Friday 05.10.2001 - Profitis Ilios

	Route: Kamiros Skala - Profitis Ilias - Soroni - Theologos Distance: 70,1 km Total: 340,2 km	ROUTE

The breakfast that has been prepared for us this morning is great: self-baked bread, plenty of sandwich filling, honey, jam, orange juice and bacon and eggs. We stuff ourselves and so we hope to have plenty of energy to climb without problems to Profitis Ilios later on. Today is going to be the toughest route of the entire week.

It's about 9 am now and the thermometer already stood at 27°C in the shade, that's promising! We take a long goodbye from this good hotel and we start our route along the coast in the direction of Kamiros. Along the way we briefly stop to take a picture of a few goats that are exploring the beach. Just before the excavation site of Kamiros we have to do a tough climb of almost one kilometer, but we know the way back will be a lot easier...
Besides Rhodes town and Lindos, Kamiros used to be one of the three city-states of the island, but in 226 BC it was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake. You can have a beautiful view at the ruins from the highest part of the excavation.

Kamiros

From Kalavarda it slowly goes up to Salakos and Kapi. Just before the ultimate climb of Profitis Ilias we quickly have an energy drink and some biscuits. The bright blue color of the energy drink does not seem very natural, but if it contains calories we drink it all. The climb is about 6 km long and on average 10% steep. The road passes through a forest and has several hairpin curves.

Going up!	The beginning of the Profitis Ilias

Well-balancing our strengths here is the best advice and so we each choose our own tempo. Piet is well trained and reaches the top first, he is followed by a Corfu-trained Gert. Alain is back in shape today, but he is still a debutant and he is last to reach the top.

Because of the rather dense forest there's not much to see at the top. We take a short break and then we immediately start the long descent to Eleousa. Because of all the efforts we made, we start to get hungry and so we stop at Dimilia to lunch. From there we only have one small climb and then it's a long descent to Soroni. We have another go at breaking our speed record but the traffic makes it difficult and when we finally have to slam on the breaks at the end of the road the meter shows 58 km/h.

Going down!

Along the way we make a stop at the monastery of Aghios Silos. The parking place is huge but today it is deserted, we don't hang around long here and continue our route. There's not much movement in Soroni either and so we head straight for the beach since we feel like taking a swim in the sea. The water is looking very inviting and a few moments later we have changed our biking trunks with our swimming trunks and we are floating on the water under a sunny sky, this is just heavenly.

Soroni

It's getting time to find a room. We ride around in Soroni but can't find anything. Actually the village is not very cosy so we ride on to the next village: Tealogos. In Bella Vista we find a very large apartment, with enough room for ten people! Although the name suggests a beautiful view, we see mostly concrete.
In the evening we go eat in the village at the local restaurant Drassia. There are more Greek people here than tourists so it is very cosy here and the food is delicious. And again we are very hungry. After several first courses, a main course, a couple of desserts and a bottle of wine we return to our apartment and fall asleep.