Kissamos

I wanted to tell a story of a religious man I saw in the bus station. He was a Greek Orthodox priest I think. He was dressed in a dark blue long robe that buttoned in the front. It went to the floor and was long sleeved. It flowed beautifully when he walked. He had a long beard and was wearing a tall hat the was the shape of a giant water bottle cap, with a thin doughnut ring around the top. (I wish I could have taken his picture, but as with many things when you travel, sometime you cannot take a photo and still be respectful.) His “headquarters” was a table in the bus station, like all the other tables. This was clearly his “office”. He had his cold drink, a jumble of papers and most of the time was calmly sitting there with a wooden cross in one hand and a small playing card size photo of a saint in the other hand. He was holding them up for all to see. Several times during the 30 minutes I was in the bus station he patrolled around holding his religious symbols. Once I saw him go up to two young backpacker types and start talking to them. They did not speak Greek , but the priest kept talking and finally gently touched the cross to each of their foreheads and walked away.

Today, we had big plans to leave Kissamos, but we kept coming up with different ideas of what to do next. Like, should we rent a car, take the bus, go to Santarini (another island), go north, go east….we discussed many options. We decided to go have a coffee and walk around the town. I had seen some signs of the roman ruins, so we saw a small part of the ancient village wall, this village had an inner and outer wall. Then we found the ruins of a Roman urban home with a mosaic floor. We saw another sign for Polyrinna, that pointed up a road so we started walking….we didn’t know how far it was or even what it was, just that it was a historical site. After climbing up an inclined road we stopped in a shady spot to assess the situation. Just then a man in a truck was driving by and he stopped and said, “Polyrinna?”... the name of the historical site as a question. We said yes. He moved some things around and offered us a place in the back of his truck. He had the two Polish tourists, who were also walking up the road, on the inside of the truck. So off we went, up and up and up until we were 5 miles up this road. It was a fabulous ride, with spectacular views and the wind was blowing so it was refreshing, but most of all it felt like a real adventure. I loved it. Little did we know it was this far. So this place is an ancient village (still occupied) built into the side of the mountain. There was an operating Roman aqueduct and lots of ruins of small stone houses, plus some of these stone houses that were occupied had signs of modern life, like loud music playing. It was a climb up to the site and houses were perched on the hillside. It was very hot and nearly no shade, but fascinating. We walked around the ruins for a couple of hours then made our descent. We learned that there was no bus to get back, and we asked all of the other tourists who were there for a ride, but no one said yes. So we decided to hitchhike and/or walk and depend on the generosity of the Greek people. We started down the road and in 15 minutes only two cars came by…finally a Greek family, on their way to the brothers house stopped, rearranged the children and the car seat and drove us down, chatting all the way.