Agía Marína

This morning we had to be ready for the taxis at 9:30am, so breakfast on the boat and then a taxi ride up too Analipsis Christ Church to start our walk. Surprisingly Thanos didn’t mention anything about the church.

We walked down towards the ocean but stayed on the road that was higher up on the hillside. From this road we could see the devastation from the 2012 fires and the Monastery rebuilt from the fires - this Monastery only has two nuns left, Thanos said it’s only a matter of time before it becomes Nun-less Monastery unfortunately.
It was a perfect day to look our towards Makronisos Island, unfortunately this island has a terrible past from the political prison from the 1920’s to the 1970’s but worst from the time of 1967-73 as this was the time that with help from the Nixon Campaign threw out the voted in party and put 3 military personal from Junta army in control of the country. This was a dictatorship and lots of people lost their lives on this island from being imprisoned.

We kept walking around the edge of the Island as we came into view the famous Great Sand Bar Beach, ideally there is a bar there with the local kite surfing club! The Sand Bar is naturally made and doesn’t change a lot as the sea here isn’t tidal.

Thanos left us here to make our way back leisurely walk back to the boat, first we walked down to Zastani Beach to see the volcanic rocks in the sea from the beach. It was very windy so opted for no swimming. We wandered back to the sand bar and grabbed a coffee from the bar.
We wandered back and had lunch on the boat at 1:30pm.

The weather was very windy and it had started to pick up and get worse earlier than expected. Thanos soon told us we were not heading back to the port at Karystos as there was no guarantee to get us back off the island by ferry from there. So he had made arrangements to take us back to port of Nea Styra for the night and we catch the ferry to Marathon Port which was guaranteed to run the next day.

This was fine by us as when docked, Thanos lets you jump from the top of the boat and the water is crystal clear! No diving as I touched the bottom jumping in the previous day we were here! Also at the pier start of the pier across the road is Dodoni, the famous ice cream shop with 24 flavours each day! I had a swim then we went and got ice cream!

For dinner Thanos organised us a spot at ΓΙΑΝΝΗΣ ΨΗΣΤΑΡΙΑ again! I had the chicken skewer as did Katie with courgette fries for starters. Again Thanos famously got extras from the Resturant for the table and way to much food was consumed.

After dinner most turned in for the night but we went with a couple of Brits to a bar for drinks. Thanos was to join us once his wife and son had made it from the main land. Thanos finally found us and ushered us out of the bar we were at as he had found a roof top bar! We went to Flamingo Bar where we met his Australian Greek wife and had a couple of Spritz with them! We all called it a night shortly after 1am and Thanos was glad to be in a different port for a Saturday night to experience the night life here.Read more