When I think back on our trip to Greece (October 2013), I remember beautiful sites, incredible climbing, and delicious food, to name a few. However, the most significant portions of our trip were characterized by transportation.
Prior to the trip, we did a lot of research on where to go, how to get to the island of Kalymnos, obtained the local climbing guide, etc. In the many sources we read, they all recommended renting a scooter to get around the island. However, not a single source mentioned that in order to do this, you need to have an International Driver’s License. I imagine this is not an issue for most climbers visiting Kalymnos, since most of the people we met there were from somewhere in Europe (where an International License is standard protocol). Our naïve selves were unfortunately completely unaware of this distinction, and were thus unable to rent any motor vehicles in Greece.
Upon our arrival in Athens, we caught a ferry to the island of Kos following a day of wandering around Athens. Kos is an island slightly larger than Kalymnos, and only about 10 miles away as the crow flies. We figured we would be able to easily grab a ferry from Kos to Kalymnos. However, the ferry from Athens dropped us off in Kos town, about 25km from the port containing the ferry to Kalymnos.
When our plan to rent a scooter was quickly foiled due to the aforementioned lack of an international license, we opted to rent bicycles. These weren’t modern bicycles, but heavy vintage schwinns with low seats and high upright handlebars. On top of this, we were biking with ALL our luggage, including all of our climbing gear, food, clothing, etc. On the other end of the ferry, we had another 3+ km (almost entirely uphill), to get to our accommodations.
For the next week, we got around Kalymnos on our bikes of questionable quality. As you may expect, an island notorious for having some of the world’s best rock climbing is quite hilly. On top of that, each time we arrived at our climbing wall of choice, there was usually another 45 minutes of hiking up a steep hill in order to reach the wall. And that was all before we had even started climbing for the day. Needless to say, this trip got me in great shape (which I quickly negated by indulging in French cuisine in Paris during the later part of our trip).
On our fourth day on Kalymnos, while riding up an especially steep incline, the derailer on John’s bike snapped and got sucked completely into the spokes. He was eventually able to straighten it out enough to coast, but and hard pressure on the pedals would cause it to snap again. This was slightly problematic given that our routes were littered with hills that required far more than the minimal pressure to snap the derailer.
Eventually, on a day trip to Kos, we stopped by the little bike shop where we rented from to see about getting his bike fixed/replaced. Upon seeing it, the owner was like “Oh yeah! That’s the one I fixed!” He ‘kindly’ offered to fix it up and have it ready for us that evening, but we opted to just not deal with it anymore. We returned the bikes and spent the rest of the trip getting around on foot (none of the other shops had any bikes in stock because the Kalymnos Climbing Festival was happening at the same time). Only after returning the bikes did I realize just how useful they were, because being bikeless was a whole other challenge.
We rounded out our transportation-defined trip by (unintentionally) trying to utilize as many forms of transportation as possible in one day. We left our hotel on foot and made the 3+ km journey to the docks with all our luggage. From there, we caught a ferry to Athens. Upon (a late) arrival, we grabbed a bus to shuttle us to the subway. We took the subway until we were forced to debark due to some unforeseen issues (of which we have no clue of, since we don’t speak a word of Greek). At this point, we were worried about missing our flight, so we grabbed a taxi to the airport. So in the course of one day, we went from foot, to ferry, to bus, to subway, to taxi, to plane.
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