally boarded our ferry. This process in Greece, as opposed to Spain, and Italia, was complete chaos. maybe because its the peak of the tourist season going to the greek isles, but in any case, we went to paros that night. Found our campground, and went to sleep. In the morning we awoke to find ourselves on this beautiful little island, with great beaches, whitewashed buildings with blue windows, and a few too many tourists. After 1 more night there (and a little more chaos figuring out how to get back to the port for our 7am ferry) we left for the island of Ikaria.

This little island, filled with fascinating history, in particular the fact that Greece exiled about 15,000 commies to it in the 50s, and now the island votes whole heartedly for the communist party, is about 8 hours from the mainland, close to Turkey, and was just what we were looking for. Despite the fact that the island is much less developed than any of the other touristy islands, it was booked to capacity, and we ended up sleeping on the roof of this pension we found. The town we stayed in was called Kampos, it has a population of about 94, but down the road to the coast about 4 km, there is another town called Evdilos, that has around 500 people (the big city on our end of the island). We spent our days eating figs and grapes from trees, baaing (is that a word?) at goats we'd pass on the road, and tearing down communist posters on walls for souvenirs. Oh, and we swam for hours in the different beaches nearly every day. We also rented a scooter, that didn't really have the best brakes, and 50cc wasn't quite enough to fly through the corners with our knees down. But it was a lot of fun.

But, as all things must end, our time on the roof of 'Rooms Dionysis' had to as well. Yesterday, we took a ferry back to Pireus, where we jumped on the metro and came into Athens around 10pm last night. Today, we saw the Acropolis, and lots of other old athenian greek ruins. Athens is nice, but a lot like any other big city, just with really old things kind of splattered throughout it.

more to come,
Esteban