This summer turned out to be really loaded with work and family stuff. I thought I'd never utter these words, but I'm almost glad it is over... Bottom line, my GF and I only managed to find a 3-day period during which we were both relatively free, and took the plunge to go on a short camping/hiking trip along with a couple of friends.
The place is the banks of river Netha (Νέδα), a beautiful canyon less than two hours away by car. Sidenote: river Netha is the only female-named river in Greece, as all other rivers were named after mythical males...
As a teaser, the area features four or so waterfalls with matching small lakes, a bat cave, ancient temple ruins, and lots of fun...
Alright, so... We arrived at the river in the afternoon. As you'd expect, our first priority was setting up camp, as it can get really dark really quick inside a canyon. Here's our little, cosy, comfy shelter for the night and some shots of our "backyard"...
With that out of the way, and the daystar still scorching us, it was time for a little swim. No shots allowed (ok honey?
) but you get the picture...
The water was, of course, quite
cold invigorating and the strong current made it quite fun too... Think of it as a cold-water jacuzzi...
A "short" hike around the camp site was all we had time to do before the sunset and lunch time...
The next day we got up early and eager to get wet.
We followed the river downstream...
... all the way to the above mentioned bat cave.
We didn't get any shots from the inside, as we had to swim to get through so the cameras stayed behind with the girls. Anyway, it was awesome; think of a 13-15m tall cave through which the river is flowing (it gets all the way up to the ~10m mark in winter), a couple of holes on the roof with beams of sunshine coming down, a couple of small waterfalls, and lots and lots of bats flying around or staring at us hanging upside-down from the ceiling and sides of the cave. The cave was too dark to see at some points, so there were ropes mounted on the sides of the cave to clink to while swimming across. Now, the plan was that the boys would go in first, then come back and get the girls... but for the life of me, I don't get why they didn't want to come along after the above description...
So, we left the river bank and, a short climb afterwards, ...
... we got to the first of the waterfalls we had come up to the previous day. Then continued on to the second waterfall, which now was quite a bit more crowded than the previous day (probably a function of the time of day).
After a little swim and rest, we decided to make our way back to our campsite for some rest and a little something to eat, before wandering off to some of the local ancient ruins.
Well, that proved to be the
wrong thing to do, as the girls got a "short" nap of around 2-3 hours, and then it was too late to go anywhere before it got dark again. We thus called it a day and took the rest of the day swimming in the river and socializing with some other people that had set up camp by us.
The next day turned out to be the most mundane of all, as we we forced to leave early in the morning (Real Life (TM) called) so we didn't manage to go anywhere else in the vicinity. This river flows all the way to the see and it's a 7-8 hour hike all in all, so we are definitely bound to go back again, even if just for the crossing. Hopefully soon...
Here's just a couple more gratuitous shots of some of the denizens of this great place...
Donations
Community Links
