Our Odyssey, Greek Ferry style

The eleven of us were active participants in a classic Greek epic.  We were the protagonists in a well known Greek Drama: "Trying to Make a Greek Ferry Connection."   This story is as old as the unpredictable ferry schedules, as often told as the platitudes that are espoused by the ferry officials, and as predictable as the winds.  Months earlier a travel plan had been sketched out, based on early ferry schedules, that had us traveling from Naxos to Ikaria via a short layover in Mykonos to change ferries.  Now, if there is anything you should not bank on, it is that schedules in Greece will stay as published.  Ironically, the other thing you can bank on is that ferries do not wait for anyone.  So with this as our backdrop, the tension in the plot thickens when the schedule is updated and our layover time has shrunk to minutes not hours.  Much hand-wringing and scrambling to find alternate routes ensued.  Do we go for it? Do we have other options? What to do!? Long Greek tragedy style story later we realize at this point we have little choice but to go for it and cross our fingers and make sacrifices to the gods in hopes that we make our connection. With that, the stage was set for our travel day off of Naxos.

The day started with great excitement and optimism.  We were setting off on a quest, an adventure.  Positivity was abounding, "we were going to make it".

As we waited for the first ferry we started to get a bit antsy as it was not yet in port.  There was an especially bitter moment as we watched another ferry, that was suppose to get to Mykonos after us, arrive and take off before ours had arrived.  Adults started to talk to various officials, repeatedly asking variations of the question "do you think we will make our connection?"  The answers varied wildly from assurance to you might as well forget about it.  It could have been a sociological experiment on how different personalities answer the same question.  And why some keep asking the same question, hoping for a different answer.

Once on the ferry we settled in for some good old fashion passing-the-time-activities.  Cards, colouring, lego, reading, backgammon and pacing. We make false friends with one of the ship officials.  His family lives in Canada and he returns there in the winters when the work in Greece is quiet.  We feel a bond.  He says he will radio over to the other ship.  We know enough not to believe him.

After an uneventful, but painfully slow first leg of our trip we approached the busy port of Mykonos.  This is a central hub for many ferries and a requisite stop for cruise ships and college kids looking to party.   While waiting in the belly of the ferry to disembark we were all on pins and needles, wondering if by any stroke of good fortune our second ferry would also be a bit delayed and mystically waiting for us to run up the gangplank in a flurry of victory.  Just look at the faces of eager anticipation, optimism, glee, a whiff of stress, and excitement:

We can't get any closer to the ramp. If collective mental will could make a vessel dock faster we would have been touching land by this moment.

Down goes the ramp.  We start to scan the berths on either side.

The littlest is ready to make a run for it. 

And the answer is, of course there is no ferry there.  It left on time, 15 minutes earlier.  The what ifs could bounce around all day, but instead we get busy with the task of figuring out what to do with 12 hours in Mykonos, with all our stuff, 5 kids ranging in age from 4 to 13, 6 adults, and a ferry that leaves at midnight.

After some internet searching and a little defeated lull we decide we might as well head towards the center of town, so we hop on one of the many buses heading that way.  I love the smiles and enthusiasm coming from the crew. 

Within minutes of leaving the port we realize we had been dropped into another world.  The world of  Mykonos.  The 5 km drive from the port to the center of town took almost an hour.  There was literally bumper to bumper traffic.  The island has had decades of tourism and is inundated with thousands of people every day, but it still has the tiny windy roads and infrastructure of an old Greek village. In the center of town, which is simply where four roads meet and a cluster of tourist offices, grocers and restaurants congregate, we plunked ourselves down with our stuff and send off a search party to figure out a plan.  It was hot and stinky with bus exhaust, we were hungry and by now a bit deflated post adrenaline rush.  But soon we had our pile of bags safely (we hoped) stashed at a tourist office and we set off to look for food.

It was culture shock arriving at the mecca of consumerism-and-alcohol-soaked-sex-focused-tourism. And yet, the beauty of the Greek islands never disappoints.  There may be T-shirts and speedos with lewd slogans for sale on either side of the walk, but in the next stride there is a tidy home with a freshly painted gate and colourful flowers against the wall.

After walking for what felt like a mile down the main drag, but was only a few hundred meters, we sat ourselves at a restaurant, ordered up a pile of food, trying not to gulp at the prices, and were appreciative that, once again, even in the throes of tourist central, the food in Greece is delicious.

Freshly watered and fed we set off to explore a bit of the town by foot, with the goal to find a beach to take a dip and relax.  Quickly we came upon the classic windmills, featured in countless tourism brochures and instagram posts. The windmills, and the hill upon which they sit, were, in the bright sun of the day, a bit ragged and the grounds dirty.  If you squint your eyes and ignore the surrounding jumble of cars, wires, and people, you can get a sense of the classic beauty that was once there, but today it just feels trampled and overrun.

Cars, cars, wherever you look.

This was one of dozens of such scenes.  Instagram moments in the making.

But we got into the fun and took lots of photos.  The reality is, even with, or perhaps despite the crowds, the island is still beautiful with picturesque moments all over the place.  I can only imagine that if this is your only taste of Greek Island life you might leave happy, it is just that it is not what we look for in a vacation.

We made our way to a little cove of a beach where we could pass the afternoon. Ah, the difficulties of being stranded on a Greek Island for a day.

As the sun began to set we made our way back to the center of town.  By this time the waterfront and the windmills were crawling with people who were there to get photos of the sunset.

I got sight of an older woman looking out of her window, watching the crowds below, a big grin on her face.  I imagine that she has lived for many years in the same home and has watched as the crowds have swelled to immense proportions.  And yet, it appears that rather than be distressed she watches the mass of humanity as entertainment and as an enjoyable part of her evening routine.  Surely it is not the first evening she has stood in that window, watching the young kids with reddened shoulders and peeling noses, and yet there she stood, smiling, waving.  The queen of her castle.

Once back to the tourist office, reunited with our bags, we inquired about the next bus to the port.  It was at that time that we were informed that buses no longer ran to the port. Hmmm. Okay.  At this time there is no panic as we have hours yet before our ferry, but there is a little niggle of consternation.  We are suddenly thrown back into the narrative of our saga. A little jolt of adversity, a new challenge. Surely this is all part of the plot.

Everyone remained in good humour and cheerful attitude. Smiles and laughter still bubbled up despite the increasingly late hour and the long day.  As we ran through the options: bus, taxis, private van, we started to feel a little panicked as each option was not viable for one reason or another.  Finally one of the men who works in the tourist office said they would help us hire a bus.  Yes, a bus.  We weren't really sure what that meant, but we were out of options.  And then we waited, and waited some more.  As we waited we watched an incredible show.  Bus after bus would arrive, negotiating the incredibly narrow roads and tight turns, only to stop in a puff of exhaust and discharge a swarm of people coming from other parts of the island to start their night in town.  Bus, after bus, after bus.  It was a constant stream and an incredibly coordinated dance of maneuvering oversized vehicles in and out of the congested hub.  It was only when we learned that we were seeing a fraction of the volume of tourists seen in the "high" season that I began to get a glimpse of the insanity that is Mykonos.

This is us getting ready to get on our bus.  We were told it could not wait long so we had to be ready.
It was only us on the bus, but the buses cannot wait for long because of the incessant flow of drop-offs.

"Our" bus finally showed up to our great relief and then amusement.  It was a smaller bus that was used to shuttle visitors around the island for their night of partying.  It had a blue light and was HILARIOUS.  The lovely young driver was just starting his evening of work, and would shuttle people across the island until 5am.  I was glad we were in the bus at the start of the night.

We arrived at the port with hours to spare.  By this point we were done trying to "pass time" and wanted to simply find somewhere to sit and wait.  We watched the comings and goings at the port, looked at the cruise ships that were in port, and pondered why one of them had an ambulance at the waiting.  Some of us snoozed, others did not, but finally, after a long but fun day on Mykonos, we were happy to see our ferry approach as the stars twinkled above and the lights of Mykonos town shone bright.

And we are off, finally, to our ferry.

Like many of the ferries we were on, this was another one that you enter up the ramp,
walk through the car hold, and then enter the sitting area. No frills.

We were slated to arrive on Ikaria, the island my Papou (grandfather) was from, in the wee hours of the night.  Desperate to have a few hours of sleep under our belts, we quickly spread out on the ferry in an attempt to doze.

Groggy and sleepy we wandered out to the deck to see the approach to Ikaria, the homeland.  We made it!

This little one was determined to lose her tooth and she wiggled it out as we docked!

Once on land we were greeted by two friendly taxi drivers.  The journey was not yet over.  In a theatrical twist, the ferry we had just arrived on landed on the opposite side of the island where we had made hotel reservations.  We were returning to this side in a few days, but our carefully constructed itinerary had us landing on the other side of the island in the bright of day, on the ferry we missed by 15 minutes.  And so, as brave heroes, we loaded 11 people and as many bags into two cars, took a deep breath, and drove over the mountains in the dark, as dawn broke over the rocky mountains of our grandfather's home.

  

Safe and exhausted, we tumbled into our new beds, another Greek Epic seen through to its conclusion.