Our wild ride around Naxos

Naxos is the largest of the Cyclades and has the largest mountain, Mt Zeus (who else).  We rented a car, a Kia Piccolo -- which is the chihuahua of cars, to do a tour of the island.  We did the gringo trail: up to Mt Zeus, a visit to a cave on Mt Zeus where Zeus was born (apparently of humble beginnings), a little chapel a top a hill, the villages along the way.  It was getting late, gas was getting low, and it was 54 kilometers to get back to town.  So, we did the obvious thing: take a shortcut.  Read that again.  A Kia + setting sun + low gas + shortcut in Greece.  Not a good bet, but good enough for Code and I.  We turn off a bumpy road and pass an old man on his front stoop just as the road turns from bad concrete to dirt.  It still was not too late to turn back.  'Is this the road back to town?, we sort of gestured toward the road and pointed to our little car.  He nodded yes but seemed to indicate that the road was a little bumpy.  Yes, indeed.  The road was bumpy.

Somewhere over a mountain pass, after swerving around a stray goat, but before we got to a dog chained in the middle of nowhere (we gave him some water) I fought off intermittent panic attacks about getting lost with the kids and having to spend the night on this mountaintop with the kids being hungry (and thirsty because the dog had our water) in the car.  I could imaging having to subsequently explain to our rescue party just what possessed us to think we could go off-roading in our Kia with NAXOS MOTOR RENTALS plastered all over the side.  My defense against the panic was a bad case of the giggles and nervous jokes about of James Kim.  Code was reassuring.  He had figured out that we had enough gas and/or daylight to hike the half dozen miles to get back to civilization.  Still, while we were sure we were going to make it, on some level we were both a little anxious about having perhaps taken a wrong turn or running out of road.  The kids thought the whole thing was a grand adventure, especially with our giggles, afterall, the scene was nuts.  We passed little huts along the way, usually with a truck or a ATV parked out front.  Was it obvious we were from out of town?   We saw 3 other cars on this 10 km trail - each going the opposite direction as us (again making us feel like the way OUT was the opposite direction than we were travelling), and each giving us a glare and a head shake as if they knew that their evenings would soon be disrupted by having to come back to rescue more tourists.  Again.  I was finally reassured when the last guy who we saw was also driving a Kia.

Since I am writing about this, you can guess that we made it back to town with gas (but no more daylight) to spare  for our 2 hour shortcut.  It was a thrill ride, and a beautiful one at that though the Greek Mountains.  It may have been a short cut, but it was definately the right turn.