Obviously, our first day had only existed out of a constant repetitive pattern of dozing off on the beach-beds, me carefully allowing my milky legs to get some sun only to pull back like I was burning myself against an oven, after a minute. After this we would be too warm and stumble back down to the peer to no longer tiptoe, but slid into the water like not that charming mermaids. Well, we weren’t here to be beach babes after all, we were here to feel the soft, refreshing water, see the sandy bottom trough the glass-alike water, communicate like whales below the water when we spotted fish, and then come up gasping for air with pig-alike sounds. It was a beautiful, but exhausting circle, and because both of us were more of the discovering type, we decided to go for a walk that evening to fetch some supermarket food. After all, the goal of this journey was for it to be a long one, the longer the better. Which meant, strict budgets. I always say, one can go on a holiday and just spend their money and enjoy it to the fullest, or one can go on a journey and learn along the way. It is whatever you feel like doing, there’s no right or wrong here as long as it is sustainable; harmless to the environment, helpful to the locals, and putting the money where it deserves to be. Maybe by not going for dinner we didn’t really help the locals, but it was a surprise to see how extremely busy the island was when it came to tourists.
Mykonos apparently is known to be the party island of Greece, basically the Greek Ibiza. And this became very clear to us very soon, as we mainly saw youth driving around on quads or scooters, and our camping was a never ending party location filled with expensive mojitos and summer beats. Which for sure is extremely nice if it’s what you’re into, but we preferred the more quiet areas and decided to head for an evening stroll. It turned out hiking to the supermarket was going to be quite a challenge, but with the sun having gone down the temperature had dropped to a pleasant 22. The sky coloured orange and pink and the crickets started their concerts. It was time to show the world their talents, being the beautiful chirping sound on cannot possibly not connect to summer. You’d hardly ever see one, but hell, they see you. If you unknowingly pass by a bush where they’re playing their beats, a sudden quiet will overrule. Only when you’ve passed, they will carefully, one by one, start motivating each other to continue. Sneaky little smarties. We were mostly climbing hills because, coming from the beach you cannot possibly go down further and we now had to ascend to the top-area of Mikonos to get to the inhabited area. For now all we saw on the dry orange grounds were a few blinding white houses, all locked of securely by baby blue hatches and rising up so high on the mountains sometimes that I was clueless on how people even got there. Some of the rocks surrounding the houses seemed so incredibly loose that I was half expecting an avalanche of stone heading our way any second. But sometimes this loose gathering of rocks, actually did shape into a house that like a chameleon camouflaged itself in the landscape.
My legs started trembling a little as we went up so steep I almost fell backwards and made up excuses to stop. ‘picture time’ ‘look at that house’ ‘look at this cactus’. And I have to admit, being one of the many plant lovers it is extremely exciting watching your average movie cactuses rise up like giants from the drought, decorated by beautiful red flowers on top. We had to be extremely careful not be hit by cars as sometimes the hills or curves made it impossible to see ahead and the stone walls by the road offered no option to avoid, which was hard anyway as the roads were suitable for one-way traffic yet really pretended to be a normal road. a lot of honking and people driving backwards with grumpy faces was the only way traffic could work around here. Luckily, the closer we got to town, the more quiet the roads turned. We now got to enjoy unexpectedly large plains of dry landscape, decorated by cactusses, bamboo bushes that were ruled by the cricks?? and the typical Greek dream houses. It was completely silent except for the wind howling, and it made me feel like I was walking trough the dessert. With the sky turning into a light blue as a surprisingly early dawn fell around 9, it was extremely mysterious walking around there. Yet nothing could cozy up this almost horrormovie suitable scenery more than the moments where we got to sneekpeek onto the driveways of locals. There would always be a meeting of cats going on, sitting together with serious looks on their beautiful little faces, scanning whether or not you had food with you.
It is true that Greece has many stray cats which I personally find extremely painful. But it is also heartwarming to see how many people open up their yards to them by putting food and water outside. The cats kept scanning us with tiny eyes as we walked by whereas the chickens loudly announced our presence to each other. Most of the driveways were messy in a lovely way. Old pickup trucks of which the colour fainted, hundreds of pots and plants filled with the few survivors able to handle the heat, and a lot of things you might throw away if you’re Dutch, but here they liked to gather their every item around. The hike obviously wouldn’t have been complete if we wouldn’t have bumped into not only the flora of the island, but is fauna too. Mykonos as an island wasn’t exactly known for wildlife if you didn’t count the enormous goats, skinny sheep and wildered cats, but, it has a few little pearls, or basically one, I was really on the look for; lizards. And yes, dozing off into the evening, keeping their cold little bodies warm on the walls, they were. They came in many sizes and their colours variated from brown, to yellow, to green. But all of them had the same snake alike tiny heads with surprised but satisfied bat eyes and tiny heads that moved around in very robot-alike motions, their little tongues constantly zipping in and out as a sign of alertness. And yes, whenever we neared, they disappeared as soon as a fart in the wind. Now finally we could dodge the roads, as sidewalks were not a thing on this, and many, islands, by walking over a sandy cliff. It offered us a magnificent view over the pearly white houses, shining orange and blue lights over the hill, reflecting into the now pitch black waters forever surrounding them. Even the boats seemed to be in a deep sleep and floated peacefully over the hardly existing waves.
We passed by a few more houses, some of them small and barn-alike, some of them absolutely massive with pools and about 5 barky guard dogs protecting their boat and 3 cars. And then we finally arrived to the supermarket, to fetch ourselves some well deserves snacks and avoid expensive restaurants prices, Dutch as we were. On our way back, I saw a sunset that I definitely had to put in my top 3 sunsets, as we spotted a ball of orange literally sinking into the sea, so fast that you could literally watch it grow less round and more flat, until nothing but an orange gold stripe, floating on the ocean, remained. Watching 2 of nature’s most beautiful beings, the sun and the sea, emerge like that, was an experience that made me realize how special this life really is. I now noticed that many of the white pearls we saw along the way, hadn’t been houses at all, but surprisingly tiny churches. They were hardly separable from the houses except for a tiny tower on top, sometimes. There were so surprisingly many variants that we had to enter at least one, and inside it was a surprising smell of candles and incense and an overwhelming amount of blue and gold and the funny curly Greek alphabet on the walls. But the sky was turning into a deep blue and the crickets upgraded their volume, so we decided to speed up. I really felt like I was in some American cowboy movie as the roads turned abandoned and the dry plains so still, but was reminded of being in Greece soon again when a cheering squad of young people raced by on their quads. Yet still, I couldn’t help but imagining the silhouette of a wolf on top of the unsteady gathering of rocks, throwing back its neck and howling against the big white moon. I couldn’t tell if the quiet dessert-thing made me feel safe or nervous, but I could tell it was an entirely new experience.
- It's an amazing life
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