How did the five days of the 10th to the 15th (or is that six?) go by so quickly in Patmos? Easily, with long walks, interesting destinations and a few projects, a week was suddenly behind us!

A quick note, though, before we explore Patmos, is that traveling east to west or vice versa is a "breeze" in this area at this time of year when strong Northerly "Meltemi" winds dominate. That's why we chose to zig zag east and west in the area in the chartlet below. With the Meltemi winds being relentless, blowing 2 to 3 days at 30-ish knots, north-going routes - our ideal itinerary - are just about impossible.


One of the bad effects of those pesky Meltemi's is that your flags get tattered rather quickly, and at $35 a pop there's a limit to patriotism! So Craig devised the "Meltemi Flag Bag" in the pic - we can now neatly roll up the real flag and put that Flag Bag over it when the wind pipes up. Perhaps not up to the highest flag etiquette standards, but practical indeed.


So following our east-west strategy, a short 8 mile close reach to Patmos from Lipsi (Lipso on the chartlet above), brought us to the charming bay of Grikos (or Grikou). That's not labeled but it's the little bay just above "N. Tragos" ("N" being Nisos or Island).

We had time to find a good holding anchorage although it was near a very large orange buoy labeled NERA which we heard was a tie-off for a big water tanker ship, and gee whiz, "nera" does mean water in Greek. Yet, as the afternoon stretched into evening with magical sunset lighting and no ship in sight, we settled in for a cockpit dinner and a pretty view of twinkling lights amongst Grikos' white rectangular homes and inns. In the distance, the imposing 11th century monastery honoring St. John the Theologian crowns the island's peak.

In deference to "Nera" we moved the boat the next morning and after a 2 hour exercise of anchor-drag-repeat on the weedy harbor bottom we got smart and grabbed another buoy on the east side of the harbor. The rest of the day was lazy: swimming, exploring ashore, checking out the starting point for the next day's monastery climb and then treating ourselves to cool drinks (and a quick internet connection) in the posh lobby bar of the Patmos Aktis Spa hotel.

With afternoon temps in the mid 90's and no clouds [ever] in the bright blue sky, we opted for an 8am start for our uphill climb ... mid-day workouts are wipeouts. It was 9km of serious steep walking and in a couple of hours we (with 3 busloads of Princess Cruise line tourists - yikes!) were touring the Monastery, founded by St. Christdoulos in 1088 and built in in the shape of a medieval fortress for protection against pirates - you can get the feel for it's impregnability in the top left shot below. Today it houses 30 monks, an ecclesiastical museum, remains of many fine frescoes and is a draw for pilgrims, visiting Orthodox Priests from all over Greece and, of course, tourists.


With no guided tour groups at our elbows and in most all of our monastery pictures, we then visited Zoodochou Pigis, a tranquil convent with more frescoes and peaceful gardens. In need of a cool drink and rest stop we wandered around the Chora (old town). You can see some of its maze of narrow lanes and landmark architecture in the top right and bottom left pics below, the latter actually being new construction in the old style. With 40 smaller monasteries and chapels set within the labyrinth of white-washed homes - it's fascinating. But, alas, no open cafes!


Our route down from the mountain top Chora to the main port town of Skala, with cruise liner at the quay, was a much shorter than our 9km uphill jaunt and, although it was an ancient cobbly path that did have the welcoming shade from eucalyptus and pine trees along its edge that you can see Kath enjoying below. Given the crowds we found at the monastery, we skipped the "grotto" or cave where St. John saw the vision of fire and brimstone and dictated the Book of Revelation and used our imagination to envision the rocks he used as bed pillows. Lunch was well deserved and delicious at Skala's harborside "Ostria". A quick grocery stop and bus back to Grikos had us in the water for a swim an hour later.


Another day's hike took us to the south end of the island to explore Kalikatsou Rock, Patmos marina, and Psilli Amos Bay. "K" rock was written up in a Greek-lish brochure as "a geological miracle! not to be missed!", "a strange rock with a stranger aura" and "former home of many hermits who turned it into a comfortable place by sculpting steps, a cistern, places for coal and candles, leaving their fingerprints on it forever!" Although you see below that the rock itself was an imposing structure jutting out of the end of spit of pebble beach peninsula, all we found were goat turds and some spray-painted non-neolithic graffiti.

Patmos Marine was the treasure: a "real" boatyard with cables and wooden skid haul-out equipment to lift and launch even then heaviest of traditional fishing and sailing boats - that's about an 80 footer on the skids above. Of course our resident engineer marveled at their systems and we both were duly impressed with the craftsmanship of their wooden boat building and restoration projects. The boatyard's attractive restaurant "Tarsanas", constructed out of several half- ships, was tempting for lunch, but it was only 10am! so we continued our walk to the west coast and were planning to swim from the Psili Amos beach but the wind was suddenly howling in our ears and Sangaris, now on anchor, was out of sight and a long trek away ... we skipped the swim and lunch and started trekking home.

All was well and we spent another afternoon (and all of the next day?) swimming off the boat, reading, writing and getting nowhere with internet connections for calls, emails or blogs. Oh well, it is only about a week later and we are getting this posted!