Naxos, Round 2

So I'm going to try a couple of new things with this entry - mostly brevity and a lack of minute details.  I'm going to focus on descriptions and reflections rather than overviews - let me know what you think.

So I spent this past weekend (11/6-11/8) on Naxos for the second time since arriving in the Cyclades.  My first visit here included my 21st birthday and a bus ride from Hades - this time the approach was a little different.  Amanda and I rented a car and drove around most of the island on Saturday, an experience that I think will be impossible to replicate even if I spend every weekend I have left here on Naxos.

Our goal was to climb Mount Zeus (Mt. Zas to the locals), the highest mountain in the Cyclades at 999m.  A few minutes into our drive I started to notice the clouds, gathering rather ominously around the top 1/3 of most of the visible mountains.  By the time I pulled away from one of the small reservoirs, the tops of most of the mountains were completely obscured by clouds. 


By the time we reached the tiny village of Mesi (or maybe it was Skado, or even Koronos - I failed to write it down or photograph a road sign) we had driven almost to the border between cloud and clarity, and the clouds hanging literally just above the roofs of the buildings there created a very "Lord of the Rings" feeling, the diffuse light and odd hillside architecture adding to the feeling.  I halfway expected a  hobbit to scamper out of one of the small houses built into the hillside.


Driving about 2km farther, we crossed the threshold into cloud, and everything become even more surreal than before.  As I drove in silence, the silhouettes of roadside objects appeared and disappeared with unsettling abruptness.  I took the opportunity to snap a photo of a mist shrouded Cycladic style windmill - perhaps my favorite picture from Greece so far, other than one I took later that night (more on that in a bit).  Knowing that my senses were limited to an almost tangible boundary that I could almost touch, but that offered no shelter from what lie beyond it, was an experience I doubt that I can adequately describe.  Imagining that I was alone in the car, it wasn't hard to imagine myself completely alone in my little world (not in a despairing sense) that extended only a few feet in each direction. 

As we came back down the mountain, the car emerged from the cloud almost instantly.  Going from a world of soft, diffuse light and murky shapes in muted tones of gray into the world of bright lights and sharp contrasts was another truly unique sensory experience.  I suppose it's similar to cleaning a window you didn't realize was dirty until you wiped it off - the suddenly crisp images you see through it seem especially striking because you took their blurriness for granted and accepted it as reality. 


After dinner I walked alone from the hotel to Apollo's gate near the harbor - the same place I had visited on my first visit to the island over a month prior.  At night the leeward side of the monument is brilliantly (perhaps excessively) lit, and is visible for quite some distance at sea.  I spent a few quiet minutes photographing and examining the monument in the dark, and wandering around the small peninsula it sits on.  The Greek habit of using their finest bits of land for temples/churches clearly has a long lineage.  The view from this point is incredible - Aegean sea almost surrounding, with the town and overlooking Kastro (castle) on the other. 

Round 1: Mt Zas v Charley - Mt Zas wins!  But wait, I still managed to get an awesome experience out of the deal, so perhaps it was merely a draw?  The mountain doesn't stand a chance in Round 2, anyway.