Lomography

Alonissos. A little piece of paradise...
written by stouf on February 14th, 2009 , 14 submissions , 13 comments (11 votes)

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I hesitated long before doing that particular lomolocation. Why? Well… Because maybe I’d rather keep that place secret… But slowly, I realized I wanted to share this with people of lomography. I’ve met some of them in the site and I realized that they were all very nice persons… That deserved to know.

So. It’s an island. A Greek island located in Northern Sporades, called Alonissos. First, from Athens you take a bus to Agios Konstantinos, from there you take a boat. It’s the last, most remote of Northern Sporades that you can reach by ferry boat. On the way, you’ll pass from Skiathos and Skopelos.

Then, you’ll finally see it. Alonissos. Feeling home… It’s a beautiful island. Not windy as Cyclades, the water is hot and clear… Pine trees provide a nice shadow for a nap at noon. A nice place to go for sunsets is the place called “the garbage”. The monastery of Agioi Anargiri is beautiful also. A bit trickier to reach.

But the most important is the water. Hot, clear and very welcoming… You can stay hours in it without getting cold. Play with your friends and some dogs (easy to find, they walk around free, I’m talking about the dogs.)…
If you can find my friend F., maybe he’ll take you for a fishing trip. It lasts 2 or 3 days, kills you completely, but it’s good life. Great life. And when you catch something, be ready with a big hook to take it out of the water, because it could be big. Very big.

Coming back from fishing, satisfied by the fact that you’re gonna feed all your friends and family tonight, take the time to observe the beauty around… Olive trees almost reaching the sea. Water… Cristal clear water… you can see fishes from high up here… Even in a port.

So jump in it! And feel its soft, refreshing and cleaning hand caress you. And when you’re in the water, please, take your time. Fear is an oxygen consuming activity. Just relax, be quite, enjoy it. After the bath take some rest on the beach, let the sun burn your skin. Then, you have other islands around like Kira Panagia and its monastery. It’s an incredible out of time monastery. You’ll climb under the heat before being under the fresh shade of the vine trees. A bit further, there is Psathoura. It’s an amazing place. A volcanic black island with a white sandy beach on which grow beautiful orchid-type flowers. Paradise.

The water is the clearer in all the world over there. Yes it is. You can make underwater shots with a 100 iso film in a Holga and get acceptable exposures. That’s an ultimate proof. Oh ! Just a last advice. If you see a lot of sea birds concentrated in a point over the sea, and that the sea looks like it’s boiling, take a boat and go over there. Usually dolphins are not far… Then, try to find from the surface, the center of all attentions and dive in it. You will see the ecosystem at work in front of your eyes. Very little fishes will be concentrated as a big living cloud… Or like a tornado, but shaped as a sphere and turning around its center. Constantly attacked by small tunas, trans piercing the cloud like little torpedoes launched from the bottom… And if you’re very lucky, a group of amber jacks (like the one we caught with F.), king of predators will come to hunt anyone who’s too slow to escape from them.