Is Kastellarizo, Is Meis

Day 14

So, the day had arrived where we were able to head over to the Greek island off the coast of Kas. We had our showers, ate our breakfast early and headed out to the store where we had bought our tickets the day before.

Vulcon met us there and then took us around to the office that the tour was going to leave from. What we discovered was that all of the ‘tour offices’ basically sold tickets for one boat that left and took about 100 people over to the island, as well as doing other private snorkeling and hiking tours.

It took a while for us to get onto the boat, as there were a number of people that apparently hadn’t handed in their passports the previous day and needed to be taken to the police station to very quickly get their papers organized.
Once the boat departed, Sparkles, Shakira and I grabbed a fantastic position on the top deck of the boat with an amazing view of the water around us, and of the island that we were heading towards.

As our vessel pulled into the harbor, the architecture and landscape of the island had a lot of subtle differences that showed that this was definitely a Greek island and not a part of Turkey. For those not in the know, there was a period within the last 30 years where the Greeks and the Turks developed a bit of bad blood, and a number of Greek citizens living in Turkish areas were forcibly removed and sent back to live on Greek sovereign soil. I must admit that I don’t know too many of the details, except that it is still a sore point for many Greeks, and not so sore a point for the Turks.
One of the things that I spied as the boat arrived was a long set of stairs leading up the hill behind the city. I decided then that I was going to climb these stairs.

We disembarked from the boat, noticing a duty-free store right next to the boat landing, and wandered along the waterside promenade, opting to sit at a café that served iced coffee (for Shakira), a massive glass of freshly squeezed orange juice (for Sparkles) and a nice big latte (for moi).
After our beverages, we went for a wander around the harbor of the island, wanting to find the beach/swimming area for the girls while I went exploring the island.
Around one end of the harbor was a hotel that had sun-lounges for hire as well as access to a designated swimming area. Sparkles opted to stay here and sort out 2 sun-beds for her and Shakira. Shakira and I wandered back around the harbor as she wanted to find a snorkel.
As we were walking around the promenade, I was amazed at how many Australians there were staying on the island. As we had been sitting down for our refreshments earlier, thee waiter and I had joked about this. He said that Melbourne has a large Greek population (I informed him that it was third after Athens and Thessalonica), and then he joked that this island had one of the largest Australian populations outside of Australia. He was exaggerating, of course, but I don’t think that I would be overstating by saying that at least a quarter of the people we walked past had Australian accents.
Shakira ended up finding her snorkel, and I headed on to climb the stairs up the mountain.

I will preface this next bit with the notification that I was a bit stupid doing this climb in the way that I did. Firstly, I had thongs on (flip-flops for my international audience – if I had been wearing a thong that would have been even more stupid). I did have 3 litres of water and my wide-brimmed-Gilligan-style hat, which I knew I was going to need, but the second stupid thing was that the temperature was 37 degrees, the sun was beating down, and there wasn’t a lot of shade up the stairs.
I started by climbing the stairs, posing for a timed photo in a Gollum pose (“Up up up the stairs we go, and when we reach the top we get to… THE TUNNEL!”).
I took some amazing photos at the points where there was shade, but the amount of shade was not huge. I quickly discovered that my footwear was completely inappropriate for this kind of walk, as my feet started to sweat and therefore were slipping around on the rubber surface of the thongs. I was very fortunate that I did have my hat and plenty of water.
After a couple of minutes, I reached a drawing on one of the stairs with an arrow pointing backwards saying “100” and an arrow pointing forward saying “300”. Sweet, I was already a quarter of the way there!
I wandered on in the hot sun, struggling more and more as I continued, passing through a rickety gate on my way. I reached the “200/200” mark again fairly quickly, and took some more photos, but from this point on I started to struggle, as the stairs got steeper, with less shade and more sun. My feet were slipping more and more on my thongs, and my stops more frequent.
After what seemed like an eternity, I reached the “300/100” mark, and looked up.
I realized that the marks weren’t for distance – they were for altitude, which was why they had seemed so oddly spaced.
The stairs had reached a point where they doubled back upon themselves several times, and I could no longer see the top of the mountain.

It was at this point that I almost gave up.

I was feeling dizzy and light headed, and I had gone through a litre of my water already, not knowing how much further I had to go.

I decided to push on. I wasn’t going to let the mountain get the better of me, and I knew I couldn’t be that far away. So I walked the 12 or so stairs to the next bend. Looked up. I staggered up the next 15 steps to the next bend. Looked up. Walked up the 8 stairs to the next bend… and saw that I had reached the top.
I had a great feeling of satisfaction that I hadn’t given up, since I had been so close to the top, but I was knackered and realized that I was probably suffering from either a bit of sunstroke or dehydration. I found a nice spot in the shade just below the top, had a mouthful of water and poured the rest of the bottle over my head to cool myself down.
I then cracked open my next bottle of water and drank about half a litre.
For any of you out there that have gone to the gym or played sports so vigorously that you feel terrible at the end, and then you throw up, you will know the feeling I felt.
Yes, I threw up at the top of the mountain, but after consuming another half litre of water and sitting in the shade for about 20 minutes I was still feeling knackered but truly buoyant at my achievement.
I took a few photos of the view and of the harbor laid out below me, and gave my parents a call. It was great to speak to them after 2 weeks of travelling, and share with them my recent achievement.
I made the trek back down with a much greater spring in my step than there had been towards the end of the ascent. I walked sections of the way without my thongs on, as I was slipping a bit more on the way down, but this was fine for me as there were no thorns on the path and also no glass.
I made it back down successfully and had a quick wander through the streets of the town behind the harbor esplanade.

After grabbing a bottle of water, I wandered around the harbor to meet up with the girls at their sun-beds. They had been taking it in turns of working on their tans and then going for a swim in the water. After arriving, I headed over to the bar and secured myself a sun-bed (under shade, of course, after my epic hike) and a beer, then rejoined the girls.
We faffed around for a bit, went for a swim, faffed around some more, and decided that we should grab a bite to eat before we had to get back on the boat to go back to Kas.

We headed to the place that I had bought the bottle of water earlier. The girls ordered a fish to share, and I ordered burgers. My meal came out fairly quickly, and it turned out to be 2 burger patties with some chips and salad. Interesting, but tasty.
The girl’s fish didn’t come out at the same time, so we spent a bit of time clock watching as the time got closer and closer to when the boat was supposed to depart.
It reached 10 minutes before the boat was supposed to leave, and Sparkles headed over and asked if we could take the fish away, as we didn’t want to miss our boat.
The waiter said we should have told him that we were going to catch the boat back, although he was kind enough to wrap the fish in foil and give the girls a fork to eat the fish on the boat.

We managed to make the boat, and pottered back over the water to Kas.

Sparkles was pretty wrecked after spending the whole day doing nothing in the sun, so she headed back to our hotel room, while Shakira and I headed over to get the bus tickets for the next day to Antalya. We stopped in to see Ali and find out if he had received a shipment of journals for our friend’s birthday, although Ali wasn’t there. His brother told us to come back a bit later on in the evening when he would be there.

Shakira and I headed back to the hotel room and had a tactical snooze, and then headed back down to Ali’s later on to find out what the story was with the journals. Ali was outside having a cigarette, so we sat down with him next door and had a coffee and a good chat. The journals hadn’t arrived, but he had spoken with his supplier, and he had organized for them to be placed on an overnight bus and shipped out to us.
I cannot emphasize just how helpful Ali was. If ever you are in Kas, you should head to his store. He will look after you fantastically.

He recommended a good place for Shakira and I to go and eat, as it was now getting to 10.30.
We headed to the restaurant and thoroughly enjoyed the food.
In Turkey, there are plenty of cats roaming around trying to get people to feed them part of their meals. Most of the cats are little bit manky, so it is easy to ignore them.
This night, a very cute cat came along and gave me one of those Puss-in-Boots looks that I just couldn’t ignore.

Shakira slapped me over the back of the head, and we wandered back to our hotel having a deep conversation about life, the universe and everything.

I got an average night’s sleep, so I spent my waking hours putting down notes for my journal for the previous couple of days so that I would be able to continue writing my blog.
If only I had been able to spend more time writing my blog as well as putting down notes for the blog.
Sigh.