You will love this

The Aqua Aerobics have just finished and hotel manager Christos is about the get the pool party started ....

These were the aqua aerobics earlier....

Excursion: Butterfly Valley and Chalki

I've told you about the trials and tribulations of our excursion the other day, but this concentrates on what we did and what these places were like.

'Butterfly Valley'

Deceptively called the ‘Valley of the Butterflies', Petaloudes Valley is home to thousands of moths (relatives of the Jersey Tiger Moth) It’s a natural habitat and gets overwhelmed in spring and autumn with butterflies of the Panaxia genus, species Quadripunctaria Poda.  The valley's high levels of humidity draw them here to reproduce.

The valley is home to the River Pelekanos and many waterfalls are scattered all along it. Over the years, the valley of butterflies has turned into a popular tourist attraction.  Small wooden bridges cross the river and an uphill path leads to the Monastery of Panagia Kalopetra.

It costs €5 to get in and children get in free.

These moths, being moths, don't settle and then leave their beautiful wings open. When they settle, they close up. Getting a photo of them with wings open is well nigh impossible. They flap their wings so quickly that even using my highest shutter speed, I was hard-pressed to get any photos I can use here.

This is what they look like -

And here are some merged video clips for you to see what the valley is like -

Of course, it is the dry season now and most gullies which run with lots of water in the winter are dried up.  There is a little water still flowing here, but otherwise the valley, although looking fairly arid, is greener than most places on the island!

Highway Code - Rhodes

I've found a copy of the Rhodes Highway Code and it explains a lot.

Here are some of the main points - 

1. Speed limits - only obey them if you're someone else
2. Drive on either side of the road, especially on corners as that makes it more exciting
3. Do your best to add to the numerous wayside memorials dotted along the route at every road junction and blind bend
4. If you see anyone on a pedestrian crossing, put your foot down - you may still be able to clip them
5. Solid white line? Good place to overtake!
6. When on two wheels, remember that crash helmets can play havoc with your hair-do, so best to avoid them
7. Feel free to use your mobile while driving
8. Traffic lights on red?  Cars must stop, moped and scooter riders stop only if you feel like it

Crisis here!

Elizabeth has been no trouble on this holiday.

She has been devouring, one by one, the various books of Jeffrey Archer's current project, The Clifton Chronicles.

She has now reached the end of the fifth instalment and has looked to download the sixth on to her Kindle, only to find that it won't be out until early next year.

Each story ends on a cliffhanger, so life at home could be tricky until the New Year!

Sexiness Survey

A comment from you is required!

I've brought some sunglasses here from the UK, but haven't so far dared to wear them in case the ladies here just couldn't cope with the pressure!

Now that we're getting towards the end of our stay here, I've quietly tried them on in the privacy of our own patio area and I'd appreciate your views.

I'd like 3 answers from each reader, please.

1. Which set of the 3 sunglasses makes me looks sexiest?
2. Which of the first two (i.e. not the white ones which I've borrowed from Elton John) makes me look best?
3. Is Elizabeth's swimming costume the sexiest thing of all?

Answers please!

Food's great here!

The view from our patio currently ....

Advice for Travellers: A Tale of Two Excursions

We’ve only done two excursions on this holiday and we get the feeling that quite a lot of people here don’t do any.

In recent years we’ve been used to doing excursions from cruise ships – you get off the ship, get on a coach and they take you round.  Here we’ve been back to old style excursions, whereby such as Thomson’s use a local coach operator who’s running excursions for any and everyone who’s prepared to pay.

Our first excursion, “A Tale of Two and a Half Cities” was an adults-only affair and worked well for us.  The system they used that day was on the FOFO principle – first on, first off.  The coach had picked up a couple of guests at a hotel before it came to collect us.  We went on the tour and the couple got off first and the rest of us then came back to the hotel.

Yesterday’s excursion – to Butterfly Valley and Halki wasn’t quite the same.  We were first told to be ready for 8.30am. Late the evening before the trip we got a letter under our door to say we had to be ready for 8am.  We were first on. There followed pick-ups at 8 different hotels.  At some of these stops there were discussions between the driver and boarders (or non-boarders!) and some stops were then followed by U-turns as the driver dotted about collecting passengers.

After an hour and a half we arrived at Butterfly Valley (which is a 25-minute drive from our hotel)!  We were there till 10.40am and then drove on to the coast to catch the boat to Halki at 11.30am.  We got there with a few minutes to spare and we were then ferried across to Halki, the crossing lasting just over an hour.  The sea was pretty much flat, but those small boats can manage to rock on a flat calm and it was quite rocky.  We had around 3 hours and 20 minutes in Halki before the boat left at 4pm.  Halki is a very pretty place, but it is small.  There are endless bars and eateries on the very attractive water front, but we saw just two small supermarkets, one touristy shop and a pharmacy plus the odd fruit stall here and there at the front of someone’s house!

The reality is, if you don't have something to eat and drink and/or go to the beach, there's little else to fill your three and a half hours there.

The beach was some way away and up a steep incline in what was, once again, searing heat and most we saw who wanted the beach were shocked as to how far they would have to go to get there.  Unless you were in a bar, there was very little shade to be had on Halki.  There was a tree on the front with seating underneath where some people gathered at times.

We enjoyed having a drink or two, something to eat (much to our surprise, prices were no different to those on Rhodes itself) and a browse round the place which is very pretty and then we were back on the boat.  Once back on the coach, we pretty soon we realised that this was not going to be a FOFO excursion but a FOLO excursion as we retraced our steps round most of the island to drop people off in reverse order and we were indeed dropped off last.  The boat is about 35 minutes by road from our hotel, but we got back there an hour and 40 minutes after getting off the boat, so our day had lasted from 8am till 6.40pm and we were pretty weary by the end of it.

This second excursion had only just passed my ‘Balance Test’ - how long did we spend travelling compared to how long at places of interest?  For me, if the travelling is more than 50% of the time overall, then it’s not worth it.  We spent just about 50% of the time travelling, so this one just about scraped through the test.  That said, knowing what I do now, I wouldn’t do it again. The coach was cool each time we got on but got progressively hotter, such that it was unpleasantly hot when travelling and the ‘butterflies’, whilst very pretty in flight, were actually moths, so for the owners to call their place ‘Butterfly Valley’ has a Trades Descriptions Act problem about it!

I’d do the first excursion again like a shot and I’d go with them rather than hire a car as Lindos and Rhodes are both a bit of a pain as far as parking is concerned. I’d do the ‘Butterfly Valley’ and Halki tour again, but in a hire car.  Hire cars are cheap to rent (€25 a day) and parking seems to be straightforward at both ‘Butterfly Valley’ and at the small village where the ferries run from – Akra Kopria.  I'd also call by Epta Piges (the Valley of the Seven Springs) on the way out or back.  I was hoping that this would be part of our tour, but it wasn't.

Kiki, queen of the breakfast waiting staff

Here's Kiki who mainly looks after us at breakfast these days.

Unusually for here  - as they have staff from all over - she's a local girl and used to work where our room is situated at the Atlantica Imperial Resort and Spa.  Her husband is a local taxi driver and they have a 10 year old child and Kiki used to have to do split shifts.

She got to the point where she told them she was going to leave and they said they would like her to work in their new hotel across the road (it's only been open for a month or so).  Now she's at the Atlantica Imperial Residences and works 6am to 2.30pm instead and it seems that everyone is now happy!