more than a week on Patmos (click here for photos)

I've been more than a week here on Patmos Island, in the eastern Aegean Sea a stone's throw from Turkey. It's definitely my favorite island that I've visited so far, and one of those all-around amazing places that would definitely be near the top of my list of favorite places in the world. For one thing, it helps that I'm here at this time, end of September/early October, as it's very mellow now with very little tourism. But it is a fairly well-known island, apparently jam-packed in peak season in large part because of its distinction as being the place where St. John the Apostle wrote the Book of Revelation. The very cave where God apparently spoke to him has been turned into a small monastery (and a tourist attraction) and another, much larger monastery, surrounded by huge castle walls, is perched on top of a hill that overlooks the bay at the center of the island and the port town of Skala.

But in addition to that impressive place in history, Patmos is impressive for the usual things that you expect out of a Greek island: a relaxed and exotic atmosphere; friendly and personable people; cool, surreal landscapes; small white churches scattered hither and yon in unlikely places; donkeys roaming the countryside; lots of stray cats lounging around in narrow back alleys.....and something else that you'd hope to find around here...let's see, what the heck was it.....oh yeah, beaches! Great beaches with calm, crystal clear waters, and at least at this time of year, not to many people around to get in your way.

So, I arrived here more than a week ago and spent exactly a week exploring the island on my own, with my trusty bicycle (well, other than yet another flat tire, #4). Patmos is great for getting around on by bike because although it's a fairly small island, there are a number of different roads that branch off going to various parts of the island, so that there are plenty of different areas to see. I basically spent every day biking my butt off, as well as hiking up to various ridges to get the view and see what I might come across (donkeys and horses mostly, and plenty of old rock walls zigzagging the barren landscape), and then finding a beach along the way. The island is long and thin, with an extremely narrow waist so to speak, at the center where the main bay and port town of Skala are located, making two distinct sections north and south. So from anywhere on the island you can see the sea, usually in multiple directions; as well as several other nearby islands, that aren't all that far off in the distance.

Then after a week to myself I was met by my friend Dianna from Athens, who I met at the Kalikalos retreat center on the Pelion Peninsula, a little over a month ago. She came in on the very same ferry that I'd come in on a week earlier, arriving at 7 am Wednesday morning. So I've been showing her around the island, with the difference being that we're now getting around by rental car, since she has a bad knee and can't bicycle.

We'll be hanging out on the islands together for a little while, and the plan as of now is to hop on a ferry on Saturday (in two days) to the nearby island of Lipsi. It's quite a bit smaller and supposed to be extremely quiet, even quieter than Patmos, which is a little hard to imagine at this point. But either way it will be nice to see somewhere new after spending a good ten days here. We probably won't spend a lot of time there, as there are lots of other islands to see, but who knows. After that though, we're likely heading to Ikaria, another island which you can also see from Patmos, but a much larger one, which also has hot springs...

That's all for now folks, talk to you all later...