Roy was up early to make breakfast and get ready to meet the small group of cruisers who had planned a morning hike.

While he was away, Elaine decided that the best thing she could do for her body, after walking more than 8 Km / 5 miles yesterday, was to do her stretch exercises on the foredeck; it had been months and, needless to say, she was as stiff as a board! She did, however, take a break to chat to our temporary neighbours on our starboard side, who had returned to their yacht from Israel a few days ago and were setting off to enjoy their cruising season in the Mediterranean. Like many of the cruisers here, they were in awe when they learnt that we had sailed from Thailand and had come the “long way round” from the Caribbean.

Afterwards she spent the rest of her morning putting the final touches to our latest video, cataloguing all our latest photographs and getting everything ready to upload to our website. Unfortunately the latter turned into a very time-consuming and frustrating activity as the data connection kept dropping during the day. That meant we started the uploads tonight and will run them overnight. Hopefully we have better success!

When Roy still wasn’t back by 1300, though, having left for his hike at 0900, Elaine started to worry. Fortunately a text message confirmed that the group was fine, but Roy hadn’t realised it was going to be such a marathon hike. By 1345 he was back onboard, having hiked 12 Km / 7.5 miles up the mountains behind Finike, reaching a height of 659 metres / 2162 Ft and back down again, over a period of 4.5 hours. It wasn’t surprising then, that when Elaine mentioned she was going to have an afternoon nap, Roy actually beat her to bed! From the photographs, although it was an exhausting hike over very rocky terrain, the views were magnificent. He hadn’t expected, however, to see so many old tombs and tortoises everywhere. Thanks to Kay, off Mai Tai, for some of the photographs.

Feeling somewhat refreshed after our naps, we enjoyed a chat to Keenan, who was starting to feel better, enough to be outside in the sunshine and getting some fresh air, although still congested.

Our day wrapped up with dinner and a movie, as well as “nursing” our uploads.