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May 2023 (Part 11)

Greece/Spain Trip - Day 4, May 16 - Poros, Poros

The next morning, we headed out of Aegina for the short crossing to Peros, which is a small island at the southeast end of the Peloponnese peninsula still in the Saronic Gulf.  Along the way, we stopped to swim (3a) and swim again at a shipwreck (3b) before reaching Poros (for night #4).

He is the morning leaving Aegina.  We had time to step off to grab some quick items for breakfast then got underway (by we, I mean, Nancy and Steve, as everyone else slept in).

We headed a bit west along the coast of Agistri, which lies just to the west of Aegina. Stunning view of the Saints Anargyroi Holy Orthodox Church in the town of Skala.

We eventually came to a small cove where we anchored for a quick swim.

Brad was the first one in, followed quickly by Andy.  It was a tad brisk.  It was early May after all.

Brad wanted to get a picture of him diving off the boat, as he had one from his last trip and wanted to hang one from this trip with it.  Everyone else eventually got in (except Marek who clearly thought we were crazy), even if some didn't stay in any longer than was necessary to get back out.

Andy decided that a picture like that sounded fun.

We then went to another cove with a shipwreck, the wreck of the Rolini near Galatas, which is across the narrow straight from Poros.  The ship sank in the area 30 years ago and the bridge part is visible on the surface.  The four of us all swam over and around the wreck, which was surprisingly long with the bow much closer than we would have guessed.  I think only Yannick joined us.

Here are Nancy and Steve on their way back.

Here is our arrival in Poros.  Poros is separated from the town on Galatas, which is on the Peloponnese peninsula, by a 200 m (656 ft) wide sea channel.  There were several water taxis constantly ferrying people across and a lot of small ship traffic in the channel.  The town has a population of 4,000 or so.

Once docked, we all headed off to find gyros then explore.

We eventually made our way into the town and then up the hill a bit.  Luckily, we ran into the rest of the crew on the way up, although they were coming from a completely different direction.

We were all ultimately headed for the same place, the Clocktower of Poros, built in 1927.  This is on a high point overlooking the narrowest part of the straight between Poros and Galatas on the mainland.  It stood out as we entered the town and was an obvious must-do destination.  It was also essentially right above where our boat was anchored (it is the left most of the three tall masts, second ship from the left and third from the right).

Andy climbed up on a huge rock, which prompted Yannick to follow.

Such a cool spot, so we needed capture some images with several of us in the scene.

Steve propped his iPhone up against a couple small rocks and took these with his Apple watch as a remote.

The huge Greek flag produced quite an image.

In what is clearly the start of a common theme, Lexi stopped numerous times to take pictures of cats and flowers.

Here is some of the rest of the group on their way up.

In her defense, Steve took pictures of at least the flowers too.  Here are Lexi, Nancy, Andy with Neesha, Yannick, and Brad (Steve took the image, not sure where Tony was).

    We eventually made our way back down the shore and wandered through several stores on the way back to the boat.  We ducked into one restaurant and had a drink to wait out a short rainfall.  Lexi enjoyed a rather rich hot chocolate (fitting to help warm up with considering we'd been swimming that morning)

When we got back to the boat, we discovered that Merrick had flown pennants for G-Adventures and each country represented onboard.  He argued they were hung alphabetically, which place Poland above the UK and USA.

We then made our way out to dinner, this time with reservations at Oasis.  This was simply wonderful.  Most of us headed to a wine bar after dinner, at least for one drink.  Andy stayed behind with the rest of the crew to have fun once mom, dad, and Lexi called it a night.

Here is the clock tower illuminated for the night.