The Flood

This is also an old post from Greece that apparently never loaded:

Last night it rained so hard there were animals walking around in pairs asking if anyone knew a guy named Noah? It was fierce and heavy, then just heavy, then became occasional spitting showers as the sun came up. There will be no climbing today for us after that!

Knowing that the rain was coming, we climbed hard yesterday: many, many single pitch routes, climbing past exhaustion and half-way into stupid, as in “did I tie my knot correctly?” this check being done somewhere in the middle of the next route. We are in Kyparissi, and there is not much for moderate climbers here. I should add, “yet” because there’s probably room for more easier routes, but for the moment it’s between hard and very hard. There’s one whole cliff which seems to be entirely 8a to 8c+.

It’s beautiful, though, and we’re in a very nice studio in a sort of resort place. We can sort of cook: there is one pot, one sauce pan, no cutting board, but we’ve been making do. The restaurants that are still open here are not wonderful. There’s the restaurant where we are, which seemed to confuse ketchup for tomato sauce on our spaghetti, and another tavern which is fine but not great, and certainly with so few people coming in, almost nothing is likely to be fresh. They had good horta, though.

The beach is a few steps away and the water temperature is just perfect. It’s cool, I think, enough to get the blood flowing but not so cold as to suffer. Getting in is a little difficult, but after it’s great. I just looked up the temperature: 19.6°C, 67°F. I think that’s my favorite temperature.