Ormos Katapola, Amorgos - The Big Blue

1st October 08
Leaving Ios, we motorsailed in light winds to Amorgos, where most
businesses are called 'The Big Blue' - pensions, hotels, bars, cafes -
all testament to the Luc Besson film 'Le Grand Bleu', filmed around
here. The film was about 1 hour too long for our liking, but did have
spectacular scenery and lots of fit tanned men in small pants as it's
about free-diving.
Our Amorgos experience was less blue and sunny but just as spectacular,
and is one of the islands we would definitely like to come back to. We
took the hour long climb to the 'hora' - this literally means 'the
place' but refers to the main town of an island, often built high on a
hill to avoid the marauding Turks and pirates. This was beautiful in
itself, but we then walked over the back of the hill down and up to the
9th C Horoviotissa monastery glued on a rocky perch halfway up a 500m
cliff. We arrived 5 minutes after closing time, so didn't benefit from
the three remaining monks' hospitality of tea, lemon liqueur and (non)
Turkish Delight.
The view however was to die for, and the walk up to it would nearly
finish some people off, even if they drove to the start of the path.
Above the monastery we found another walking track, and being without a
map or compass, and not wanting to retrace our steps to the hora, we set
off on what we thought might be a 35 minute walk to the saddle of the
hill, followed by a short downhill back to the hora. However, you know
what it's like, the further you go, the more committed you are to that
path, even though you can clearly see a big mountain in the way, and the
path is still going up it, with the monastery disappearing behind us.
Suffice to say 3 hours later we arrived back in the hora, having only
seen 2 other people and lot of goats, who all looked at us like we were
mad. Only another hour downhill back to the boat after that. The total
days walking time was about 6 hours. The thing about Amorgos is that
there is nothing there, no restful little bars or villages or even
houses on the route. Just rocks and goats, and all the better for it.
If you anchor in the bay, watch out for the 3am ferry, who needs most of
the bay to drop his two anchors and back onto the quay. You don't want
to wake up to find him alongside your boat, so anchor as close in to the
beach as you dare. We moved onto the quay for our monthly water fill
and diesel top up. We needed our transit log stamped for the month, so
visited the port police whose office had a balcony right over the quay.
However he had not the slightest interest in taking money from us or
stamping papers. The Turkish charter boat alongside us, however, was
hailed and requested to produce all papers and passports.