Steno Beach

As long as I travel to Astypalaia there will be a blog about Steno Beach, because I am very taken with the place.  I always see it first from the taxi as we leave the airport, and I am amazed at all the colors of blue that the Aegean can be.  The color palette changes throughout the day, the colors look lighter in the morning, and more vibrant in the afternoon.

As time moves differently in Astypalaia, it took Andrea and I a full week to get to Steno, although not for lack of trying. Our first attempt was aborted when we realized that we were waiting at the wrong bus stop.  There we were, dressed in our bathing suits and beach towels, waiting for a bus that never materialized. Being that this is Greece and transportation is often late, we waited extra long for the bus that had left the port a half hour earlier.  Oh well!  And it was over 100 degrees that day.

So on our day off we finally managed to call a taxi driver, who speaks no English, and made ourselves understood in remedial Greek as to where we were and where we wanted to go.  We arrived at 10:30 am to a completely empty beach. We hung around a bit and were finally able to rent two lounge chairs and an umbrella.

Steno is a very shallow sandy beach, you can keep walking out and you are only up to your knees.  I decided to swim from Steno Beach to Micro Steno Beach.  It involved swimming out around a small point of land, but there was a pretty strong current.  Micro Steno is also very deep, I had to swim right up to shore before I could stand up. Floating in the crystal clear waters of Steno is easier.

After my exertion I needed lunch and headed to the local cantina and had meatballs, dakos salad and some beer.  We went back to our beach chairs and fell asleep.  Maybe for too long, because Andrea was fried, red as a lobster.  We called the taxi to take us back home, but ended up waiting another 45 minutes in the sun.  We did meet a nice French lady at the bus stop, who was also waiting for a taxi.

More on the taxi ride later.