Tuesday: Two Wows and a Walk About

Woke up to less wind.

Actually, I woke up to Richie and Lou Lou staring down at me through my hatch. 

Jeff and Heidi each caught beautiful shots of daybreak while I was still asleep! Thanks, you two!

Lisa brings me my coffee every morning on SwimVacation. It’s a little luxury that quite literally enables me to greet my guests with my best self some mornings. Usually I wake very early, have some quiet time in my little nest, connect with home, do the Wordle and the Nerdle, maybe even the Quordle before she brings my cuppa. Today, after being up a few hours in the night, I slept to an astonishing 730. I might have slept all day, except for the chittering above from the pair of them, wondering if I was alive. We had a good laugh as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and drank my coffee quickly. I set my nest to Day Mode - bedding rolled up, towel down to catch post swim dripping, bathers at the ready. In this boat, I also sleep with several liters of boxed milk and 8 dozen eggs as there was no more room in the galley, so Day Mode means those also get moved back into easy reach should the chef require restocking. Thank you Richie and Lou Lou, for the wake up, the coffee, and everything you do for SwimVacation and for me.

My nest is a small berth in the bow of one pontoon of this catamaran. It’s tiny but so am I, and the only way in or out is the hatch in the ceiling. It’s pretty spare and one of my first orders of business when I board a boat is to nest and make a home for my off hours. I set up my lotions and potions within easy reach, neatly stack clothes, perhaps hang something pretty to soften up the hard, fiberglass walls. It’s my space and I love it.

Weeks ago, Simon and I had a conversation about the 60s band The Monkees. I don’t know why. I revealed to him that as a youngster I was a mega fan - watched reruns of the show, had every album, etc. Unbeknownst to me, he left that conversation and immediately printed 7 or 8 memorabilia photos of The Monkees, laminated them and packed them with his things for Greece. Late last night, I dropped into my nest to find my walls and ceiling decorated with The Monkees. I laughed aloud and fell asleep with the biggest smile on my face. Thanks, Swiggy.

And so I started the day in pretty good shape, and what do you know, it only get better.

Still at our anchorage in Paralia Stafilos, we splashed in for a swim to the east side of the bay, and a rounding of a peninsula to another resort-y beach. I love when we swim up to these beaches, James Bond style, all the day tourists on their lounge chairs in awe to see swimmers storming the beach. It feels cool, feels like Type 2 Fun - a fun that is earned and impressive to the ones who haven’t chosen it. What a snob I am.

The swim was spectacular, with caves, pass throughs, swim throughs, underwater passages and cliffs that reached high into the blue sky. Simon named them all  - The Cave of Tranquility, The Hole of Death, The Swim Through for All Time, etc. The beach on the far side (Paralia Velania) was stepped with large flat shelf rocks and littlered with smooth stones and was bright with light. We bobbed and played before turning back, rounding the corner to swim home into the wind which found us again. Still, it was wonderful

Paralia Stafilos

(39.0839329, 23.7469023)

https://maps.app.goo.gl/uncurUJTxnJ56aA57?g_st=ic 

We set sail for the third major Island in the Sporades Archipelago, Alonissos. We were hoping to stop and swim around an island on the way, but the wind wasn’t having it, so Simon and Richie identified a curious stretch of Alonissos coast line with a cut in it labled Mystic Beach. We dropped anchor there and sat to an incredible lunch of spinach and feta pie - Lou Lou, you crushed it - and suited up less than an hour later for a look-see swim.

The coast line of Alonissos shifts a bit from the rest of the archipelago here. We’ve been looking high up at tall dramatic cliffs so far, but here we found flattened sedimentary layers of rock, tables of white and pale pink, stacked and cantilevered as if by Frank Lloyd Wright. I love to watch geology shift as we pass from location to location of a place. 

We swam along these shelves for a while, noting how the same stratifications continue deep into the water, until we turned into a crevice in a wall. Mystic Beach indeed. The opening passed into a large room open to the sky, lined with trees and punctuated by a pebbled beach at the far end. Beneath the surface, a million little silver sides schooled and surrounded us, reflecting the light like a million mobile mirrors. Stunning. We floated and dove and rested on the beach. We didn’t want to leave.

Eventually we did, and continued along the outer wall to another small cut in the coast line. Here we found a long shelf which hovered at the sea surface. A few exploratory dives revealed that there was an airspace beneath, and that we could dive down to surface under it, and travel the entire 50 or 60 feet of the shelf in a magical grotto. A skylight in the top created a heavenly shaft of light into the water below. I was so inspired I even climbed atop the shelf to photograph through the skylight to our swimmers below. Jeff miscalculated his surfacing and bumped his head on the rock ceiling. He’s okay, but it was a good reminder that even though a place looks inviting, we are in a wild environment that requires concentration as we navigate it.

We played in this magical place for an hour. Chilled and a little wrung out, we swam back to the boat and yapped endlessly to Richie and Lisa about the Mysitic Beach room and the Magical Shelf swim and the clarity of the water and all of the things that have made for a Tuesday that will be tough to top.

At present we sit on the dock of a little Alonissos town called Patitiri. Lisa and Richie have history here in the early days of their storied relationship, and I’m excited to meander the tiny streets with them tonight as we all find a good place to dine. Let someone else do the cooking and the dishes.

In the morning we will top up with water - we have no water maker on this boat and our guests have been doing an incredible job with short, efficient rinses after swims so we haven’t run out - and make our way to a special place, far flung in these islands and so remote you may not hear about it until Thursday.

Rest assured, we will make the most of tonight and tomorrow and you will get the play by play when I can get it to you. Until then, we will live this adventure for ourselves. With these five, I have no doubt it will special.

Efcharisto Skopelos, Kali Nikta Alonissos,

Heather

Our deets for tonight:

Patitiri Port, Alonissos

(39.1437398, 23.8664467)

Dropped pin

https://maps.app.goo.gl/bsDVBmBstyfqbjSs6?g_st=ic

PS. A beautiful night at the top of Alonissos.