This morning we headed off by ferry to see Delos (note that the pronunciation in Greek more closely approximates “THEE-lose”). Coming from Naxos, it appears that the only way to visit Delos is to take an 8:45 AM ferry that stops off in Paros, then heads to Delos where the tourist has a three hour window, then to Mykonos, where there is another three-hour window), then back to Paros for a passenger drop and pick-up, and finally back to Naxos at about 6 PM – a full day of touring. We had a quick breakfast in our apartment, then walked down to the waterfront to catch our ferry.
Our first stop, after a half-hour on the water, was Paros town
where a few passengers got off, appearing to be dressed for a day at the beach, and a goodly number of passengers boarded, apparently bound for Delos
This church on the end of a spit of land looked as if it might be an interesting destination had we been on Paros – with the benefit of a car!
An hour later, we approached the rather barren-looking island of Delos
and we left ashore with the strict warning that we were to be back on board by 1:15 PM – not a second later, because we leave at 1:15 and not at 1:16!
Both the travel agent at Zas travel, who had sold us the ferry tickets, and the trust guidebook that was using as my main guide to ruins beyond Athens and Delphi, Ancient Greece: An Explorers’ Guide, strongly recommended attaching ourselves to an English-speaking guide to help us understand the island better. The site, we were told, was poorly signed. And besides, said the travel agent, the guide can get you into the site without waiting in a long ticket line. But although we had been led by this comment to expect to find a passel of guides trying to hawk their services outside the entrance gate, none appeared as we approach the ticket window, and the ticket line was nice and short. So, we bought our tickets and went in, hoping to find a guide inside. We saw several small groups with guides.
Yet each of the guides we approach told us curtly that she (most of the guides were women) had a pre-existing arrangement with the small group to which she was talking (and with whom, apparently, they had traveled to Delos on either our own ferry or one that had arrived at almost the same time), and no, we could not join them. So, after maybe 15 to 20 minutes of this, we gave up on finding a guide and did a self-guided tour.
And in the end, this was probably a good choice. The map provided with our tickets not only had a fair amount of detail identifying a hundred separate items, but has three separate walking routes suggested , for walks of 90 minutes, 3 hours and five hours, respectively. In addition, the signage along the way was not bad - better than at Knossos, for example. And using the map, and the signs, along with walking guides copies from the Rough Guide, Fodor’s and the Explorers Guide, we felt that we were able to see and understand the place pretty well, and we were able to move at our own pace. My guess is that we saw a good deal more than any of the tourists who were seeing the site with a guide.
