Naxos

Today we left Paros and took a two-hour ferry over to the neighboring island of Naxos, the largest of all the Cycladic islands. Due to last minute planning and the limited availability at our hotel, we booked only one day for Naxos, and vowed that we would pack in as much as we could during the day. So, we checked in (after sampling some home grown olives, feta, and wine from our hosts at Pension Sofi), settled in, cleaned up and rented a scooter.

It is a huge island, much larger than Paros, with true mountains in the center of the island (holding mount Zeus, the largest mountain in the Cycledes at 1004M high). We visited the town of Apiranthos known for its beautiful mountain views and its very Venetian twisting streets. We had a quick meal at a café here, enjoying some Greek salad and taziki before we decided to go for a walk and find the Ancient Church, which was 1.5 kilometers down the road from the town.
After walking over an hour, passing through 5 goat enclosure gates (you can hear them on the video below), and encountering one snake, we figured that maybe it wasn’t 1.5 kilometers away (since this should be about 1 mile away). So, sweaty and accepting defeat we hiked uphill all the way back, and thoroughly concluded that Greece must be operating on some other measurement system than Kilometers, maybe they meant 1.5 cubits of Zeus’s arm or something.

We hopped back on the scooter and heated to Liona Bay, a beautiful pebbly beach in the middle of nowhere – with only two other people there other than Ulises and I (oh and a bunch of cats).

Now, Ulises being the entrepreneurial guy that he is, and I experiencing an absurd craving for Mexican food, we had decided that somehow we were going to open a Mexican restaurant in Greece, which seemed to be the only cuisine that we were having difficulty in finding – and should translate relatively well to the local palate. Well, guess what, someone already did and we stopped in to have nachos and chicken burritos as the Picasso Mexican Bistro, run by a US expat and her husband. Too bad they didn’t have any green chili!