Greece Lightning
Greece was everything I imagined it would be and more: sunshine, dazzling white buildings, soft sand, the bluest, stillest ocean and not a worry in the world.
Oh, except for our boat. My friend Fleur and I had booked an eight-day sailing trip of the Greek Islands through the tour company Traveltalk. We would be on a boat of 30 people, which would cruise around the Cyclades, with breakfast, lunch and accommodation provided. The price was so unbelievably cheap, that we were left wondering what the catch was. Well, the catch was a pretty big one. Our boat was pretty much a useless piece of crap.
Well it floats, I guess that's something.
Things were off to a shaky start on day one. Fleur and I had spent the night on Mykonos, which was where the tour left from. We’d stayed at Paradise Beach, which is pretty much the Miami of the Greek Islands. The beach is covered in deckchairs and umbrellas and dotted with bars that pump techno music all day and night and aren’t shy about their female employees showing a bit of buttcheek. The beach won’t get full until 2pm, when everyone’s slept off their hangovers (you wouldn’t bother setting foot in Mykonos’s most famous bar, Cavo, until 2am, and it closes at 9am). And expect to see lots of Speedos. Actually, feel lucky if they’re even wearing Speedos. Nudity – and I’m not talking the enjoyable kind here – is pretty much the norm about these parts. Our accommodation was literally a white box – one that grew very hot in the 39-degree heat. Oven hot.
Our inviting box
After vacating our box the next morning, we headed to the port to board our boat. We met our tour guide Alex, a silver-haired half-Greek man with stunning blue eyes whose sexuality became a hot topic for the whole trip. I think it’s pretty obvious he was gay, as much as he tried to tell us otherwise. We also met our 30 fellow seafarers – all but about three were Aussies, and about 95 per cent of those were living in the UK. Fleur and I had already earned a reputation for being the tardy two after heading out for lunch and returning to the boat rather late to find everyone already eating lunch, which we didn’t realise was going to be served. The tour was supposed to leave at 2.30pm but for whatever reason we ended up sitting on the boat’s sundeck, staring at Mykonos port for about three hours, not moving. At one stage we saw the captain leave the boat. Apparently he forgot to do some paperwork or something to give us permission to leave Mykonos. Didn’t really give us much faith in our captain. Then it took about four or five hours to get to our first stop, the island of Naxos, and we got there very late and very tired and hungry.
Our experience of Naxos the next day was very rushed, which was a shame, because it was simply stunning. With its white buildings, blue shutters and doors, colourful flowers and pebbled streets, Naxos was postcard-perfect and exactly what you would expect of Greece. We explored the town, then jumped on a bus to a beach around the corner that was just gorgeous with umbrellas, crystal clear waters, and gorgeous views. We were rather enamoured with Naxos, but that afternoon we were out of there (with the boat leaving about two or three hours late once again, of course).
Naxos
Leaving Naxos, the weather forecast was looking rather grim (windy) so our itinerary was altered slightly. We were supposed to go to Heraklia, a very small island, for a day but as there was a chance the conditions could leave us stranded there for a day or two, so we went to Paros instead, where there was plenty more to do. But then we got stuck on Paros for three nights. Which was really too much.
The first night on Paros we enjoyed a seafood feast, followed by a night out drinking ‘hand grenades’ (a glass of Red Bull, topped by a shot of Jagermeister propped above a shot of White Sambuca. When you remove the sambuca, the Jagermeister plonks into the Red Bull). Poor Fleur was bedridden the next day (was it the seafood? Not sure) with some kind of nasty bug so I went out and hired a scooter all on my own. I went to the hire place, handed over my Australian licence and the guy asked me, “Are you experienced?” And I replied, “Sure, I rode one of these in Malaysia.” He appeared reassured by this revelation. Then I jumped on the scooter, and revving it much harder than I should’ve, I zoomed off. I thought I was doing OK until I realised there were cars heading towards me – on my side of the road. I was driving on the left side of the road instead of the right.
I quickly readjusted and pulled into a service station to fill up. As I was doing this, a scooter with two people on it pulled up beside me. It was the scooter hire man – he had followed me. He appeared very distressed. “You must give the scooter back,” he said in his broken English. “You will die,” he said and babbled something about being Australian and not having insurance. “No,” I said adamantly. “I was just getting the hang of it, I promise. I’ll be OK.” He still shook his head. He was really concerned and kept telling me not to ride. But I was stubborn. People were staring at us squabbling.
“Here, I’ll do you a deal,” I said. “You follow me out of the service station and back to town. If after that, you still think I shouldn’t ride, I’ll give you the scooter back.” He agreed, hesitantly. I did a perfect job of getting back to town and the man pulled up beside me. He looked relieved and happy. “You will be OK,” he said. “Just go slow.” And off I went.
I met up with two others from the boat, Ben and Lizzie, and we scootered off to a nice secluded beach and went for a dip; then we ended up down some back roads and I rode the scooter on really rocky pebbles and sand, which was quite precarious really. Then I had a bit of an explore around Paros on my own. The scooter hire people seemed relieved and surprised when I showed up alive to return the bike a few hours later.
The boat got stuck at Paros for three days because of water conditions, much to the chagrin of everyone aboard. We’d already had problems such as power blackouts and water not working while on the boat. Every day there was a new broken promise that we would be leaving. It was incredibly annoying because there was so much more of Greece to see and Paros was the least interesting island of the lot. We didn’t want our time on the more exciting islands of Ios or Santorini cut short. But in the end we just had to learn to breathe and enjoy the paradise we had found ourselves stuck on.
Finally, we left Paros on the morning of day four of our trip. But it was one LONG trip to get to Ios. The boat also had no water and no power. No one could shower. No one could FLUSH THEIR TOILETS. The boat smelt like arse. Our “air-conditioned” rooms were like furnaces (and had been since the trip started). And this was after a big night. The boat was rocking like all hell. You could barely walk from one to the other without getting thrown around. It was ridiculous. We got to Ios late in the afternoon, dirty, smelly, hungry and wanting to be as far away from that damn boat as possible.
So Fleur and I jumped on a quadbike and decided to scoot off to the other side of Ios – away from the main town (party party party). It was quite a long drive to get there and a ride-on lawnmower would’ve had more power than our quadbike (we stopped it halfway up the hill, then it wouldn’t take off again because it was too steep. So we had to let it roll backwards all the way to the bottom of the hill and try again, much to the amusement of a small herd of goats sitting watching).
When we returned to the boat, we were dismayed to discover there was still no water and no power. Oh yeah, and there was smoke coming from the boat. Luckily for us (me, Fleur, Ben and Lizzie), pretty much as soon as we stepped on the boat, the water started operating again, so we all got showers, unlike everyone else who just counted themselves lucky they’d stocked up on Wet Ones before boarding. However, the generator was broken and we were informed that we would all be vacating the boat the next day and getting on ferries to Santorini – our last stop before heading back. As we were leaving the boat for our big night out, a local man pulled up and asked us if our boat was on fire. Then the police quickly followed. We told them to talk to the captain. Whatever went down, it wasn’t good, because during the night Alex got called to an “emergency” and appeared very distressed afterwards. My guess is that they police said the boat was unseaworthy and wasn’t going anywhere.
So we hit the town. And oh, did we hit the town. Went to many nightclubs with very cheap drinks, including the ridiculous Slammer Bar, where you had to wear a helmet to drink your shot, and afterwards you are hammered over the head with a crate, hammer, baseball bat – basically anything they had lying around. Such a weird gimmick.
In another small-world moment, I was hanging at a bit of a crazy bar called Flames, when I bumped into a good friend from Merimbula, and more recently, London – Rose. I saw her heading into the club and recognised her straight away only to discover that in the only way you can be on Ios, she was rather inebriated. She mumbled something about wanting to pash someone and wandered off. She said later that she was so drunk that she thought it was completely normal that she had seen me on this random Greek Island. I bumped into her again, along with her sister Claire, poolside during Swedish Midsummer celebrations the next day (the BIGGEST day of the year on Ios … more about that later).
So it was a big night on Ios. One that resulted in me attempting to drink seven shots in record time only to fall short by two minutes. If you beat the bar’s record, you got your shots free. Unfortunately I had to pay, but I got a T-shirt. We ended up wandering back to the boat at 7 or 8am, just in time for breakfast.
There was no time for sleep the next day either, as we headed straight to Farout Club for Swedish Midsummer celebrations. I caught a quick kip on a giant cushion in the beating sun before sitting poolside while watching the hoardes of young beautiful people enter the club, running and screaming, rotten drunk, and proceeding to dance (or gyrate, dry-root, whatever you want to call it) to some very repetitive dance music. I have never seen so much naked flesh and making out in the pool in my life. We watched with amusement until we had to head back to our defunct boat and leave Ios. We were sad to leave, but also exhausted.
The pool was so peaceful, until ....
Santorini was my favourite. Luckily for us, the travel company had put us up in a pretty damn nice hotel for two nights – including one extra night than the tour was supposed to go for. Fleur and I hired quadbikes and explored the whole island. Breathtaking landscapes, Red Beach, black sand, volcanoes, sunshine, historic villages, absolutely amazing sunsets, the biggest squid I’ve ever seen on a plate … it was sublime. A great way to end our trip. All our qualms about the defunct boat and the hours of hell we’d endured on it were quickly forgotten.
Santorini
We also went to see the famous sunset at Oia, but of course, not without a glitch. We had just left Fira after eating the best moussaka ever made and we were on our way north to Oia when our quadbike completely zonked out. On a busy road. I tried to start it over and over to no avail but luckily for us, we had conked out right outside a scooter hire place. A topless Albanian man came out, flexed his muscle and straight away diagnosed a dead sparkplug, and fixed it for us for free, meaning we would make it in time for the sunset.
Our Albanian hero. I'm saving this one for the calendar
The sunset didn’t disappoint but I can’t say it was the BEST one I’ve ever seen (I think South-East Asia wins out in that category), and if there wasn’t 500 million other people jostling for a position it might’ve been that little more magical.
Our last night we spent on Mykonos. Fleur and I and three of our fellow boaties Dan, Aaron and Scotty (who we’d coined ‘The Three Stooges) negotiated a nice house for the lot of us in Mykonos town … we crammed into this woman’s tiny little hatchback (half my body was literally out the window) and got this nice little pad to ourselves for a night. Think the woman was a little uneasy about it but we were good tenants. Watched the World Cup and ate ourselves stupid (just for something different) and finished our Greek adventure with a bang (though Mykonos is stupid expensive and my least favourite of the islands).
Then it was back to Athens. I hadn’t thought that much of Athens on my first visit … it was sweltering at 39 degrees and was rather dirty and noisy and not that friendly. On our second visit, it was not quite as hot, but just as crazy … ended up sleeping on the hostel floor because there were no beds. And when I say sleep, I mean for an hour tops. Fleur and I had decided to drink too much ouzo and beer and had even at one stage ended up crammed into a car with a bunch of others to travel to a lookout (which was stunning, I must admit) to see the lights of Athens twinkling below us and before I knew it, it was almost time to get up and make the long-haul taxi journey to the airport to get my 8am flight to London which I wasn’t even sure would be leaving due to a transport strike in Greece (what a surprise!). Luckily I got on that plane, and was out like a light for the whole flight back to London.
Efharisto Greece, I had a blast.
Choose your own (mis)adventure 
Great post Beth!!
Oh Beth! I laugh all the way through your posts! Fun times.