Rhodes 2008 (4 – Final)

West Coast
On the day we had to bring back the rental car we drove to the West coast via Archipolis, Eleousa, Dimylia and Soroni. The west coast near Soroni was more industrial and the beaches were mainly gravel and no sand. The whole coast was very windy and therefore there were lot’s of schools for kytesurfing and windsurfing. Personally I think the east coast with all the bays, sand beaches and less big hotels is more interesting. But if you are a professional surfer or want to learn surfing than the west coast is definitely for you.

Having the car for one week was not enough so we decided to rent another car for 3 days. We wanted to visit Rhodes by Night again and of course our favorite beach the Agathi bay (Golden Sand).

Rhodes 2008 (3)

Epta Piges
We read about Epta Piges and the lake in the forest which is reachable through a 200 meter long tunnel. It wasn’t that far from our hotel, so we decided to go there. Epta Piges, or also called Seven Springs is a place in a green valley where exactly seven springs build a (small)river. Again there were hundreds of tourist which came by bus to eat at the tavern near the river. However going through the tunnel was exciting. It was completely dark and so narrow that you couldn’t turn back even if you wanted to. The tunnel was too small for two people next to each other. We walked several minutes in complete darkness and partly very bad air (from the sweating tourists in front of us). The only noise you hear is the flowing water at the bottom of the tunnel. Unfortunately there was no lake on the other side, only a small dirty pond. So the month July is probably not the best time to visit this place. But – funny enough – nevertheless tourists were taking pictures of this dirty pond.

Rhodes
The ancient Acropolis of Rhodes (Monte Smith) and the old town of Rhodes were really fascinating. We went there in the late afternoon when the main heat was gone and we also hoped to see the sunset on the west coast. The light at about 7 pm was perfect for taking pictures. The contrast and the colors were much better than at noon. First we visited the Acropolis, the theater and the old stadium which was build at about 200 B.C. The stadium is still used today for sport events and as a jogging trail. If you have time watch the sunset over Simi. The changing colors and the reflections in the water is something you have to see.
The town Rhodes itself was amazing. The big walls around the old town and the bombastic entries with the towers look like as if they were built for a Hollywood movie. Most of the small alleys are maintained and while walking through you get a good feeling of how they lived hundreds of years ago.

Mapping the Morning Run

Recently I came across a new Silverlight Application which let’s you analyze and compare GPS tracks. It is called “Speed on Map“. You can upload your tracks and you can even save your project to your local hard disk.

The webapplication can create different chart types and is very usefull to examine your training. Below you can see a few examples from my last run.

The color-coding of the GPS track shows the different speeds. Green is faster and red is slower. The second graph shows the speed profile of the run.

In the last chart is the histogram of the different speeds.  One can quickly see that the average is at about 6 km/h.

Rhodes 2008 (2)

Feraklos fortress / Charaki
The other day we went to Charaki and climbed to the Feraklos fortress. About 300m above sea level we had an amazing view of the Agathi Bay and the small Charaki village. To explore more of the south we drove to Gennadi. In the south were less hotels and also less tourists. But I must admit the landscape was also less exciting because everything was so dry and desert like. On the way back we stopped at the Agathi Bay which we think (so far) is the most beautiful bay for swimming on Rhodes (on the east coast). The road to the beach is too small for the tourist buses which is a great advantage. The small amount of people makes this bay so attractive. The water is crystal clear and on both sides of the beach are cliffs and rocks which are excellent for snorkeling.

Moni Tsambika
Moni Tsambika is a spectacular viewpoint. It is a mountain at the coastline about 15 km south east from Faliraki. On the top is a small church and from there you have an amazing view of the coastline. You can drive by car almost to the top. The way up is then only 20 minutes and about 300 steps to the church.

Currently they are renovating the building and therefor they need lots of sand and gravel. There is no road to the top so you have to put it manually there. Whats the best way to bring all the material to the top? It is using the tourists for it. At the starting point you see many little bags all full with sand and gravel and a sign which says that you can help renovating the church by taking some of the bags up to the top. The motivated tourists – which don’t know up front how far it is – take several bags at once and start the way up. Soon they realize that it is not that easy and fast as they thought.

These 300 steps are very exhausting especially with the additional bags and the heat. But the reward is great if you reach the top. You have an 360 degrees view of the island and you helped the people who are renovating the building.

Lindos
Lindos was interesting but not that spectacular as it is described in the travel guide. Lindos has also like Rhodes it’s own Acropolis but we didn’t went up because of the masses of tourists and the extreme heat in the afternoon. The city itself is nice but the small alleys were stuck with tourists and souvenir shops. Nevertheless the city has it’s own authentic character and in the hotel they told us that Lindos by night is even more engaging.

Rhodes 2008 (1)

We started our two week trip to Rhodes at 12pm in Munich. The flight was OK and it took us only 2hr 25mins to get to the Diagoras Airport on the west coast of Rhodes (there is one hour time difference). We rented a car (Suzuki Jeep Jimny) and went straight to our hotel, the Cathrin. The hotel is on the east coast of the isle and very close to the famous Anthony Quinn Bay. They filmed a part of the movie “Die Kanonen von Naverone” in Rhodes and made the isle to millions of people public. It is a small but very beautiful bay with clear water and lots of underwater life.

Faliraki
The hotel is also near Faliraki, a very tourist driven place where most of the main streets are very noisy and full of animators in front of the many bars and discos. As we expected there was also a Mc Donalds, a KFC and even a PizzaHut for the average tourists. If you want party and action all night long (and you have no car) this is probably the right place for you. Street life begins at about 11pm, most people come even later. We thought we could walk from the hotel but we found no proper way to get there by foot. And if you had some cocktails the way back is even more difficult and for sure too long. If you have a car than Faliraki is a bad place for going out. Rhodes City is then definitely the better choice.

Valley of Butterflies (Petaloudes)
The first day we went to the valley of butterflies (Petaloudes). The entry fee was 5 euros and for that you can walk about 2km on a nice trail through the valley along a small river. There were thousands of butterflies and unfortunately also thousands of tourists. They come with buses at about midday and we didn’t knew that. I wasn’t able to take some good macros of the insects because first the light was not the best (too dark in the forest) and second because the masses of people were to noisy for the butterflies. Interestingly there was only one sort of butterflies with orange black wings, the Panaxia quadripunctaria.  
 
Kolimbia was similar to Faliraki but everything was smaller. At the beach is a nice bar with comfy couches and relaxing music. The umbrellas at this beach were with 14 Euros (3 beds) the most expensive ones. The average is about 10 Euro for 2 beds and one umbrella. Most of the time we had 3 beds and two umbrellas for the same price.

Review: The Power of Now (3)

The Power of Now

The mind itself is not dysfunctional. It is a wonderful tool you can/should use. It gets dysfunctional when you seek yourself in it and mistake it for who you are. -> Don’t seek yourself in the mind.

The state to achieve is to be intensely alive in the present moment, which is free of time, free of problems and free of thinking. Some people love to practice dangerous activities like mountain climbing or car racing because it forces them into the Now. In that state they are highly alert and free of thinking or worrying about the past or future.

Psychological Time

Tolle uses two phrases: clocktime and psychological time. We do need clock time to make appointments, setting goals, or predict the future by means of patterns and laws learned from the past. Whereas psychological time is identification with the past and continuous projection into the future.

For example if you set a goal and work towards it you are using clock time. Nothing bad with that. The right way to achieve this goal is to give fullest attention to the step you are taking at this moment. It would be wrong to become excessively focused on the goal to seek fulfillment in this future point. Because then the Now is only means to an end. You would be obsessed by the future.

Your life’s journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to “make it”.

The future is what you think of it at this very moment. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future. If the quality of consciousness is what shapes the future it is important to improve this quality. It is determined by the degree of your presence.

All problems are illusions of the mind

First thing which came into my mind was: “If I fully live in the present moment, my problems still exist and are waiting until I switch back into the old thinking pattern. Am I not just temporarily avoiding them?”. The answer is simple. You have to realize that there are no problems,…” just situations to be dealt with now, or left alone and accepted as part of the ‘isness’ of the present moment until they change or can be dealt with.”

Problems are mind-made and need time to survive and the mind loves problems because the mind believes that without these problems it looses it’s identity. Tolle has a really good definition of what a problem is:

Problem means that you are dwelling on a situation mentally without there being a true intention or possibility of taking action now and that you are unconsciously making it part of your sense of self.

If there is no ease, joy or lightness in what you are doing you may have to change the how. “How” is often more important than what, so give more attention to the doing than to the result you want to achieve. If you give full attention to the doing itself the fruit of your actions will come on it’s own. Furthermore you no longer depend on the future, you are not attached to the results. Therefore you don’t demand that situations, things or people should make you happy. You are happy, independent of the outcome of your expectations.

Hohe Kugel – First Try

Two years ago (April, 14th)  it was no problem to walk from Ebnit to the summit of the Hohe Kugel. This time we tried the same track but there was so much snow that we couldn’t find the right trail (even with GPS!).
See Michael in the picture below, definitely on the wrong way

Every step in the deep snow was exhausting so that we decided to walk to the “Lindenbach Alpe” to eat our snacks.

After the snack there was still plenty of time left so we took the trail to the Emser Hütte which was much easier to walk. Maybe it would have been possible to walk to the summit starting from the Emser Hütte but we were already tired so we just relaxed in the sun and ate a fantastic soup bowl.

In the map below you can see our two failed attemps to get to the Hohe Kugel. We will definitely try a few weeks later.

More pictures of this Hohe Kugel trip are in the gallery.

Hohe Kugel – First Try Details

Review: The Power of Now (2)

The Power of Now

As we saw in the first part “You are not your mind” it is important to disidentify from your mind. To be able to fully accept the present moment you have to forget about the past and the future. That is not easy because the mind always tries to escape into the past or the future. The mind tries to deny the Now because it can only exist in time.

Think about thoughts like “I don’t want to be here. I don’t like this moment, this moment is not good enough. I want to be there. I want to be then,…not now. I will be happy when I have this or that…I will be happy when I’ve achieved this…”. These are escapes from the Now. The Now has no time and because the mind can only exist in time it tries to deny the Now. This is why so many are identified with the mind (egoic mind as Tolle names it). We are so used to it (and used by it ) that everyone thinks there is no alternative.

This doesn’t mean that you should forget about the past and the future:

Have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation.

Egoic mind means that you identify yourself with your mind. Despite several defense mechanisms of the egoic mind it is very vulnerable and insecure. It needs lots of external things to feed it’s lack of incompleteness. Some people search for this wholeness in possessions, money, success, power, recognition etc. but this search is never ending. It is not possible to complete yourself with external things.

As long as your egoic mind is running your life you cannot truly be at ease. The egoic mind (your false self) doesn’t want to die – because if you are identified with it – this would also be the death of your identity. So your false self is very engaged in creating and maintaining the whole illusion and this makes it even more difficult to break out of this thought patterns.