MickTravels World Travelogue -- Ios -- June 1999

Ios	36° 42' 55"n 025° 17' 38"e

We boarded our ferry to Ios early the next morning. Upon arrival we were thankful to find a bus that went by our hotel. Turns out that wasn't such a spectacular find since there's only one real road and one real busline. Our hotel room wasn't ready, as usual that early in the morning, so we hung out by the pool again. I sarcastically remarked that we probably had the room at the very top of the stairs. Sure enough, we had a real hike getting the luggage up all the steps. It was a real nice place overlooking the topless beach (!!!). We dumped our things and went for lunch.

After lunch we tested the water, and it was a little too chilly and rough to try snorkelling. I had Kelly choose where to sit on the beach so that I didn't get into trouble by selecting the spot next to all the topless chicks, and we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the beach. We saw lots of good looking women (OK, Kelly said there were good looking guys, too), but there was one lady who must have been about 300 pounds and she was naked. Thank God she had a towel over the important parts!

The next day we rented a motorscooter. The scooter wasn't powerful enough to propel both of us up the steep hills, so we traded it in for a dirt bike. I had to really rev the engine and drop the clutch to get up some of those hills. We made our way around half of the island entirely on a dirt road. Our butts were quite sore. We ended up at a very isolated beach at the other end of the island. Then we came back.

Besides lying on the beach and motorbiking around some dirt roads, the only thing to do in Ios is party. People were coming back to their hotel rooms at all hours of the evening/morning and at all volumes. As non-partiers, we found Ios not very exciting and somewhat irritating at 3:00a when the first of the drunks were screaming home.

The next morning we took advantage of the Ios Palace complimentary breakfast and were excited to see milk and cereal. The only problem was that the milk was warm goat's milk. It was gross enough for Kelly to not finish her cereal and rely on fruit and toast, but somehow I choked it down.

After breakfast we boarded the bus for the ferry port. 3 young women got on the bus with us -- they hadn't been home yet from partying the night before and sleeping on the beach. Wow, am I old or what? Our next destination was Naxos because they had excursions that took you to Dellos, an uninhabitted island filled with ruins.

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