Whew!!

Alright...it's been a long week full of sun, ocean, gyros, and a sore throat. Having gotten through the airport and onto my plane without hassle for my boat, I was rather excited...no I was ecstatic. Upon my arrival in Athens however, the boat turned into a six foot long, red, bagged anchor. I managed to squeeze it onto a city bus which took me to the center of the city, however they wouldn't let me go the next step onto the metro (subway.) So I took off walking in the direction that I thought my hostel was, and ended up being mostly right...after getting six different answers from five different people. The hostel was tucked away in a quiet little neighborhood within walking distance from the Acropolis, the Gardens of Zeus, and Adrians Gate. A three hour nap left me ready to go down to meet people for happy hour where I ended up meeting a group of students from the US studying for the semester in London. To make a long story short, I ended up travelling with them for a couple of days around Athens, and then down for a short stay in Santorini.

Unfortunately, there is no whitewater in Santorini, so the hostel keepers were nice enough to let me keep my boat there until I got back. The weather was slightly foggy, but still sunny enough to give me a pretty decent sunburn. If there are two things that Santorini is known for, it's probably the scenery and the sunsets. The combination of the two can be amazing...or so I hear...every time the sun dipped below the horizon, there was no real horizon to see...oh well.

From Santorini we sat on deck for a 9 hour ferry back to Athens where I was awaiting an email from Nikos of TEAMadara to possibly see about paddling this weekend. Lo and behold there was an email, but unfortunately, Nikos was too busy to paddle this week. He got me in contact with a couple of different paddlers and one of them may work out, but it will be a stretch.

On a side note, while I haven't gotten a chance to go paddling yet, I did hook up with two climbers from Toronto last night and we were able to get the first ascent (more of a traverse) of Adrians Wall...probably 2-300 feet of limestone blocks running adjacent to a main road. There may be a video coming soon...Anyway, I think tomorrow I will be renting a car and getting out of Athens...possibly some paddling...who knows.

Pictures are proving to be obnoxious on my sketchy internet connection...so if you can get to facebook use that, and if not I'm working on another venue...

More later,

West