Our last week in Greece so far, and we are sailing to a new country!

Hiking to Prophet Elias

We continue checking out all the trails on alltrails.com, and today we did the hike to Prophet Elias Church from Salakos village on the western side of Rhodes. There is too many churches with the name Prophet Elias, we have been hiking to a few of them.

We didn`t start the trail from where you see it on alltrail, we parked the car where you can see the black line on the left side of the map. It is only space for a couple of cars there. On the other side of the road you will find many dogs barking at you and it maked me nervous, but they didn`t came after us.

Right after we parked the car we saw this sign, so we knew we were on the right trail. In the beginning you are walking on a gravel road.

And you have to go through this gate. And as the sign tells you; please close the gate!

The trail is going uphill all the way through serpentines. It is easy to see the trail all the way to the church.

It was easy to keep a good pace all the way

You have to have a look where you put your feet because there is a lot of stones on the trail. Astor stopped up and took away some of them, but there is a lot!

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Halfway up and you have a view to Salakos.

We continue the steep uphill trail

Can someone tell us what this is? Earthworms?? Or a moldwarp??

You can see how steep the hill is.

There was some fallen trees there. just watch up!

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When you are closer to the top the trail is more like long steps

The last stretch of the uphill part

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When you finished the uphill part you will come to an area looking like a park

A nice place to a sunday picnic! You can also drive up here, but as I said in the last post, it is not fun driving to the top!

The last steps to the small church of Agios Georgios

This was my ultimate hike to check out how I am. It was almost 300 height meters and 2 kilometers (so pritty uphill) and I was not tired when I arrived the top! I was only wet and cold, luckily I had warm clothes in my backpack!

inside the church

It is possible to walk further on, crossing the main road and up to the next hill, but this day it was foggy on the top so we decided to head back to the car. This trail, including the part we didn`t hike is “hard”, but if you are going only to the church it is not hard. yes it is uphill, but it is a really nice trail. I can not speak for the rest of the trail. Someone is also written “it was scary in the first part”…. I am not sure if we did the same trail…

The Prophet Elias Monastery is further up in the hill, but because of the weather we decided to turn back here.

After a lunchbreak outside the church we walk down the stairs on the other side of the church and hoped we come back on the trail from there.

We found this point of view. I guess this was made years ago when the threes were small, or not even there. The vies is not the same today.

A selfie on the viewpoint. We tried to take it the other way – with the view, but because of the sunlight it was not possible to make a good photo.

The view from that viewpoint. We continue against the trail and found it. We use a tracking app so we can see where we walk, and then it was easy to see where to go to find the trail back. We followed the same way back down to the car. It took us one hour up and maybe half of it the way back.

We had no plan for the rest of the day, but I remember Filippo at the rental car mention an ancient city in this area. So we google it and found only 20 minutes drive from Salakos.

The ancient site of Kamiros

Ancient Kamiros is amazing! I was in shock when I came there, because this is really a great hidden gem!

Kamiros was one of the three large Doric cities of the island, which united with Ialysos and Lindos in the 5th century B.C. to create the powerful city – state of Rhodes.

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Kameiros was basically an agricultural society which produced oil, wine and figs. During the city’s golden era of the 6th century, it was the first Rhodian city to cut its own coins.

Kameiros (Kamiros) has been often compared to Pompeii, something which is not correct since Kamiros did not fall into decline because of a natural disaster. Its decline, like the decline of Ialysos, was the result of the gradual abandonment by its residents, who decided to move to the city of Rhodes which was established in 408 B.C.

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In 1929 archaeologists localized the ruins of the ancient city, and the excavations which brought it back to life continued till the end of World War II.

On the top of the ancient site we could see back to the mountain we climed earlier the same day!

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You should really visit this place, this is one of the most amazing ancient sites we have been, and we have seen many the last months! Check out Rhodesguide if you are visiting Rhodes.

And the best thing? We were almost alone there. A couple arrived when we finished the walk around.

After the ancient site we drove down to the beach to eat some snacks before heading on. It was not time or weather to have a swim here.

Campochiaro

We took another way back to Lindos and stopped at Eleousa village, with the earlier name Campochiaro. This abandoned village was build by italians under Second World War.

The building are open so you can just go inside.

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This day a group of people were here, it looked like it was italian schoolchildren, but we don`t know.

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The Italians remained in the village until 1947, when the union of the Dodecanese with Greece was signed. When the Italians left, the buildings were abandoned and the village was deserted.

Read more about this place here

A few hundred meters further from the square of Eleousa there is a large round cistern, filled by the waters of the adjacent Koskinisti spring. It is the home of a quite large population of the extremely rare fresh water Gizáni fish, a local type of fish. This is all that remained of a population that no longer exists, that of the Platy stream. 

Sycamore Fig Tree

From Elousa it is a short distance to Sycamore Fig tree, which is an old fig tree where you can walk inside, and there is space for 4-5 people in there

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It is open in the top so there is a lot of light

When you are driving the main road you will see the tree along the road. There is also a restaurant but it was closed in november.

Next to the tree there is a beautiful church. We didn`t check if it was open.

Tuesday we decided to sail to Rhodes town. We had to go there anyway to check out from Greece, and it was on the way to Marmaris, which was our next plan.

We berthed in the Rhodes Marina this time, because the weather forcast was not good. It should come some rain and wind.

On thursday we made the norwegian dish “Raspeball” for the first time on this journey. The balls are made of potatoes and flour. We also use kohlrabi as sides, but we haven`t seen it here, so it was some salt meet (lamb), carrots and bacon. It was so good!

Our last day in Rhodes

Friday we went to town. My plan was to do some shopping, because it was black friday, but first we decided to to the check out prosedure. We went first to the port police, but they sent us to customs before we had to come back to the port police. And of course it is not the office next door. So we used some hours to walk between offices to complete the check out.

On the way to town we went through the old town, today it was no cruiseship in town so everything was closed and we could have some photos without a lot of tourists around.

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Cats relaxing in the sun

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They have started to decorate the town for Christmas so maybe we should stay here instead of going to Turkey where they do not celebrate Christmas??

This was the last day in Greece for now so we wanted to have the last Pita Gyros before leaving.

Beautiful skies when we came back to the boat. Now it was time to prepare the boat for sailing again.

We said goodbye to Greece

Saturday morning we woke up early to start the sail to Türkiye. (You can stay 24 hours after checking out). It was a beautiful morning!

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We said goodbye to Greece for now, we know that we will come back, but at this moment we don`t know if it takes us 3 or 6 months. We can stay in Greece/EU for 3 months, then get out for 3 months, and we thought that we had to be outside EU for 6 months to stay in EU for 6 months, but the guy on customs on Rhodes told us that was not any problem. We got his phonenumber and will call him before we are going back to Greece so we have everything prepared. If we can` t go back to Greece after 3 months we have to stay in Türkiye for 6 months, so right now we don`t know what will happens.

On this map you can se our journey in Greece, from we started in Corfu 1. of september. You can follow us on this map

Marmaris / Türkiye

We had a nice sail from Greece to Marmaris/Türkiye, it took us approximately 7 hours. We had contacted an agent before coming to Marmaris and a guy from the agents office met us at the cruiseport to help us to do the check in. We followed him to the passportcontrol, the rest of it he took care of and we could relax in the boat.

My first impression about Marmaris is that this is a nice town to spend some weeks!

Everyone is telling us about all the boatshops and it is cheap to get boatjobs done here, so our plan is to get som heat in the boat, cockpit-tent, new cusions in the saloon, new hot watertank, and a new matress for our bed. So we will stay here for a while.

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In the afternoon we took the dinghy ashore to check out this town. None of us has been here before, but as I have been working at a travel agency for years, I know the town pritty well.

We tried to find the castle, but we couldn`t find any sign or the correct street. Anyway, we were hungry so we looked for a place to eat. And we are going to stay here in Marmaris for some weeks so we will definitely find the castle later!

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We went to the restaurant O`Yes. I had chicken and Astor had calzone. Very good dinner!

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Sunday it was time for the first advent and I had to decorate a bit in the boat. It was also time to find the first christmas book (the biggest christmas gift).

While Astor was planning what to do…

Sawing holes for new sockets.

Nice to have extra USB sockets for charging.

Haven`t you read our last post from Rhodes where we did more hiking? You can read it here