5/31 – Ed’s Patmos BD

This morning we walk through the deserted town streets, past the beautiful Church of Agios Ioannis Prodromos (one of the many churches surrounding our house – and one of the many bells we hear in the morning and afternoon), then around the harbor for our morning walk. This morning we stop at Sam’s Bakery and Café for cappuccino and Tiropita. The lovely woman at the counter shows us all the different Tiropita – white cheese, yellow cheese, with onion, with mushroom, small ones, sweet ones. Yikes! We tell her to choose her favorite and she picks the large white cheese Tiropita. Excellent choice! It looks like a huge overgrown empanada and is filled with an excellent cheese mixture. This will keep us fed for a good long time!

After briefly stopping at the house for our picnic supplies and gear, we walk over to get our pre-booked car (passing one of the ubiquitous cats sunning on a scooter – this place has as many cats as Hydra – which is saying a lot!!!). Once in our little Panda, we head out toward Psili Ammos beach – where we hiked with the goats last year. Today, we are early enough that we stop at the windmills to get some more long shots over Skala with the windmills in the forefront and the Monastery looming over everything. You can definitely understand why the Monastery is up here when you get these views – no way anyone was going to conquer that place!

Back in the car, we make good time over to the other side of the island – even with all the road resurfacing going on. They are obviously resurfacing every single inch of asphalt on this island – and we’re obviously going to see every worksite in our 4 days here! Once past the paving, we find our way down the mountainside and onto the little gravel road that leads to our goat path. Being so early, we are the first car in the parking area. Again, no surprise! Off we go through the “free gate” entrance, making sure we latch it once we are through – and up onto the path we go to Psili Ammos. The views are as spectacular as always, but sadly, this year, there aren’t anywhere near as many goats!

There are a few here and there, but the bulk of them were near where we parked the car, and they never migrated to the path. Bummer! But the views do make up for the missing goats (they are a little intimidating anyway). The hike is fairly strenuous, actually, and just when you think you are there, and crest this big hill with a huge rock wall built on top (why? Why would anyone build that wall up here?) – you realize you still have to walk all the way down that hill. We love it and are very happy that we actually accomplish our goal and reach the beach this year!

The beach itself is fabulous – all soft white sand with a restaurant at one end (not open yet – remember it isn’t really “season” yet) and nothing else at all except lovely shade trees and the water lapping up on the shore. I joked to Ed that we could go skinny dipping! Because this is a perfectly quiet and secluded place where you can do anything you want and be alone and undiscovered.

Not our thing though, and we are completely happy to sit here, soaking up the Zen-like atmosphere, sitting on the roots of a tree that act like a bench, as we happily munch on our picnic of ham sandwiches and apple slices, listening to the silence with the beach all to ourselves. It was like being on a deserted island or something.

Except, well, we don’t really have the beach all to ourselves. There appears to be someone camping down at the other end of the beach, and when we look up, we see that there is a guy who is buck naked walking around in the water. Um. Oh, yeah, right, this is the nude beach! Totally forgot about that! So we could have gone skinny dipping!!! LOL. Turns out naked man isn’t alone after all, he has a kid and a woman with him – all buck naked. Then another couple arrives and they wander down to the far end of the beach and immediately shuck there clothes as well. More power to them!

We’ve finished our lunch and decide to sort of wander along the beach – away from the Nude end – and explore a little dock built into the rock on the side of the cove. We are guessing this is where they restaurant loads in supplies – because there sure isn’t another way to get in or out of here with anything big. Even a donkey train wouldn’t help you here.

I climb through a little canyon like space to perch on a rock, then we decide to make our way back out the trail to the car, passing the restaurant building and a couple of goats who have decided to grace us with their presence.

As we start our hike up, here come a boat load of people. Seriously, maybe 30 people hiking down this trail. A big group of maybe 20 together – I’m thinking a bus just got in! – then some couples and a foursome. All different ages and nationalities. Crazy! We’d never even guess some of these people would have made it on this trail. Impressive. But we are definitely not waiting around to see if they disrobe – un unh, no way! That’s a sight you just can’t unsee. So, no.

We slowly make our way up the steep hillside trail, cresting the rock wall plateau (seriously though, why?) and enjoying the nice walk back to the car.

Successfully passing through the construction zone, and getting great views toward Hora and the Monastery,

we turn toward Grikos beach and head to Kalikatsou rock, which, legend has it, was once the home to Aphrodite and also where hermits supposedly lived. We didn’t make it to the rock last year, so this year we figured why not. Getting there is – as always – interesting with Google. It tells us one way, but the road is literally a path down by the beach. We could have made it, but there is a truck at the other end cutting tree branches, making it a bit like our Crete misadventures, except that instead of rock walls we might hit, there is the water we would fall into. Yeah, reverse course.

We make it through some winding little narrow village lanes and come out back down on the coastal road, passing the beach lane on the way. Then we navigate through some flooded salt flats to finally arrive at the rock. Which is cool and fun to walk around, but not all that! I guess we could have climbed all the way to the top – but it looked a lot like some of those Wadi Rum boulders that don’t have a real path, you’re just supposed to be a mountain goat. Eh, we’re happy with staying relatively close to sea level. The views are still pretty great.

In the middle of this rocky little beach, there is the Petra Beach Bar (Petra!!! We made it to Petra – Patmos Petra, but Petra nonetheless!), which is thankfully open – so we stop for Ed’s first BD beer! It is a lovely spot with a sweet husband and wife owner team who take great care of us – fun little interlude.

On the way out of the beach, we take the other road, and head up toward Patoinos winery – the only winery on the island. We thought maybe they’d be open and we could do a tasting or a tour or something, but that was not to be. The gates are locked and it looks deserted. The growing season hasn’t really even begun, so you can understand why – and they advertise as a school or something, so, we weren’t’ very hopeful, but we were right there. And hey, the drive alone is worth it – in a manner of speaking. The road might as well be a goat path – it is really poorly maintained, but excellent driver Ed makes child’s play of the gullies and pot holes and safely gets us to the paved part of the road and out to the main road back into town.

Then it is more beautiful scenery and breathtaking views over the water – and those awesome benches placed in strategic locations where you can just sit and while the day away staring at the water. We love those benches!

Since it is still early, and we have the car until tomorrow, we decide to head to the other side of the island to an area we’d not yet explored. We drive through the more populous areas, toward Kampos and down along the coast with the numerous restaurants and cafes on the water, then out to the end of the peninsula that sort of faces Skala. But we are so far out, you can’t see the town any longer. Here there is nothing but scenery and coastline and beaches. There is one monastery at the end of the road, and we stop here, but instead of walking up to the chapel, we head toward sea level and the secluded beaches that dot the island here.

The hike down is great – along this cement path (who and how did they do this? We can’t imagine them bringing the cement mixer and laying this path out to nowhere – but somebody did!) that skirts what must be a goat corral. Huge stone walls are topped with dead scrub, which acts as natural barbed wire (hey – we need this stuff for the pool at Hawthorne! That way nobody would argue about feeling like they are in prison – its natural. It’s organic! It keeps the illegal teens out! Win win – I’m suggesting it when we get home!).

We continue on down the path, which has directional signs and obviously rings the island shoreline over here. We could walk for kilometers if we wanted. But we satisfy ourselves with only a kilometer or two, ending up on a lovely cove with a rocky little beach where I did my hands in the water just to say I did. And might I add that there are nude sunbathers here as well? Apparently we did not get the Patmos nudity memo! What the hell? Everywhere you turn, somebody is naked. At least these people aren’t hard to look at…..enough said!

Turning back, we wander down a more overgrown path to another beach and cove by the goat corral where a sailboat has moored then head back up to our little car and drive back to Skala.

We deposit the little Panda (God I want one of those cars at home!!!) in the public car park, taking a picture of the license plate just to ensure we can find it again! The we head home… to make lemonade! Seriously! There is this huge, prolific lemon tree in the garden courtyard with tons of lemons that keep dropping off the tree. We’ve been collecting them and finally have enough to make lemonade. There is even a juicer here in the house. So well equipped! If only we were cooking, we’d have fresh lemon juice and lemon zest all the time!

The lemonade turns out perfectly – but man do you need a lot of lemons to get even a little bit of juice! Ah, it’s ok. It works and we enjoy our fresh little afternoon treat while hanging out and relaxing.

Then it is onto Ed’s BD dinner. We do something we normally never do, and that is go back to the same restaurant we’ve eaten before. We loved Pantelis, and they were “born” in 1950, same as Ed, so we decided it was Kizmet and we had to go back for his dinner. And it does not disappoint. The food is just as good as at lunch – only this time we get Saganaki, the most tender octopus in wine sauce, zucchini balls (which are much better than last night) and grilled squid – which takes forever to come (not that we care) and when it arrives has 2 huge squids on the plate (we think for being late). An excellent meal all around!