Motoring About

So here we are! The bike I wiped out on yesterday is actually the one Lo is on...it's a little more tricky to start, so we've switched. It seems not the worse for wear, though, unlike me. Injury report: (and thanks to Dr. Jood, wish I'd known that about hydrogen peroxide yesterday!) Scrapes are already starting to heal, though they hurt all the time, and aches and pains are effectively gone, hooray.

This morning we began with our usual spani and, special for today, the closest thing we could get to a latte, which was more like a frappucino:

This is the little terrace of our place, not sure if we've posted a picture of it since our little movie won't upload. In any case, after breakfast we consulted our map of the island, and to our dismay, we found this:








We should have known! For you see, the road we were on yesterday was this one:




So had we consulted the map...well who knows. We might have tried it anyway, actually. Anyway, I'm glad to be feeling better and back up on the bike, as you can see in this casual picture:







Shopping for gifts was next on the agenda, aided by this helpful town map:










Finally it was time to head for the interior of the island. This little jaunt was made entirely possible by the motorbikes...and it was beautiful, as promised by guidebook and motorbike renter man both. At first, it seemed a little desolate and dry. Then, as I looked around I started to notice more things....things like the absolute silence (broken by our motorbikes :(, but also often by the screeching of cicadas, which can be a VERY loud noise. The hillsides are terraced and full of crumbling stone walls and olive trees. We saw the occasional goat or donkey, the occasional village, even the occasional marble quarry. See if you can find them all in these photos:


And after a while, the countryside didn't even seem so brown...I started noticing the gray-green of the olive leaves, the bright greens of figs, these purple flowers along the road side, and even the red in the rocks as we whizzed by. When we rolled back into our pension, we both agreed that it was a great ride.

We leave you for today on a sweet note: our dessert last night was yogurt and honey. The honey was amazing, and the yogurt...well, let's just say that it's definitely not low fat. Yum.