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An Island in Three days! But such interesting and eventful days.

Aegialis Bay

Aegialis Town, Hotel Aegialis across bay

Amorgos — Aegialis

Just before we set out from Athens on our island tour, we asked Jennifer, a friend of ours in the travel business who had conducted tours in Greece where her tours went. In her response she mentioned Amorgos. Until then it had been off our radar: not on any obvious route from Athens through Crete and Rhodes to Turkey. We looked it up and found that it was among the more rural islands with a pretty small population, especially in comparison to its size, and that its most famous site was the Hozoviotissis Monastery, which hangs on a cliff on the center of the east coast.

Interested in seeing such a small island, we checked out ferries and found what we thought was a convenient one leaving from Naxos, so we elected to go to Amorgos. We bought tickets to Katapola, the port at the center of the west coast, which is only about four kms as the crow flies from, and so closest to, Hozoviotissis monastery on the opposite coast. In fact, however, the day we travelled the ferry left late (by order of the harbormaster of course, seas were too rough) and rather than arriving at a decent hour we got there well after dark and at the mercy of what we would find. The ferry itself was making what Americans call a milk-run: in the old days the local bus or train would wind in and out of the countryside to pick up milk from farmers all over the place. In our case, the ferry took us to every last one of the Micro Cyclades, five small islands south and east of Naxos.

After visiting the last of the Micros and after asking "Is this Amorgos?" and being told "Yes", we followed the remaining passengers as they got off at Amorgos. We were about to walk away from the pier when a woman called to us from a parked car and asked if we were looking for a room. We'd hoped for that but because we were already at the town end of the small pier thought it wasn't going to happen. Imagine our surprise, therefore, when we learned that this person was none other than Jennifer's friend, Irene, the owner of the Aegialis Hotel. From Jennifer's description we expected her hotel would be above our budget so we hadn't planned to stay there. But Irene convinced us to come and look. We should have known better because we hadn't managed to settle a price at the ferry. Once we were in the hotel we were sort of at her mercy and paid her price rather than going out in the middle of the night to look for something else.

When we left we had two more price-shocks. What we had thought was free internet service (a reasonable assumption since no sign was posted and many American hotels of this class give free access) turned out to be the most expensive internet we'd had, ten euros for 1.5 hours. And we felt we were charged overmuch for an average meal. We should say that we often encounter a kind of deafness when we talk to people, and especially hotel-keepers, about our lifestyle. Used to holiday-makers who are rarely price-sensitive, they cannot or will not believe that we are on a strict budget, which is the only way we can afford to travel continuously. They treat it simply as a bargaining ploy.

Getting to Hozoviotissis, Part I

Amorgos Woman and her donkey

Path Aegialis to Hora and Hozoviotissis

One of the main reasons for coming to Amorgos was to visit the Hozoviotissis Monastery which we tried to do twice and sort of failed both times. The first time we set out to walk there from the Aegialis Hotel. We thought it was about 5 km away and were surprised to learn it was estimated as a 3.5 hour walk. Irene volunteered to drive us the one kilometer from her hotel to the start of the walk above the nearby village which we'd already eyed across the bay from the hotel balcony. On the drive we asked why she named her hotel 'Aegialis' when it was in Katapola. She responded that it was named after the town and bay, Aegialis. It took us a moment to get the import of this: we were in Aegialis, the northern port, and not in Katapola, the southern port. We'd gotten off the ferry at the wrong place because we thought that particular ferry made only one stop at Amorgos!

Given where we were, we now understood the estimate. We set off and climbed through the charming village of Potamos above Aegialis and then were in open country. Not long after leaving Potamos, we encountered an elderly woman on her mule. She looked so picturesque and authentic sitting sidesaddle and from about 20 feet away, Gerry motioned to her with his camera, hoping that she would consent to a photo. Rather than nodding or shaking her head, she began to wave her arms rather feverishly and rather incomprehensibly to us. Jan walked closer to her to try to understand her gestures and soon all became clear: she wanted Jan to be in the photo too! In the end, she insisted that we take a photo of her with Gerry as well. Such a lovely, friendly lady.

Path Aegialis to Hora and Hozoviotissis

Path Aegialis to Hora and Hozoviotissis Naxos across the straight

After two hours of walking, we suddenly realised that we had lost the trail and after checking our poor map and looking at the landscape thought it likely that we were not even halfway there. We guessed that the trail was above us. Perplexed, we didn't know what to do: How much climbing would it take to find the trail? If we did find the trail, how much further to the monastery? Were we estimating right? If we tried to abandon — we could see the road far below — would we get ourselves stuck someplace where we'd have to come back up? And once below, which way should we go? Was Aegialis or Katapola closer? Finally, in the interests of healthy feet we abandoned and succeeded with only minor problems in climbing down to the highway. It was deserted. Amorgos has few people and none of them were going by. And then, just as we had opted to walk towards Aegialis, a car appeared, fortunately also going toward Aegialis. The driver was an artist (a ceramics maker) like so many other people we bumped into. Back in Aegialis and within easy reach of the comfort of our room we hardly felt defeated: we loved the bit of the walk we did having got some great views for our pains.

Doing Business, Island-style

Having abandoned our walk, we decided that we couldn't afford to stay more than two nights with Irene and since there was no public transportation to Katapola until Monday morning, we should therefore try and find a cheaper room in Aegialis. We asked our ceramics artist and she asked the grocer and he recommended the Pelagos pension which we promptly went to look at it. The woman owner/manager only spoke Greek. She showed us a very clean room with two big beds and private bathroom with hot water and called her helper to make up the beds as she thought that we wanted to move in immediately. We explained through our ditctionary that it was "tomorrow." She immediately understood and through hand motions showed that beds would be made up and the key would be in the door. When we offered to pay her, she managed to convey to us that we could leave the money with the grocer.

Aegialis Main Street

Aegialis Harbor and Fishing Boats

The next day around noon we arrived and found indeed that the key was in the door and the beds made up. We were the only ones in this multi-storey building. After unpacking our toilet things, we went out to find lunch. The grocery store was closed so we paid at the little restaurant nearby where we ate delicious home-made lentil soup and "biftecki". By giving the restaurant owner the phone number and 20 euros we easily conveyed the idea that we were paying for our room. Said restaurant owner pulled out a cellphone called and spoke with said Pelagos owner, restaurant owner said a few words, hung up, and smiled at us. Our bill was paid. Just as we were finishing our lunch, the heavens opened and every street in the village turned into a river. Undaunted, we paid for our meal and sloshed and splashed our way uphill to the Pelagos and spent a dry, if chilly, night.

Windmill on Aegialis Pier

Street uphill from Aegialis

Getting to Hozoviotissis, Part II

Our second attempt at visiting Hozoviotissis was more successful. Very early in the morning, after a very stormy night, we got up to clear weather at our 20 euro dolmatia and left. No checking out, nobody to say good bye to, and took the school bus to Hora, the "capital" that sits on the backbone of the mountain ridge that makes up Amorgos. There, we found a very gemütlich cafe near the trailhead, had a welcome cup of hot chocolate, played a game of backgammon, and, leaving our bags in the cafe, walked down the hillside to the coast road and then back up to the monastery. The sun came out while we were stepping our way down the hillside and so the monastery looked quite fabulous when we caught our first sight of it. The bad news was that they were doing some kind of spring clean-up work, rebuilding steps and so weren't open to the public that day. Such are the vagaries of winter travel in Greece! Still, we got great views from the monastery steps and reamed out our arteries as well, so we were quite happy with our lot.

Sea below and beyond Hozoviotissis

Hozoviotissis Monastery

Hozoviotissis Monastery

Goats on path to Hora

Back we went to make our way from Hora to Katapola. In the cafe a taxi driver wanted double the going rate; we declined so he, or the waitress who was translating, came back to normal price. In ten minutes we were in Katapola, in plenty of time to catch the 2:30 pm ferry.

Katapola Town and Bay

Katapola Bay and Town

Katapola Ferry office

Katapola Church

In fact — you should have expected this — the 2:30 ferry did not show up or leave at that time. Nor at the new time of 4:30. There was a Greek fellow there and he, being able to speak the language, learned something that made him disappear. We started looking at local pensions wondering which one we were going to spend the night in.

Katapola Rubbish bin and cats

Katapola Pier with approaching ferry

In fact the ferry finally showed up at 6 pm and we had another milk run, this one all at night, back to Naxos. There thankfully Petros was waiting to take us back to Oniro Studios. We'd telephoned in the morning saying we were coming. From 5 p.m. on he or his wife went down to the harbor everytime a ferry arrived to see if we were on it. Those guys are great. Go stay with them!

"The Red Boat: Ierapetra"

Sunset on way to Naxos