I was introduced to an ice cream place which makes and sells some pretty unusual flavors tonight. Thinking that something that sounds so foul must be good, I tried the mustard and thyme ice creams. They both turned out to be pretty wretched. However, I am undeterred and will perhaps try the tomato ice cream next time.
The opening tonight was a big succes, with a lot of my firends and colleagues showing up. I had set the show up last night and during lunch today
Before the show, Chloe and I picked up the 40 euro cheese plate (even if you could get something like this in the states, it wouldn't be at that price!) from Les Alpages(page down to "Eat").
People from the IBS, EMBL, ESRF and other places showed up. I even had some crazy people come in from the street to "look at the photos" while eating the cheese and drinking the fancy champagne that chloe bought. One of them asked my why I put glass in the frames.
It was all really nice and very exciting. My first show! Oh, and I sold a print and have some interest in some others.
I'm still trying to finish all the kalymnos entries. I should be done this week, if preparations for my photo show don't get out of hand.
Anyway, this weekend we went to Pont-De-Barret in the Drome for my birthday. It was at a gite that I had found earlier for chloes birthday, but we had been unable to go because she got sick. I had originally been told of Pont de Barret because a guy I know in our climbing gym had told us that there was a new secret area near the town. So on saturday afternoon we set out for the Drome. We managed to get a little lost, and had lunch by the side of a small river
and continued throught Saou
and some ruins near Soyans
The climbing area is visible from the road, and is above another (maybe the same) small river.
After a 30 minute walk, you get to the base of the cliff
Because our topo was very incomplete, it was kind of a disasterous day of getting on the wrong routes. We warmed up on a .12a that we had thought was a 10b, then, on a .11b I ended up crossing onto a .12d, ran out of draws near the chain, and had the wind invert my chalkbag and dump out all my chalk!
We walked back down the hill, waded through the river, packed the car and headed for thi gite. It was easy to find, and we were both impressed with the buildings and stone driveway as soon as we pulled up. However, we didn't really have time to explore because we had dinner reservations at "l'Oiseau sur sa branche" in Saou. We quickly showered and sped off down the road through the wheat fields
to Saou
And had a very nice meal. The amuse bouche was some kind of crazy sausage which was baked in a loaf of bread. I had seen these before, but never tried it before, and it was fine, but about what I expected. I ordered the asparagus (they are in season, and along with picodon and garlic, are a well known product of the region) in a light garlic butter sauce and the volaille. Chloe had the volaille as well and a unqiue potato-snail dish which I had never even seen before. It was excellent, but I found the chewy snail texture a little strange juxtaposed with the soft potato cubes. The volaille was... volaille. Dessert was a chocolate moelleaux which had been cooked in a cute little mini cake mould. It came with creme anglaise and an apricot sorbet on the side. We had a generic Crozes Hermitage with the meal. All in all it was a great value in a very nice atmosphere.
We got extremely lost on the way back to pont de barret, but eventually made it. We also saw a GIANT wild boar waddling off the road about 100 feet from the gite.
The next morning (Sunday) we had a chance to talk to Yves about the gite. It was the usual stilted french conversation, but he understood us and I understood most of what he said. I started off by asking, "So, when you got here, this was all..." and he finished the sentence simple with "in ruins". That was twenty years ago, during which time he has turned the gite into a truly stunning place. The property, which he has re-assembled (It is called "The Bastard" and the original plot had been subdivided among all the children, and childrens children) by purchasing them in a piecemeal fashion, was overrun with bushes, had no water, a single light socket and all the stone buildings were essentially piles of rubble. He is from paris, and when he arrived, had no idea about fundamental things like how to operate a tractor, install plumbing etc. When you hear him talk about it, and you look out over the perfect laws, stone walkways and immaculate houses, you realize what a huge task it must have been. The gite and environs:
We did some great moderate climbs today, and I took a beating on some harder ones, then drove home just as it started raining.
We just walked in the door from a two week climbing vacation to Kalymnos. I'll be updating the blog soon, in chunks of days based on notes that I took during the trip.
Chloe and I got up early in a highly motivated bid to do the climb called "Eros". After a few failed attempts (I got to the last @#$@#ing bolt and then fell off!!! ARGHH) we gave up, met up with Mark and Amy and shuttled to Kastelli to do "Pillar of the Sea"
Aftwerwards, we went back to the Studio, packed our stuff up and experienced a hair raising car ride up to the monestary overlooking the harbor:
On our way down, George (Nicks son in law, who is taking over for Nick) showed us the thermal waters near Pothia which we had somehow never even heard of! After wandering around the port for a while, we had a drink at one of the 1000 Pothia cafes, and watched in amazement as a boat almost crashed into two other moored boats and then the dock itself. The name of the boat?
We sadly boarded the ferry to Mastixari, made arrangements for a room in the somewhat musty but otherwise nice Angela Thalia Apartments, and made reservations for a 5:50 AM taxi to the airport.
After a half day at arhi with TONS of people, we abandoned any hope of climbing (this is the last time we will go to Kalymnos at this time of year) and headed to Myrties to rent big plastic "sea kayaks" and paddles out to Kinaki (i THINK!) island, which has a stand of trees and a small chapel, but nothing else. From the island you can see the impressive south face of Telendos
We paddled accross to Telendos and along the shore to the rocky beach that we had been to earlier in the week. On our way back along the shore, we looked under the boat and saw that telendos has a kind of rock skirt which juts downards and outwards into the sea. The water was clear enough to see the rock and a huge dropoff behind it.
We had another great dinner at the "White Snapper", and it was just as busy as the last time!
We also had probably the only decent bottle of wine on the trip... it was from Santorini, but I can't remember the name.
Headed to the Vathi Fjord for another rest day, and putt-putted in our moped up some steep roads that climbed east out of the Valley. There are quite a few new restaurants on the east side of the bay, and some public toilets which hopefully will reduce the amount of crap and toilet paper on the rocks.
It was a perfect breezy day, with sailboats and fishing boats coming in and out of port
Vathi has a small shipyeard where they were re-painting several boats
On our way out, we drove down one of the access roads for the fish farms and got a better look at this small island with a chapel off the southeastern coast
After linking a little further into Aegialis and redpointing DNA (Chloe led it! It will be a perfect project for her on our next trip) we sat back to watch Spiro on Zawinul Syndicate again. This time we almost got killed by stalagtites falling, so we moved out of the way.
The Greek guru who put up Aegialis was there again. I should mention that he looks a bit like a cave man: dark coriacious skin, shoulder length hair exposing a bald pate... and he yells a lot. He looks a little crazy. Anyway, I talked to him through his belya slave interpreter, and said "yeah I tried Aegialis, but its pretty f#@$ing hard". He got very agitated, started shaking his head and talking rapidly. I looked at his interpreter guy who got a pensive look on his face, and said "Yes, he was watching you on Aegialis, and he suggests that perhaps you should move more rapidly" in perfect english. It was a very funny juxtaposition. Its not fair, but I was expecting something more along the lines of "YOU NO STRONG. CLIMB LIKE BRONTOSAURUS. CLIMB LIKE MONKEY BETTER".
We cooked omelets for dinner which were a little nasty. At least there was a nice sunset:
After our moped almost died going up the hill, we walked to Symblegades Petres for a relaxing day on easy routes in the shade. I did the varied and very fun KVM a vue and a few other 6's on the other side. Afterwards we went into Pothia to find duct tape and foam to make my superclimbingfancypants. It took a little searching but eventually Chloe and I found a hardware store. It was packed from floor to ceiling with so many things that the guy working there (who was a large fellow) couldnt really move around the store. Instead of a ladder, he had a little gripping device on a pole which seemed to be completeley useless. After knocking down several paint cans for the previous customer, he managed to almost drop a large roll of duct tape on his head! I would say that it is a system that could be improved.
Later on we went to the mother of all sponge shops. Kalymnos used to be a major source of natural sponges, but a blight of some kind and the availablity of cheaper sponges from southeast asia and the US has since changed that. They dont seem to have any lack of sponges though!
After buying a few sponges, I asked if I could take a picture of the owner. It became obvious that I was not the first person who had asked this, because she scooted on over to a little wooden bench, picked up a stick, and pretended to whack the sponge. It was a little eery: a bit like watching a human wind up doll. I was sorry to have put her through that, especially because the photo didnt turn out very well.
As the sun was setting I saw a group of boys in a rowboat cruise through the harbor. They would start gesturing and pointing towards the occasional boat that came back to port, start paddling madly towards it, and then start lobbing firecrackers on board.
We had dinner at Barbagiannis, where a mangy dog circled the table
Later that night I made the superclimbingfancypants by taping sections of a foam sleeping pad to the inside of the pants.
It was absurdly crowded today: there were lines, for a hard climb called Spartacus, which I have never seen before. I did Jellyfish Pie a vue, then we fled to the Grande Grotta to escape the huge (20 people) spanish crew that had congregated.
Chloe tried "Aphrodite"
photo by mark
and figured out a workable sequence. We watched a really tall french guy on Zawinul Syndicate. ZS is a huge climb on tufas, with several mean looking cruxes on it. He was there with his wife and daughter, so when he climbed his wife was belaying him, and their daughter would periodically wander off. While he was on the climb, she scrambled to the top of a boulder and was teetering there while her mother demanded that she get down (she refused). She also managed to find a used piece of chewing gum, which she happily tossed into her mouth and chewed. If you have been to Kalymnos, you know that every flat surface in any sheltered area (like the Grand Grotta) is covered in goat shit pellets, which made the whole gum incident even more gut wrenching. At one point she put something else in her mouth and started crying: one can only guess what it was. Meanwhile, her dad was trying to get through the cruxes and scolding her whenever he got to rests. He fought through almost all of the climb until he got within a meter of the chains, got tired, started screaming "Nooooooo!", then lobbed off. Echos of "Meeeeeeeeeeer-duhhhhhhhhhhhh" echoed through the cave as he came to grips with having spent nearly 40 minutes carefully trying to onsight the climb. When he got down I heard him mutter to himself: "zawinul syndicate... c'est moi qui est nul!!". "Nul" means useless, crap.
We watched another impressive on sight of Priapos, and I went for a run on Aegialis. 
Aegialis seemed pretty impossible to link, but a Greek guy named Spiros was leaving draws on it so I vowed to come back and do better. Chloe seconded it and did great 
In order to get better knee bars, I also resolved to engineer knee pad embedded climbing pants.
We had cheeseburgers, shakes and fries at Glaros. Calamari overload.
Today we took another rest day and hiked to Palionisos. We hiked up the rutted dirt road which switches back up into the hills above Skalia, past the beekeepers and burnt out buildings
and to the church with the giant white crucifix. From there, we took the trail down towards Palionisos, stopping to look north at Leiros and the swarms of strange grasshopper like insects
After a short downhill walk, we rounded a bend and saw the small port town of Palionisos before us
and continued downwards. Amazingly, despite its diminutitve size, the paths that wend through walls and peoples backyards are a bit maze like and confusing, but we made it to the beach where we had lunch
and looked out over the stunning water
I took some pictures after moving some brightly colored plastic bags and miscellaneous detritus off the beach. A strong wind out of the south was washing all kinds of nasty things ashore, including a dead sea bird of some kind and a very weathered carrot.
Right before lunch, a man name Nikolas came down to the beach and greeted us. He told us that Palionisos is a popular port in the summer, with as many as 70 boats in the natural harbor at a time. He used to be a sponge fisherman and speaks six languages. After a little small talk he invited us up to his taverna ("Paradise") and gave us instructions on how to get through the labyrinth of walls.
We finished lunch, took some pictures and then walked up to his Taverna. Nikolas showed us his photo albums from his sponge fishing days and told us that there were only six inhabitants of Palionisos (including himself!). He talked about how he used to have to run up the trail (the same one that we had descended) at 4 in the morning to get to Panormos, where he would get a taxi into Pothia for school. Personally, I think I would have either moved or stopped going to school. Included in the memorabilia was a postcard from Stephanie Zimbalist (from remington steele) who had apparantly visted at some point. It was laminated. Nikolas was a very friendly guy, but he seemed a little depressed about his situation. He told stories as if they were sales pitches he had given so many times that he had forgotten what he was selling. He wasn't actually selling anything except cold drinks and sponges, the latter of which Mark and Amy bought one of.
We said goodbye and started walked back up the hill. As we got to the top, a cloud bank rolled in and I got some nice light over the hills below us
We continued on down the hill to skalia
and had dinner at Drosia by the harbor: excellent olives and stuffed calamri. We were besieged by cute orange cats demanding their share.
