Detour: Ios

You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men and the same holds true for those who operate the Greek ferries.

I left Mykonos on a blustery day destined for the isle of Santorini but the winds and waves made the island impregnable and effectively turned my entire ferry into a floating sick bag. I checked around and no, these folks did not eat at Music Cafe or Niko's just prior to boarding (see previous Mykonos post). Personally I didn't have any major issues and I must say I take great pride in my constitution for not spilling my lunch.

Anywho, we had a scheduled stop in Ios where a couple friends I'd made were getting off. They announced that they'd stop indefinitely while they made a decision on whether or not to continue on to Santorini. Personally I take stops like this as a sign that solid ground is my best option and disembarked with Brent and Colleen and besides there are worse places in the world to be stuck. As an aside, the boat sat rocking in the harbour for 2 more hours before they quietly announced that it would not continue on to Santorini that evening.

When I was originally planning the trip with Mitch and Josh we had debated whether or not to go to Ios or Mykonos and ultimately decided on the latter. And while I loved Mykonos if your sole intention on coming to Greece is to party your ass off for as cheaply as possible I will whole-heartedly recommend the island of Ios. The party is just as good as Mykonos, the beaches may even be considered better and honest to god Ios is about a third the cost of her cycladic sibling. This is obviously public knowledge as the island is chalk full of three nationalities: Canucks, Aussies and Brits.

The winds continued on the second day filling the sea with a fury that contrasted sharply with the crystal clear skies. I was not dissuaded by this and headed to the beach with some folks from the hostel including some time in these rough waters.

It brought back memories of a summer my family spent up on Georgian Bay. These waters can get notoriously rough and as kids sometimes the windy gray days were the most fun. We had two kinds of waves to survive: rollers and crashers. Rollers can be overcome with a little jump but a crasher can only be survived by diving straight through to the next valley between the crests.

I don't know what or where our goal was on those days we would battle the surf; how many waves needed to be overcome before we beat the sea or even if the only definition of victory was survival. Whatever the case when faced with an oncoming crasher as my ferry slugged into Ios I'm glad I dove straight through because the other side was too much fun to be missed.