Quad bikes and beaches in Paros

Paros
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For some reason we chose to go to Paros next, despite the fact that we had to pass Naxos (our next stop) on the way.

Like Mykonos, our time here was spent mainly on beaches. Our hotel was situated a short walk from the main strip containing restaurants, the main beach (down our end) and the port (down the other end). However, rather than spend all our time on the same beach we decided to have a look around the island.

On the second day we hired a quad bike and went for a bit of a tour around to a few beaches. The upside to getting a 50cc bike is that you can't really go fast enough to kill yourself. The downside, we discovered, is that there's no reverse and the brakes don't hold too well on steep slopes. After being unable to stop on our first steep hill (that luckily ended with a long flat patch of road before turning a corner) we decided we'd stick to flat roads for the remainder of the day.

Richard on the quad bike
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We visited two beaches, Delphini and Parasporos, but spent that majority of our time at Parasporos. Because its out of the way, Parasporos is not packed with people and the drinks/lunch served to you on your sunbed (3.5€ each) are quite normally priced.

Next we headed out to Butterfly Valley (and thus breaking our "no steep hill rule"). The area contains rain forest-like vegetation and, as you can imagine, butterflies. The butterflies are actually closer to moths and thus sleep during the day, congregating in massive numbers in small spaces. It was cooler in the valley, and proved a nice break in the day. Heading back down the steep hill, and not wanted to test the bike's brakes against gravity again, we walked the bike down with each of us squeezing the brakes a little.

Delphini Beach
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Our last day was spent at the beach, and I managed to test out an all day sunscreen lotion (SPF 15) we found. As I managed to tan quite a bit more and did not get burnt at all, I can definitely say it works well.