Mt. Olympus Part 2

    The Church was very old, and not in the greatest condition.  We stayed there for a short while, took some pictures and caught our breath.
After the Church, we heard a faint sound, of running water.  It sounded not too far away.  So we hiked a little more.  We came across some rocks, and I'm NO rock climber, but I must admit, it was fun and a tad dangerous!  No one fell thank Zeus, because that would have been messy!  Finally, after climbing down rocks, we got to the waterfall and river.

It was quite a site and one that these pictures just can't capture!  The water was crystal clear, sky blue, and the waterfall was magnificant to see!  It all looked so refreshing, we all just had to dip our feet into it!
Turns out the water was melted snow from the top of Mt. Olympus, so after about 5 seconds, my toes were numb!  Couldn't hack it, I'm a wimp!  I did notice, however, that half of our group decided to brave the ice-water and walk into the river, where there was a large, smooth rock formation in the center.  Well, if they can do it, I can do it.
The water appered to be knee-deep...however, after several steps, it became waist-deep!  And oh so cold!  I wanted to walk fast to get to my destination, but the rocks I was walking on were very slippery and had I or anyone else fallen, it would have been a disaster....all the way down the mountain.  So we had to walk very, very slow...which is hard with numb feet!
Finally, we made it to the rock.  But that wasn't good enough!  Some of the brave ones, decided to swim in the freezing water.  We were all dunked, I mean totally submered, into the water by Mike, who held us so we wouldn't slip.  What a great feeling that was, so cold, so refreshing....I highly recommend it!

Here we all stand, wet and cold, after being dunked!

Walking back, triumphantly, with my numb legs.

After we dried off, we started our hike back.....UP the mountain.  I do believe that every single flying bug in the Mediterranean attacked us that afternoon...I mean we were swarmed by thousands of them.  In our ears, in our noses, in our wounds that some people obtained on the hike....the hike back, was awful!  Between the bugs, the sweat and the steep hike UP the mountain, no one was overly happy.  One thought kept entering my mind the entire way back....'I'm NEVER doing this again'.....well, we did make it back, and Bobbi's was waiting for us with the air-conditioned bus, and some of our group that chickened out earlier.  We were exhausted, starving, yet excited about what we had done.  We were happy to tell the details to Kirk and Tatiana when we got back, and almost everyone went to sleep very early that night.  And I can tell you this, I WOULD do it again.  Definitely, but next time, I'm hiking with people that can let me do it at my own pace...may take longer, but it's worth it!  It was the highlight of the trip.


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