Arrivée au village de Xinara, qui compte plusieurs églises.
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A Xinara, nous prenons un sentier au bout du village pour voir un pigeonnier et c'est là que nous faisons notre rencontre avec un... serpent. Jocelyne est passée devant, sur le sentier herbeux, je la suis et soudain, je suis pétrifiée. A quelques centimètres de mon pied gauche, tout au bord du chemin, un serpent en train de faire la sieste vient de bouger. Il est assez grand, de couleur claire.... c'est tout ce que j'ai le temps de voir avant de faire un bond en arrière et de partir en courant et en hurlant.... Jocelyne est bien obligée de revenir en arrière, elle n'est pas rassurée du tout...Elle se dit qu'elle est passée tout près, sans le voir! Mais avec tout le bruit et le tapage que j'ai fait, le pauvre serpent s'est sauvé, car elle ne le voit pas. J'en reste tremblante pendant un bon moment.
Après avoir pris un petit bout de route, nous devons continuer sur un sentier, et nous ne sommes pas trop rassurées, car il y a de l'eau, des pierres sèches et souvent, le sentier est à peine visible, caché par les herbes hautes. Nous faisons du bruit avec un bâton...
La montée vers Kambos est très belle, il commence à faire chaud, les nuages sont partis...
Nous n'avons plus vu de serpent, seulement des lézards. Ca va, ils ont des pattes.
Puis nous commencons notre descente vers Ktikados...
Today is our hiking day... We are leaving at 7 am, so that we don't suffer too much from the heat. We are lucky, it is overcast and we feel a few raindrops, but it does not rain after all. We have trouble finding the proper trail and once we get one, we can't follow it for a long time, as it ends up abruptly, so we have to walk on the road for a while. On the way, we see a few gooats and sheep.
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We come to the village of Tripotamos, very nice, the usual narrow streets, the white houses, flowers everywhere...
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All along the way, there are many dovecotes, but somehow, we can never come close to them, as they are all in closed private properties.
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We see more chapels and churches as well.
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Tripotamos is very quiet, one wonders where all the people are....
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We walk past a beautiful mill after the village and continue to Xinara.
This village has many churches. We walk through it and Jocelyne sees a dovecote a bit further. We decide to get closer to it. Jocelyne walks first and I follow, a few meters behind. Suddenly, I stand like frozen and I step backwards and run like mad. There was a snake sleeping by the path, it was just a few centimeters from my left foot and it moved when I was next ot it. I know many snakes won't do any harm, but I am totally frightened by them.... I start screaming and I am all shaking. Jocelyne who walked past the snake without seeing it, does not feel too well, but of course, none of us wants to walk along this path anymore. Jocelyne comes back and is very careful, but I guess the snake was frightened by the sound of my jumps and moved to a safer place. It was a beautiful snake, fair colour and it seemed to be rather long.... No idea what kind it could be, but I had no will and time to study that when standing close to it... The lizards we could meet did not impress us that much. May be having legs does make a difference!
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We then continue our hike to the next village of Loutra, it is 11 am and it starts getting very hot, the sky is blue now. We walk up the hill to the village of Kambos. The trail is quite good and in some places, it is a bit bushy, so we make extra noise to frighten any sleeping snake! It is a paradise for them, as it is warm, there are many flat stones where to hide and there is always water nearby. We reach Kambos without seeing another snake though.
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We have our picnic in Kambos, in a shady spot, as it is very hot now. There are quite a few cats in Kambos, but it is always difficult to approch them. Greek cats are not really tame.
We continue our walk and start getting down, to the village of Ktikados,
where we can enjoy a Nescafé frappé and where a greek lady who lived in France is very happy to see us and talk in French.
Further down, we see beautiful landscapes
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and soon see Tinos Town in the distance.
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It is 4.30 pm when we reach Sofia Rooms, where we enjoy nice pastry to regain strength after a long walking day.
Greek pastry is sweet, sweetened with honey and has many various nuts. So yummy!
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