Today was a relatively slow start, even though Connor said last night that he wanted to do the hike to the mushroom rock this morning. He said “morning”, so we figured probably leaving between 9 and 10, but we did not see Connor until 10:15.
Connor and Kayla had scheduled a boat tour that would take up the entire afternoon and evening, and the hike would take two hours, so Connor decided not to do it.
The rest of us decided that we were just going to do the hike and not worry about them. Nana Andi decided that she wasn’t going to do the hike, as we didn’t know how rough the terrain was going to be, and because she was going to do some gift shopping.
We also had to take a picture of our giant stack of empty plastic bottles, because the owner of the Airbnb was coming in to clean the place and take them all away. The total amount of plastic bottles in the stack was upwards of 30.
We then set out on the hike, which we already knew the path of, because the mushroom rock hike was just a path that branched off of the path to Oía. So the only difference between the views from several days ago and today, was that today was a perfect day, barely a cloud in the sky.
The hike itself was mainly through the towns, until you got to the point where you turn off the path to Oía and start going down. When you start going down, it’s just stairs, switchbacking their way down the cliff. The view of the caldera was beautiful as always.
During the hike, Griffin and I sped ahead of Mom, Dad, and Nana, so we arrived at the mushroom rock well ahead of them. The mushroom rock is so much bigger up close, and apparently there was a castle built around it called Skaros castle, which is now in ruins.
Something we had seen from the boat yesterday was that there was a building down on the cliff beneath the mushroom rock, and there was a path that lead around the rock and down to that building, that ended up being a church.
As it turned out, Mom, Dad, and Nana weren’t as far back as we thought, and they made it to the church just a few minutes after Griffin and I. Well, at least Mom and Dad made it down to the church.
Nana decided to stay up at the mushroom rock, because it was a ways down to the church from the rock, and she decided that it would be better to just wait at the rock, because she already was going to have to go back up to the town from the rock. (If you zoom in, you might be able to find Nana).
Once we got back up to the rock, Mom, Griffin, and I decided to continue going around the rock, while Dad and Nana took a flatter trail that went around the side that we had come from.
The trail that Mom, Griffin, and I went on led us to this part of the old castle that allowed us to climb up more of the rock and get up about halfway up the mushroom rock, where we could see that part of the rock was sheared off, which was really cool.
The trail the took us almost completely back around the rock. We were about 5 feet away from linking back up to the trail at the front of the rock, when the path sort of disappeared. It looked like a landslide had just destroyed a small section of the trail, making it impassable. Griffin thought otherwise, and was going to try to go through that section of the trail, but Mom and I stopped him. He was very adamant on going that way for some reason, but then a person from the other side of the ruined trail said that it was too risky and advised that we just go back around, which was finally enough to sway Griffin, so we went back around the way we came.
After that we started back up the many, many stairs that led back up into town. And once at the top, we took a short break in a spot that had an excellent view of the trail and the caldera.
After that we headed back to the house, only to find that we still had to wait a little bit for the owner to finish cleaning, so we sat out on the patio with Nana Andi(who had gotten done with her shopping and arrived back at the house well before us), and waited for the owner to finish cleaning.
Once we were able to get back into the house, we had a nice quiet hour, followed by a late lunch. We were too tired to make lunch after the hike, so we went out and got, you guessed it, gyros. We went to the place we went to the first day, with the swings. As we walked up to the gyro place, the workers recognized us(we were pretty much regulars, we had gone there pretty much at least once a day all week), and as mom danced up to the counter, the manager turned up the music. Also as the chef saw me, he immediately threw a bacon wrapped chicken skewer on the grill(I ordered at least one of them every time). We decided to eat at the gyro place and sit on the swings, much like the first night we were here, minus Connor and Kayla.
After lunch, we went back to the house for yet another quiet/happy hour. The Nanas lied down and Griffin decided to take a nap too, on their bed. So the three of them were taking a rest on the Nanas’ bed.
After their rest, the Nanas and Mom went out and soaked in the hot tub for a little while, and once they got out, we all went over to watch the sunset. The sunset was quite beautiful as it set over the caldera.
After sunset, we went back to the house and started making dinner. About a half hour into making dinner, Connor and Kayla drunkenly stumbled into the house, they were VERY intoxicated. They began repeatedly saying how much fun they’d had and how cool the snorkeling was, and when I say repeatedly, I mean they said it about 20 times. Kayla was definitely the more drunk out of the two, and it was super note how drunk she was. But here’s the gist of what they did: they went on a catamaran that took them all around the caldera, they went swimming in the hot spring, went snorkeling with barracuda’s, had dinner on board, and watched the sunset from the lighthouse.
A little bit after they returned, I went out with mom to get myself some dinner. I decided on getting some chow mein and some spring rolls from a Chinese place, which was quite delicious. I got it as takeout and we went back to the house, and soon after we got back, everyone started trickling into bed, starting with Mom, then the Nanas, then everybody else made their way to bed.
-Gage
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