Hydra and Spetses

So yesterday we took a boat tour to Hydra and Spetses, it was a bit rough but the stugeron tablets worked fine, well I think it was a combination of them and the fact that I had had no sleep the previous night as it was so hot. Hydra apparently has 2,000 residents and the only motorised transport is a few trucks for essential services like rubbish collection, fire, ambulance. The average person travels by foot or donkey, deliveries in the town are done by hand carts as the majority of roads are actually lanes that are stepped and cobbled. Hydra town is built around a natural bay like a natural Amphitheater. Most people live in the town and a few other hamlets on north coast. The centre of the island is almost mountainous, definitely big hills. We walked around the back of the bay up and down steps from one headland to the other then we travelled to Spetses a much lower island with 4,000 inhabitants spread out over a lot of the island. It appeared very affluent but that was an impression gained primarily from the property’s which were Italianate in style and I don’t know if they are locally owned or holiday homes. Spetses used to be home to shipyards where they built wooden ‘caiques’ (I think I have spelt that correctly) but we didn’t find any remaining evidence even though a Tim somebody had his wooden replica ship that he used to trace the Route of the Argo and Ulysses return after the war, built here. In Spetses we were dropped off at the new harbour actually just two piers at Dalia so we thought we would walk to the old harbour, we followed the signs but 45mins were still walking with no masts in sight. We altered route and another 15 mins later found harbour but like I said were disappointed no boat yards left. We followed the coast on the way back and it was much quicker I think some little oiks may have mucked around with the road signs we were following! We got back 10 hours after leaving even more exhausted and slept really well!Read more