Mount Olympus

This last weekend the Jens and I had previously signed up to climb up Mount Olympus. We left early Saturday morning and got back at like midnight Sunday night. It was an amazing trip. We didn't have anything to do on Friday though.

A quick note on Friday. We got sandals by this really famous sandal maker. He has sold sandals to people like John Lennon, Kate Moss, Jackie O., and Lily Tomlin. So we had to go there and get sandals from him. Lots of people from our program had already gone, and they were not expensive, and handmade. So, on Friday afternoon we walked over to Monstraki and found his little shop. It was covered in many different sandals and funky art. We got to try on different styles named after famous people who had bought the same pair. I tried on the John Lennon, but didn't end up getting them. I did get a pair though that wasn't named after anyone famous, but I am quite happy with my purchase. Once you bought them they fit them to your feet too, so they fit extremely well. That was my Friday.

We left for Mount Olympus, like I said early Saturday morning and we were prepared for what we were told a "5 hour bus ride." Yeah. It was closer to 7 hours. I ran out of reading material pretty quickly. Anyways, we got to where the bus dropped us off and began our "3 hour hike" (closer to 4 hours, but maybe that had to do with the fact that every 5 minutes or so we all stopped to take pictures, because it was sooooo beautiful). It rained on us for like 10 minutes when we happened to be stopped for a break, but otherwise the weather was fine. It was a little chilly, but it warmed up once we were walking, and we didn't see the sun until we were out from under the cloud cover. We got to the "Refuge" where we would be spending the night like a half hour before it got dark, and there we had a delicious warm dinner and some hot chocolate. The room where we stayed was basically 2 walls cover in a very, very wide bunk bed. We fit 5 people on our bunk, meant for 4 people. It was freezing cold at the refuge because it was such a high elevation and the Jens and I covered our selves with 7 blankets and fell asleep by 10.

Sunday morning we woke up at about 7:50 and we had to be out of our little rooms by 8, so we hurried up and got ready and then ate a nice long breakfast as we weren't going to leave for the summit until 9. We left at about 9:20. One thing about Greeks is that they have a different sense of time than we Americans do. When we say we will leave at 9, we mean like 9-9:05, the Greeks mean at least 1.6 times that amount (we calculated that based on the fact that Nadia told us it would take us 10 minutes to get to school from our apartment, but in reality it makes us 16 minutes if we catch every crosswalk, and we walk really fast). Anyways, we left and walked up the very steep, very rocky, treeless path for about an hour and a half and stopped at the "summit" at a very beautiful place, which wasn't exactly the top of any mountain, but I think our guides could tell that we were struggling with the lack of oxygen, and lack of food, and lack of sleep, as well as poor Jen G. having a terrible cold. So we stopped and us really dorky people gave offerings to the gods in the forms of half a granola bar, and some bread. They obviously accepted our offerings because the sun came out and the wind stopped almost as soon as we had dropped our food on the mountain. We hung out up there for a while taking pictures and such, until we started getting super cold. So our guides took pity on us again and we walked back to the refuge to get lunch. We were going to have a half hour break for lunch (1 hour) and then we headed back down the mountain to our bus. We got down to the bottom of the mountain at about 4, and our guides showed us a mountain runoff stream and little lake. Some crazy kinds (myself included) decided that a mountain runoff stream would be a great place to go swimming. It kinda felt like jumping in the lake on Easter. Very cold. But at least we didn't have to wade out that far to go under, unlike dear old WBL, as the little lake got deep pretty fast. We then got on the bus and headed home. After a couple short breaks we got home at about midnight, and I fell asleep almost immediately.