Naxos - Adventures in Greek Navigation

Sorry for the brief hiatus from our Greek trip.  I had to make a blog post about strike season starting again.  But now, back to Greece.

The next day in Naxos, we rented a car to drive around this rather large, mountainous island.  I was a bit nervous (with my role as being a navigator) - the roads have no names.  "No problem!" the person at the rental agency said.  "Just follow the road in the direction of the city you want to go in."  Things got interesting when we had three maps and none of them agreed.  Some had wiggly roads in parts of the island where other maps showed just fields.  In addition, the signs had the names of the towns in Greek, and sometimes had the English translation.  But often, the English translation was different than the ones on our maps.  We couldn't even find our way out of Naxos town without getting lost (twice).  Once we got out of the town, nothing made sense.  We stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, Naxos, and asked for directions from a nice Greek man.  Turns out we were on the opposite side of the island we thought we were.  Oops.  Well, we turned around, and then were on our way, occasionally joining groups of other lost tourists!

Our first stop was the ruins of an ancient temple, which was pretty well hidden.  We found a nearby restaurant for lunch in the middle of the island, where it was obvious no tourist has ever set foot in.  We decided to share some of our money with it in return for lunch.  When we walked in, the waiter waited expectantly for us to order.  When we asked what food he had, he said "We have toast."  So much for lunch.





Our next stop was a little village known for its pottery.  We followed the sign to the parking lot:

And found the definition of a Greek small village's parking:

The workshop for the pottery was neat to see, though, and it was dirt cheap!

Walking around the village.

In the village, there was also a small house that demonstrated how olive oil was made.  Bram gave it a try. 

Smash baby smash!

The area was covered with olive trees!  There must have been tens of thousands of them.

Our next stop was the distillery of the alcohol we had the previous night (see my previous blog post).  We saw the old (very very old) equipment that they use to brew their concoctions.  And we bought a nice cinnamon liqueur. 

Then, we got hard core.  Our next stop was Za, the mountain where Zeus was born and received his thunderbolt.  It was an impressive mountain - we could see why the Greeks thought it was the birthplace of their number one god.

Driving up it was not for the faint of heart!  Check out that church on the top of the hill!  Talk about hard to get to!

I'm not shoveling the driveway...

We stop on our way up to take in the view of the valley below.

Continuing up... eeeiiii!

Then finally - the hike to the cave where Zeus was born.  The path started out nice and flat, and even moderately paved, but quickly grew to a winding, frightening climb up the mountain.  At points we had to walk along slick rock, with the bottom of the valley hundreds of feet below us. 

Look at that path...

Closer to the cave, we came across some truly bizzarre vegetation.  We must be getting close!

 

 Then finally, we saw it.  After about 200 meters of scrambling up fallen rocks, we came to the cave where Zeus was born.

We discovered we did not make the climb alone!  We turned to find a goat, perched up on a rock.

You thought the climb was hard?  Pssh..

In fact, on our way down, we heard a symphony of chiming bells.  What could it be?  Well, it was actually hundreds of goats, perched on the opposite side of the valley from us.  We stood for about ten minutes trying to pick them all out.

Back in the car, we continue on to the next town on our list.  It had a really beautiful church, with the bell tower of carved marble.

In fact, the whole town was built with marble.  Even the streets were paved with it!

Why?  Ah - that's why.  A giant marble quarry, carved into the side of one of the mountains!

 

Taste of home: chili ristras!

Finally, we reach a saddle point, where we could see spectacular views of both sides of the island at once.

We ended the day by watching the sun go down over the Porta.  So ends our Naxos story.  What a great island.