We arrived on Leros at night and had to drive about 6 km (but it felt like 60 km) along a hilly road from the port in Lakki to the Hotel Papafotis in Alinda Bay. No street lighting, no reflectors, no armco, no white posts, no white lines and gutters a metre deep in places. Sometimes there was space for two cars, sometimes not.
Turns out we were on the wrong road - we had taken the local scenic route. But because there are no signs, how can you tell?
The next day, having acquired a tourist map, we could see our error and the lady on the SatNav had been no help at all. Our mistake was to have had the SatNav set for fastest route, rather than main route or safest route and so she had taken us directly over the top of the mountains instead of on the main road around the edges.
No harm done! We found our hotel, where the kind family Papafotis had waited up until we finally arrived.
We had a studio with doors to a little terrace and an additional window for ventilation, a little kitchen and bathroom and a dining table to take the computers. Plus excellent housekeeping and loads of storage. Perfect.
In front of our hotel was Alinda Bay, a long curve of narrow stony beach with crystal clear water and lots of on-beach restaurants for food, drinks or coffee.
Our first stop was a trip up to the Leros castle, looking down on Agios Marina below, and further on to the wide sweep of Alinda Bay.
Like much of Leros, the castle was bombed by the Germans in WWII. The restoration has been sensitive.
The castle covers a large area and restoration seems to have been slow but steady. It is beautifully lit up at night.
Leros is very dry and rocky, like all of the islands we have seen in the Dodecanese group.
There are lots of beautiful, mature eucalypts on the island, planted along the roads by the Italians between the wars when Italy occupied many of the Dodecanese islands. The local habit is to paint the trunks with lime - they say to avoid insect attack - but more often to take the place of white, safety posts along the roads.
This beach, at the very northern tip of the island, near the airport and army base, turned out to be our favourite. Plenty of free deck chairs supplied by the tiny taverna and great frappe, cold coffee, served to you on the beach. See the yellow plastic sun lounge?
The deck chairs/sun lounges were moulded plastic rockers, with arms, that pivoted on the centre of gravity depending on where you put your weight. I absoluely loved them because I could take all of the weight off my lower back. No pain = heaven!
I could lay here forever! The view in front of me ....
The view to my left.
The view to my left.
Another beach, with even less sand but great swimming; this one was at the base of cliffs with the taverna at the top. It was so narrow that our sun beds were eventually in the water as we chased the shade.
The sand bags not only help to walk along the beach and get in and out of the water, they add a bit of extra width to this beautiful but very narrow spot.
Paul even managed to find a bit of WiFi here - just enough to download Twitter which will keep him happy for an hour while I get back to novel number eight.
The Italians occupied the Dodecanese islands after WWI and, because Leros has the best deep water port in the south Agean, had an significant submarine and navy base here. The islands rock lent itself to tunnelling and the Italians developed extensive tunnels, some of which have been restored and house a museum recollecting the Battle of Leros in 1943 when the Italians, supported by the English, were defeated by the Germans after a significant bombing attack over more than a week.
The museum was excellent although Paul almost offered to volunteer to come back to re-do the Italian to English and English to Italian translations.
There was also a small war cemetery maintained by the British Government for the Greek, English and Italian soldiers who died. The German cemetery was repatriated to Germany some years ago.
One of the nice things about Leros is that it is not very trendy and there are lots of locals who are happy to chat. Paul struck up a friendship with Alex, who was an extensively travelled man of the sea, speaker of many languages, talented fisherman and sage.
Alex had gained some notoriety for his fishing prowess, especially for one big, blue-fin tuna he caught. We set him up with an email account in the name of "AlextheBigTuna". He was very pleased.
The staple meal in the islands seems to be the Greek salad, and on Leros it comes pretty much like this at every restaurant and cafe: tomatoes, cucumber, green capsicum, red onion and a wedge of feta. For individual variation, sometimes you get olives, or beetroot or wilted beetroot leaves.
Not a combination that really appeals to me and Paul actively disliked it. Never mind kiddo - it's good for you!
No comments:
Post a Comment