loma kreikässä

Photos: Actual pictures

oulupulu — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 06:13:00 GMT

Trying to get pictures for the journal,

Day 9

oulupulu — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 06:57:00 GMT

Trip home - ferry for an hour, bus for an hour, wait for an hour in the airport. It started raining again, and was raining as we left Greece.

Rïga Airport was it's normal tiny bustling self - our World Nomads travel insurance expired sometime between leaving Athens and getting to Rïga, but we hadn't needed it, and didn't need it in Rïga either. Finally we got back to sleepy Oulu, where it being a Sunday night, everything was closed.

Day 8

oulupulu — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 06:44:00 GMT

The last day of the holiday. As part of the course, the instructor had asked us to prepare a trip around the whole of Poros island.

Poros island isn't huge, and getting around all of it isn't an enormous undertaking - but it is far enough to make a lot of people nervous about the journey. It's about 25km.

Joke explanation: "Vitsi" is Finnish for "Joke", which is what some of our co-kayakers thought of the suggestion of going round the entire island.

A quick note on the speed at which Sea Kayaks travel at: a good speed for a Sea Kayak to go is often reckoned to be about 3km/h. That gives us an 8 hour journey. We made it round in 7 hours, and that included over an hour of breaks, and another stop to practice/demonstrate towing technique. So we probably did it in about 5:30, travelling at over 4.5 km/h for the journey. How did we get to go so fast? Because it is actually quite hard to predict how fast a Sea Kayak will travel at - the effect of wind and currents can be pretty huge. But we made it round in good time, and weren't particularly tired at the end of it.

The journey was mostly uneventful and I enjoyed it. There wasn't much of note on the journey - we paddled, watched the scenery and enjoyed the warmth (about 30°C). We stopped for lunch right on the very northern-most tip of Poros. There isn't much to stop on there, a rocky ledge of 5 x 5 meters.

Even on a tiny, crappy little ledge, there was still a water taxi if we needed it.

Some 2 or 3 hours later - I totally lost track of the time - we got to the south side of Poros again. It was a warm bank-holiday Saturday and there were a LOT of larger boats in Russian Bay so we had to be a bit careful, but nobody got crushed so it was alright.

How can Greece be broke when her seas are filled with yachts like this?

So, mostly it was a really calm trip around the island. The winds were from the east, so we couldn't feel them on the south-west of the island. To get back to the hotel in Askeli we had to cut through this thin channel into the water of south-east Poros:

The only channel on Poros

Some wave lore: a long fetch - that is, a stretch of water that is uninterupted by anything - allows the wind to come across it and build up some pretty big waves. Heading direct east from the channel there is pretty much nothing, so a plenty long reach. Another factor in wave form is the water depth - as the water gets shallow, the waves get steeper. This all hit us when we got through the channel, and our very last 20 minutes of kayaking were spent joyfully cruising over metre high, steep-sided waves, and we came splashing down on the other side. Exciting seas. The beach where we landed was sheltered from the winds, so as we approached the waters were flat, and there were people swimming in the waters. Looking back to where we had just come from, the waters looked so peaceful, you could barely make out the white-capped adventures.

One of the kayakers perhaps wasn't as fit as the others and had had quite a hard time with the resuces and the long journeys and the high waters - GF and I celebrated it all being over with him, and then we packed up the boats and we took them home.

Day 7

oulupulu — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 06:35:00 GMT

This was the major part of the assesment. We left the hotel at 10 and went to a nearby secluded bay. Correctly, it's called Neorio, but it's the major beach which we used for rescue practices, so we renamed it 'Dunking Bay'.

Basically, we had to demonstrate that we can perform an eskimo rescue and that we can be eskimo rescued, that we can do eskimo rolls, and that we could perform deep-water rescues, both as rescuer and rescuee.

What this means:

Deep-water rescue - it's the rescue that you don't really want to do, at least not in cold water, but sometimes have to. You are completely out of the kayak. The rescuer empties the water from the upturned kayak by pulling it across the deck while the rescuee holds their kayak and helps to balance it. Once it's empty and back in the water then the rescuer holds the kayak firmly and helps the rescued climb back in.

Eskimo rescues - you turn over, but wait a while before dropping out of the kayak. You hold your hands out of the water to signal that you are waiting, and a friend cruises up and offers you either the bow (or stern) of the kayak, or a part of the paddle. You then pull yourself upwards. The advantage of that one is that you are under the water for maybe 10 seconds and don't have to go through a full rescue, the disadvantage is that if no-one is nearby, there isn't much you can do.

Eskimo roll - you capsize, and then, using only the paddle and a bit of aquatic trickery, right yourself again. If you capsize accidentally, then obviously, this is the best thing to do.

It was a hard day, but net result is that me and girlfriend passed :) We got covered in a lot of salt and very nearly lost a pair of €300 sunglasses - Finnish opticians really should sell better retainers for glasses.

If I had the time, I would make spectacle retainers which are quite snug, and also float. Then you wouldn't have to dive under water for your glasses, and prey that the water isn't 10 meters. Oh, the things I could do if I didn't have a job...

We ended the day in a pub in Poros town. I had about 3 pints, way more than was sensible considering our plans for the next day. Gf doesn't drink, so I did get told off for it.

Day 6

oulupulu — Thu, 9 Jun 2011 06:26:00 GMT

We had a rest day today, so instead of kayaking, we hired a scooter and scootered around the island. To be honest, I would have been as happy to have gone snorkelling, but gf wanted to go on a trip, and I just want the quiet life.

The scenery is quite nice - Poros is a part of the verdant, hilly part of Greece.

Yeah babes.

Us outside some monastery.

OK, so that was not too painful. The evening was a lot better - we went on a night time kayak trip along the coast again, and because we had an extra kayaker - Katrina, the owner of the hotel, took a night off to come out with us, so gf and I volunteered to go in a two-seater kayak :)

I guess we went probably 3k down the coast, then stopped to watch the sunset. The instructor wanted to do some more rescue exercises, but because gf and I were in the tandem we couldn't do them. Shucks.

Being two women, we haven't always been able to keep up with the guys, but tandem kayaks go a lot faster so not only were we keeping up with them, we were speeding home ahead :)

Back home in Finland, gf and I have spent quite a lot of time in a tandem, and by now our twin drill is pretty damn good. I think that we control the boat really well as a team, the result of hours of practice and more than a few arguments last year :)

I didn't take my camera, so sadly I have no pictures from the night trip.

Day 5

oulupulu — Wed, 8 Jun 2011 06:37:00 GMT

Exciting day!

Quite windy in the morning, and we went hydrofoil dodging. Then did eskimo rolls:)

Choppy winds and quite a swell on the sea as we cruised across the bay at Askeli - it's about 20 minutes, so not onerous. Once we were across, we snuck over the bay and waited for the catamaran to come past - quite exciting as it is quite large. Didn't take a picture as was busy keeping the yak of the rocks. Then we cut across the channel and went down the coast into a headwind and with a nice swell on the sea - quite fun, and not windy enough to be hard work. We checked out some of the swanky houses on the south coast before stopping for lunch.

After lunch we were learning to do eskimo rolls. I think that to do eskimo rolls you have to be in the right frame of mind, and I certainly wasn't - you need to know the moves in order to do it, and I just couldn't get them right in my head. My girlfriend did though, and I was so proud of her :)

My babe kayaking on the open sea. The flag behind her is on the instructor's kayak. It has a special SONAR visible material in it so that large ships can see us, and a light at the end, and also looks kind of cool. GF has a lovely paddling technique, but she stops when I point the camera at her.

After the rolls there was a bit more rescue training - basically, one of us capsizes and the others have to get them the right way up again, ideally without them leaving the boat, although if we can't get them upright in time then of course that is what they have to do. You then empty the boat by dragging it across the deck of an upright kayak, and pull the floating kayaker back in. A squall came up as we were trying to pull get one of the boaters back into the boat, it's a lot harder with suddenly choppy seas and when you are being blown towards the rocks! Ideally, the operation should take 3 minutes, it took us 12. If we were in the cold waters of the Baltic, that would be a hypothermia case - possibly fatal. It's a sobering thought that hypothermia is the number one cause of death for sea kayakers.

But we didn't let that get us down for long :)

We watched another hydrofoil coming in during the trip back. The last 20 minutes back were the hardest - I had my wetsuit on from the resuce exercises and was feeling a little bit squished by it, as well as making it hard to move my arms. But finally we got home, and I had a swim off the coast. There were fish in the water:

I took this picture by floating on the surface, waiting until I saw a fish, zooming in and then hoping. It took a few shots to get it right, but I do like the subtlety of the fish.

Day 4

oulupulu — Tue, 7 Jun 2011 06:32:00 GMT

Apologies for the rubbish names of the journal entries, I honestly can't be arsed to think of anything clever.

Today was a long journey day - a 16.5km trip eastward along the south coast of Poros, then around the island of Modi and back to Askeli. We did a lot more rescues and then got the strokes covered.

The joureny went at a leisurely pace which everyone was happy with. We saw several small fish jumping across in front of us, and a shoal of small fish jumping in the water which made the water seeth in front of us. The South Coast of Poros is an inhospitable, desolate kind of place which steep rocky cliffs and few trees. It is uninhabited. As we quickly came out of site of humanity, it struck me how easily you can just want for their to be deities out there - it's easy to see how the Greek panthenon of gods came into being.

Modi Island, a small, unihabitable, rocky outcrop next to Poros.

Longest kayak journey I ever did. V. tired.

Day 3

oulupulu — Mon, 6 Jun 2011 06:29:00 GMT

Our first taste of kayaking :)

After a leisurely morning, we kayaked a little way down the coast and started practicing rolls and rescues. Hard, wet and salty work, and we were quite pooped that evening - understandably, being as we had very little sleep the night before.

GF took this picture of me.

Day 2

oulupulu — Sun, 5 Jun 2011 06:23:00 GMT

What do first time visitors to Athens always do...?

So, realising that time in the morning was pinched, to say the least, we checked out of the hotel, took a taxi to the Acropolis, and then went up to check it out.

A pile of crap.

I didn't actually go up it at all - I stayed at the bottom with the suitcases, because really, I'm not that interested in the Acropolis but my girlfriend is an Architect, so of course she had a look. It's amazing that it's lasted so long as it has, and it was all built by slaves. Brilliant.

Uneventful afternoon - we took the train to Piraeas harbour, got tickets, sat in a cafe until 5 minutes before the boat left, couldn't find the boat (eeek), asked some guy, and found it at the last minute. I think we had two minutes before the boat left - not something I'm at all comfortable with, but they didn't leave without us so it's all OK.

GF tells me that whenever some ancient Greek hero left Athens on a quest they always left Piraeas. I feel it should have been more of a moment, but it wasn't particularly, it was just a passenger ferry trip. Oh well.

So, we arrived on this really quite, peaceful island in the med. It's great for people doing sport of chill-out holidays because there is (like) one nightclub, and it's really only for locals - a quiet, peaceful island =)

We got to the hotel and unpacked, before heading to the local supermarket to get tomorrow's lunch. As we arrived back at the hotel, the thumping from the beach started.

"Tossers"

A massive band of fuckwits arrived in the harbour and started a very very loud rave-party.

I've nothing against clubbing and dance music and culture - I was in it myself when I was younger - but these people kept basically everyone on Poros awake until 7am the next morning with the music, for no good reason. The next day we learned that they had chartered a fleet of something like 14 catamarans to carry them round Greece partying in random places. There were 430 of them. The police turned up several times in the night and administered fines - you could tell when because the music would stop for about 30 minutes before carrying on again.

They were medical students. From France. The sad thing is that nobody was surprised when we learned this the next day. I hate doctors.

Day 1

oulupulu — Sat, 4 Jun 2011 06:12:00 GMT

It was raining when we landed at Athens airport. We had left Oulu at 6:30 for an unhurried journey to the airport, getting there in plenty of time. The AirBaltic flight left on time but landed 27 minutes late, giving us 3 minutes to get to the next filght.

I'm not always the best traveller - when there is no rush, everything is good, but when I think we are late then my deep paranoia of missing the connection comes to the surface. Must be some bad childhood experience. So I rushed through Rïga airport to get to the flight, and we promptly got in the wrong queue.

It's OK, we realised the problem before the flight left, and weren't the last people on the plane. :D

Then on to Athens, were it turned out it was Gay Pride weekend and there was a pro-democracy protest on as well, and we somehow managed to get off the metro system right in the middle of the pro-democracy protesters. Of course, they were very peaceful and we had no trouble from them, but you never quite know when peaceful pro-democracy protests can turn, do you? I didn't realise the irony of people protesting for democracy in the place where it was invented - although actual ancient Greek Democracy wasn't, apparently, that nice - they had slaves!!! We hurried through the protest with our luggage to the taxi rank and got the first taxi we could, and gave the driver the address of the hotel. He'd never heard of it. 10 minutes of searching on a map and a phone-a-friend later, and we were on a terrifying journey through the backstreets of rainy Athens to this little hotel we'd found on the internets.

The hotel was Hotel Proteas, and a very nice hotel it is too.

Would have been cool to have known about Athens Pride beforehand, we could have gone the day before and gone, but pride festivals are exhausting and we were already pretty tired so we didn't bother. "Maybe next year". Instead, as it was raining, we went no further than some restaurant nearby before settling in for the night.

helatorstai

oulupulu — Thu, 2 Jun 2011 04:41:00 GMT

I work in the Finnish IT business, which is (obviously) falling apart right now. About ready for a holiday. I'm really really hoping that some Icelandic volcano will go off after we have landed :)

No exciting news. It's two days until we leave. Tomorrow is a public holiday in Finland so we will pack our bags and laze around, ready for ~~v. lazy day on Friday~~ one last day of really hard work before Holiday :D

Wetsuits

oulupulu — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:27:00 GMT

We have our wetsuits for the Greece trip, and we tried them on last night in our own little wetsuit party :)

I've never owned or worn a wetsuit before, so it was interesting - they are hard to get on alone, but easy with a friend helping.

Found this stupid video on YouTube, was amused.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WHPfMh9yjU&feature=related

I love weird women - they are awesome. Don't tell my girlfriend I said that though.

Oho

oulupulu — Tue, 24 May 2011 02:34:00 GMT

My girlfriend and I are going on a trip to Greece in about 12 days. It's a BCU 2-star kayaking course, so we need fairly robust insurance. I got a 10% discount from WN, and they have a free blog as well - mezin.

We had an email from the instructor about a week ago: it's been unseasonably cold in Greece this year, so we need wetsuits. We live in North Finland, and spent most of last year kayaking round the cold waters of the North Baltic sea, but to go to Greece we need wetsuits...

It's been fun hunting out good deals on wetsuits. We only need short summer ones, and the best price was from a company in the UK - from Cornwall. We found some good neoprene shoes just over the border in Sweden last weekend, which was nice.