Grande Grotta

First full day on the island and first day of climbing: amazing. I can completely understand why people come back here year after year. We even met a family from Squamish that are here for 3months with their 3 year old daughter. It’s lovely to see so many families on climbing trips in addition to the usual crew that I would expect to see at one of my more typical crags. For our first day, we decided to see what all the Grande Grotto rage was about and it definitely did not disappoint. I climbed 40m+ routes with huge overhangs and can’t remember grabbing a single bad hold- certainly no small holds encountered yet. The crag had a definite international feel with many languages being spoken, but cheers and encouragements being understood across the nationalities.

We warmed up on a tufa-ridden 6c & 7a and while Kenneth was on belay with me trying to navigate through the foreign 3-dimensional climbing- a goat sauntered up and started nosing through my pack and chose my brand new 35 euro guide book to start nibbling on. Not much we could do about it at the time, but some French guys threw their cigarettes at him and he stopped. (actually it was a shoe, but they WERE smoking cigarettes). The other side of the Grotto (with all the routes I wanted to get on) was so packed we didn’t even think about trying to be the one American group negotiating a place in line for the most popular routes. But come ~1400, the sun starts to creep on the wall and the Euros scatter.

We have been climbing in 90 degree, 100% humidity for the better part of four months now in the southeast and it felt like heaven to us in the sun with the ocean breeze. I was psyched to hang on long enough for the onsight of Aegialis (7c) and DNA (7a+)- in fact they felt pretty easy and I’m psyched to get on some harder routes after warming up to this style of climbing. Tomorrow I’m thinking about trying to onsight Priapos- a 35m 7c that will require some creative cleaning strategies as I only have a 70m rope with me and a longer one would be helpful.

After the afternoon sun got to be a little too intense, Kenneth & I invested in a kid’s pair of face mask and snorkels and went for a swim in the Aegean. The sea is so clear here that I could see all sorts of things (lots of scary fish), which made me make high-pitched whale noises through my snorkel drawing attention to myself from all the European sunbathers. Fish are scary – I have always thought this and I still maintain that, but this trip I’m going to TRY and get a little more comfortable to swimming near them and not freaking out about it. After drying off from our swim, we met James & Laurel who just got to the island and have perma-grins from the sights of the cliffs, the proximity of it all, the delicious dinner we had, and the wine that we all drank (yes, even James). I love Greece. I love this trip. And I can’t wait for tomorrow.