The apple of the Cyclades eye

We left Folegandros, probably our favourite Cyclades island to date. These few photo's attempt to document the simple wholeness of this island, that captivated us with its beauty.

Pav at the public quay in Folegandros

Folegandros fishing trawler

We love the islands that haven't sold themselves outright to tourism, but have preserved a traditional way of life, have kept simple values and simple life-styles alive. Folegandros was such a place.

Road from the port to the Chora

That's certainly building on the rock

View from the above house - stunning.

We hitch-hiked up to the Chora from the port. It was a long walk up-hill, so we tried our 'Auto Stop' skills we learned in Turkey. Pretty soon, a local was eagerly transporting us up to the Chora. Folgandros is incredibly barren, it's like a lunar landscape of bald rock. The Chora was perched on the top of this rock, literally hugging the cliff-side. It was a stunning outlook over the Mediterranean.

Deep Mediterranean blue

View from the Chora.

The village was immaculate, cute but not in the service of tourism. We've noticed that Greeks love to paint their cracks. Cracks between paving stones, cracks on walls, even "make believe" cracks like the photo above. In fact, there is nothing in Greece that can't be improved with a coat of white paint. Tree's, rocks, buildings, court-yards. Its an annual spring clean ritual, and the Folegandran's practiced it with a passion.

Freshly painted cracks

Real cracks and pseudo cracks.

More crack painting.

I love the fact that cars don't dominate these villages. There is barely access for carts, sometimes small 3 wheelers will bring in heavier items. The streets can twist and turn, become impossible narrow or turn into a flight of stairs. The visual landscape is not dominated by rectilinear grids, transversable by mechanical behemoths.

Street scape

Simple splashes of colour

 The land is steep, so any agriculture demands incredible efforts to terrace the landscape. The cliffs around Folegandros are very steep, and you can see the effort of manually piling all the abundant rocks into dry-wall terraces.

Terraced fields

I also appreciate how old structures, like this facade of an old church, can be left standing as reminders of the past, rather than being rebuilt or turned into an archeological monument.

Old church structure preserved

The white buildings seem plain and unadorned, but a brought to life by simple splashes of colour. Flowers, blue window frames, a small pot plant, some green herbs. The visual landscape is simple, vibrant and harmonious.

Simple primary colour splashes everywhere

The church is always on the highest hill

But we had to leave. We are meeting some family in Crete, so we had to make the long haul to probably our most southerly point to date. It was about 100 nautical miles to Crete, the longest sail we've undertaken so far. We planned to leave at 1600, so that we could sail through the night and arrive  in daylight to enter the port.

Pre dawn landfall

Very tired crew standing night watch

Of course, our auto-pilot was NS, which meant we had to hand-steer all night, which makes the task much more demanding and exhausting. We'd picked a good weather window, but the wind was very light. We motored most of the way.

Sunrise over the stern

Landfall at Spinalonga lagoon, Crete

Landfall is alway exciting, even if this was not a new country, but just a new island. We entered into a large sheltered (we thought.... see next post) lagoon, and were greeted by a pair of huge hammerhead turtles. So it was anchor out, and settle into some delayed sleep, until the horn blasts from an irate day-tripper ferry let us know that we were in his favourite approach line to the public jetty. Tired, we belatedly re-anchored Pavlov further from the jetty, and fell into a well deserved sleep.

A tired skipper brings the boat home