As a recap here are the places we were touring for the day:
Back in the saddle, we headed back down to the lowlands of the island to our next stop- Xigia Beach. Unique to this one is the sulphur content of the water that comes out of underwater hot springs into the cove. So yeah, it’s a bit stinky, not terrible, but a little. Ever swam in a stinky sulphur body of water? If you have, you may have noticed that your rings, necklaces, or any other silver thing you happened to have on came out bronze-colored. I wear silver for the most part. And whoops!! I forgot to take my stuff off. It’s definitely not the first time I’ve done that. Luckily, a little silver polish reverses the reaction, and it cleaned up in no time. This is not like a sulfur hot springs; it is most definitely salty seawater.
This beach is so soooooo perfect!! It’s really tiny with a few tiki-style umbrellas and chairs for a 5 Euro pricetag (during summer… it was free and completely abandoned when we were there, but who wants to swim in the cold and rain?!) Best part? There is this amazing pulley system rigged up to the top of the cliff where there is a little basic café that you can send orders up to. Just plop your order in the basket, pulley it up, and after a little bit, your order of snicky-snacks and booze come whisking down for your beachy keen enjoyment! Drawbacks, if there has to be some: the beach is not sand. It’s made of little pebbles which for the most part aren’t very nice to step on. Ouch, remember your water shoes! Also, the parking lot is very small there. The restaurant mostly only has 7-11 style snacks and a couple of “cooked” items. And, from what I read, it gets crowded in high season by 10:00AM. Nevertheless, this is pretty much a dream come true beach.
Did we swim? I dipped in up to my knees and splashed around a little. The water was not freezing cold but was not tropical warm either. Then it started to drizzle. I guess I thought it’d be a good idea to get out and start to dry off in case it got worse.
It did.
There would be no drying off.
The entire trudge back up the long, VERY steep hill to the café got me completely drenched and when I got there, all the seats that were under the covered area were taken. Mikki had gone up ahead of me (and is faster because I’m old and out of shape) and was sitting in the off-and-on drizzle at a picnic table looking at her photos. To escape the showers I took a peek in the little gift shop across the parking lot which sold beach toys, towels, swimsuit covers and sunscreen.
Only about 4 or 5 of us even walked down to the beach at all. So, here’s the deal… this was billed as a 4×4 ADVENTURE shore excursion. They were very clear there would be some walking, getting bounced around on undeveloped, dirt roads, etc… but by the time we got to the beach, I think a goodly amount of the group were sadly pretty disgruntled with the tour in general. The guides didn’t speak English very well at all (except ours), so they had no clue what they were seeing, or what the guides were saying, they didn’t catch the history or culture. I think the dreary weather set the bad mood in cement so they mostly brooded in silence in the café drinking beer. There was no WAY I was going to miss out on the incredible beauty of that tiny little beach cove; even the soaking was 1000% worth it.
Our last stop was at the Therianos Family Organic Products Farm. It’s funny, no matter how much research I thought I’d done, none of our shore excursions were really what I’d pictured going into them. I didn’t really know what to expect really, except for maybe the Acropolis because I’d been there before; everything else was a bit of a surprise and mostly in a good way. What I mostly didn’t expect were the stops at family for-profit businesses on almost every single shore excursion. I don’t mind learning the processes of making local products, in fact, I actually enjoy it, but this seemed like a string of informercials with a bit of guilt-buy strategy built in.
The farm itself was quite lovely with gardens of flowers, veggie plots with dangling sun-ripe tomatoes, a few animals, and a very tidy gift shop (who knew?!) where we could buy their “World’s BEST!, Award Winning” olive oil. We had another sit-down group presentation about all the accolades of their products, how the olive oil can be used medicinally, we tasted the tiny raisins they grow, had sips of wine from the vineyards, etc… And it worked too. Mikki ended up buying several things to take home but more I think because this was her last chance to do so. I bought a little something too but gave it away as a Christmas gift.
While I don’t love being a captive audience, I do have to say that the family hosts were incredibly gracious, and their hospitality was warm and friendly, just like everyone else on the island we came across.
The olive oil farm was officially our last stop of the tour and it was time to head back to the barn. It was well after lunch time by then and all I’d eaten that day were a few bites off of that little snack plate at the overlook café. I was hangry. I mentioned that I was to our super nice guide lady, and she said she’d love to stop at a fast food restaurant for a take-away gyro which was directly on our way back to the tender dock. “They are the best on the island!”, she assured me. YES PLEASE! This was the last item on my Greek Food Bucket List: Dolmates, Spanokopita, Moussaka, olives, hummus, and Gyro. Check, check, check, and check!!!
Within minutes I had a pile of gyro chicken, veggies, yogurt, and hot fries stuffed inside a hot, fluffy soft pita all wrapped up and ready to go! And it was HUGE!! We thanked our driver and tipped accordingly, then headed for the tender loading area. But, before hopping on, we took 15 minutes to sit on the pier to enjoy our delicious gyro, which legit was one of our favorite shore excursion meals. Thinking back, the ones that comes to mind are the very first one in Olympia, the fresh fish on Santorini, the Biblical Feast meal near Ephesus, and this one. One in a sweet family cafe, one fancy-schmancy, one “themed”, and one fast food.
With that, our tour of the Greek Islands was done. We still had a full Sea Day ahead of us and I’ll hit that in the next update…..