ATV Adventure

The Apollon Saga
6-7 May 2009
There really are no words to describe today. I’ve been thinking about what to say in this blog all day… but as I sit here inside this empty 70s throwback hotel room with some business program in French in the background, I am at a loss for words.

I guess I should start at the beginning.

The day started out well enough, bread and butter for breakfast and we were out the door and down the street to an atv rental shop. In a short time, we were on the road in a large atv, our bags strapped in at the front and back. The idea was to travel the island, then find a room to rent somewhere on the other side.

We traveled to the southern tip of the island where we picnicked on a rock overlooking the ocean. After taking a couple of wrong turns, we were headed north on a paved road (not all roads in Naxos are paved and it’s often hard to tell exactly what road you are on).

While riding (I didn’t drive except for a couple of minutes on the beach one time), I took photos and watched the landscape change from rolling to hilly to mountainous. I also had the opportunity to see typical rural Greek life. This island is not touristy, especially now in low season. Apparently high season picks up in the middle of June here. I was intrigued by one thing I noticed and completely appalled by the other. Dotting the hill and mountainsides are tiny chapels. These chapels surely can fit no more than 5 or 6 people. What’s even more unusual is that they are in the middle of nowhere. There are chapels jutting out of the mountains with no houses or buildings anywhere nearby. What is the purpose of these chapels? And where do the congregants come from? Are there any congregants even or are the chapels just there for decoration or the odd religious need? Something to wikipedia.

The other unique practice I noticed was the tying of an animal’s feet. More than once we saw animals on the side of the road with tied feet. By this I mean that a front leg was tied to a back leg, making the animal incapable of walking properly and very uncomfortable. I’m sure this is done to keep the animals from wandering too far or running off, but surely there is a better way.

We stopped in Halki, famous for it’s Citron liqueur. After seeing the distillery and tasting the citron, we were off again heading north to Apollon. This is where the story gets interesting. After speeding around a series of harrowing, death-defying hairpin turns, we arrived in a small town with white buildings overlooking the ocean. The beach symbol on the map was an exaggeration; there was little more than 30 feet of sand. I was disappointed. I keep hearing about these amazing Grecian beaches and haven’t seen one worthy of a bikini.

We had planned on spending the night here and thought that we would easily find a domatia (room for rent). We were sadly mistaken. While it is easy to find a domatia in Naxos Town (there are signs everywhere), apparently this is not the case in Apollon. We tried a place called Flora’s
Apartments, but Flora wasn’t home. So we walked to the main drag (a few lonely restaurants without customers). By this time, I am sure the news of our arrival had spread all over town. If they couldn’t hear us speeding around the restaurants, then they saw us walking around town with helmets in our hands asking about a place to stay. We were obviously out of place and there was no possible way of blending in or sticking out less.

Greg asked a man at a café about a place to stay and we were directed to two hotels nearby. We tried the first: 35 Euro for a room we didn’t want. We tried the second, Hotel Kouros. We walked down the road and over a makeshift bridge to the front of the hotel. Everything was shut up and dark, so we tried walking around the hotel. On the far side, a woman opened her door and I walked right in thinking that she was showing us into reception. She wasn’t. I was standing awkwardly in the middle of her kitchen. We left as quickly as we barged in. We searched some more for a place to stay. We checked back with Flora and walked a bit further up the road and found only houses. Walking back towards the atv, Greg stopped and asked a man standing in front of his restaurant about a room. The man said he would make a call. He returned telling us there was a room for 30 euro. We agreed to see the room.

Thinking back on that decision, I see now that it was a mistake, but at the time, taking that room seemed to be our best option. A German woman (who happened to have been passing the restaurant at the time) showed us to the hotel we had just come from (the locked one with an old woman at the side door). I was embarrassed to return to the scene of my rude behavior (I really did think that she was showing us into reception), but what could I do? The same old humped woman met us at the front of the hotel and showed us inside where the German woman took us upstairs to the rooms (apparently the humped woman and the German woman were friends). The German woman opened 7 or 8 rooms, looked inside, and said that none of them were ready. Rather than waste anymore time looking for a ready room, we agreed to take the most ready room.

We were left alone. The scene was playing out like a horror movie. So there we were, staying in this cold, dark skeleton of a hotel with no other guests, only the humped woman and her ill husband.

The room hasn’t been cleaned since last summer probably, reminding me a bit of Miss Havisham’s in Great Expectations. We had 2 beds, 3 flat sheets, 4 blankets, 3 towels, and no pillows. I folded up 2 of the blankets and wrapped them in a sheet to create pillows. Soap lingered in the shower from the previous occupant as did a trashcan full of rubbish.

I suppose it could have been worse. There was no disintegrated wedding cake or rats (I’m alluding once more to Great Expectations). Curiously enough, the mini refrigerator and the television had remained plugged in, unused since last August or perhaps earlier.

We went to get our luggage from the atv, and in the process noticed that there was something wrong with the back tire. A man who had apparently been watching us noticed the problem with the tire at approximately the same time because. He walked over silently and bent down to inspect the tire. Greg says he’d been working construction at a condemned-looking building. I think he appeared from nowhere. Appearing from nowhere fits my purposes better. I’m trying to describe the horror movie qualities of this experience. Although working construction at 8.00pm is a little out of the ordinary.

I soon went inside the hotel (Greg and the fix-it guy were still outside with the atv). I was a little nervous as I walked towards the dark hotel. Would someone or something jump out at me? Would I be attacked? Were there ghosts roaming the halls of the hotel? Would I see dead people?
Fortunately, I was okay and nothing jumped out at me. Greg returned a little later with our bags telling me about how the fix-it man refused the money he offered and insisted on carrying our bags to the hotel.

Too late for a grocery store and probably a restaurant ev3en, we ate in the room. The meal consisted of lunch leftovers, which meant sweaty cheese and old bread for me and the same for Greg with addition of canned meatballs.

As usual I woke up early (8.00) and showered. The room was freezing (we had no heat, only the 2 blankets remaining after I made the pillows), but fortunately the water was hot and remained hot for the duration of my shower. We soon realized that we had no lights. The electricity was out. We never did understand what that was about.

Have I painted the picture pathetically enough? I think not.

As we left this morning we were greeted by horrendous yelling-like sounds. We had been warned that we might hear unusual sounds, but I don’t think either of us were prepared for what we heard. As we descended the stairs, the sounds grew louder. We tried to sneak quietly out the front door, but we couldn’t figure out how to unlock and open it. We were trapped. (Imagine foreboding music here). I took a deep breath and walked over to the old woman’s door (her apartment is off the hotel lobby). I knocked tentatively.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I was answered by a terrifying noise emitting from the old man. I waited for the sound abate and tried again. The old woman answered us with a good morning. We handed her the key and the money for the room and she let us out. We left as quickly as possible. I was beyond tired of the stares associated with being the only tourists in town.

We were still concerned about the tires, and for good reason. Not far into the trip back to Naxos, a lugnut must have come loose and a bolt popped off.

We pulled over and immediately called Mike’s Bike’s. We were told 30 minutes to an hour by a gruff sounding man that obviously resented renting to us in the first place. It’s not our fault they gave us an inferior machine. He didn’t think the tire was a big deal; he must have thought we were exaggerating the situation.

I expected to wait 2 hours even though we were told as little as 30 minutes. I guess you could call it fortunate that we broke down next to a seemingly uninhabited roof. We sat on the roof and I painted my toenails while Greg translated Greek to unintelligible English.
Three hours later and multiple phone calls with multiple hangups (them hanging up on us), we got a new bike. The guy who brought it in his little red pickup truck was the guy who rented us the first bike. To get the atv out of the pickup, he pushed it out. No ramps involved. I was a little more than surprised. I was expecting the atv to be transported on a trailer. We were given a much better atv (one on which the front brakes and both back tires actually worked).
And we were off, disappointed and angry about wasting 3 hours sitting in the sun on an abandoned roof waiting. We made it back to Naxos in an hour, but still too late to catch our 3 o’clock ferry. We went back to George at Windmill Studios and were able to get a room.

After a unique attempt at grilled cheese sandwiches (bread sliced from a wheel of bread and gouda), we took the atv south to the west coast beaches. I wonder how possible it is that our grilled cheese attempt was the first ever of it’s kind? How often can such an invention be created on a small Greek island?

Where were these beaches yesterday when we were looking for a beach and all we got were rocks? Or last night when we found 30 feet of sad looking beach? We only had a couple of hours; the sun would be setting soon and we would have to return the bike. We road the atv up and down the beach for awhile before finding a spot to watch the sun set. We drew sand pictures as the sun slowly disappeared behind Paros (the island to the west of Naxos).

As soon as the sun was completely behind Paros, we left so that we could find our way back to Naxos Town before all light slipped away.

The End (of the Saga)