i got up the next morning, had breakfast, and mounted the bike for my next leg of the journey, a 15 km trip to a popular seaside town called naoussa. boy, was my butt sore.
i figured that if i took smaller roads closer to the shore, i’d avoid the hills inland. i was wrong on two counts: first, that there actually were roads, and second, that i’d avoid hills.
after about 30 minutes of pushing my bike across rough terrain, i came to a paved road, but first took a detour onto a peninsula to see what i could find:
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the answer was “not much.” another “not much” were the villages between piso libadi and naoussa. maybe a lot of the houses are just occupied for the summer, but outside the village centers themselves, there seemed to be a lot of desolation. i frequently saw something i saw in india: a walled lot with nothing built on it. i got the sense that a lot of people started selling land for construction when times were good, and then the money dried up.
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this sense of emptiness extended to naoussa itself, but only because it was shut up for the winter. some local-serving businesses were open, but the atm sign said it pretty well.
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there was no reason to stay in naoussa for the night, and no place to stay anyway; so, after lunch, i gingerly got back onto the bike and rode (a.k.a. pushed it uphill and coasted downhill) another 11 km to parikia, the main town of paros, where i easily found a room and a meal, and i made my plan for days 3 and 4.
next: day 3.