Schlagwort-Archive: kalymnos

Greece

Digital Nomad Stop #23 – Kalymnos, Greece

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Kalymnos… this island holds a special place in my heart. Almost exactly two years ago, Kalymnos was my first real stop on my nomad journey and finally I was headed back! And as I do so many times, I ended up staying longer than expected – exactly 3 months. I experienced everything from late summer with melted chocolate bars and high humidity to storms and freezing temperatures in November. I was really happy to be able to meet up with so many friends I had made over the past years – lots and lots of people coming to Kalymnos for part of the season. People came and left again… I stayed.

Of course, I already knew exactly what to expect of Kalymnos – and it definitely delivered all of that: beautiful sunset, awesome tufa climbing, lots of fun climbing partners and a fun night with drinks here and there. Climbing-wise, I had improved a lot since my last visit, where I was mainly climbing in the 5s and low/mid 6s. This time, my goal was to leave the island with a new max. grade in the pocket – something that unfortunately didn’t happen. Sometimes, everything needs to come together for a high send, so in the end I decided to focus on building my base and trying to send lots of routes between 6c-7a+ to just get stronger in general and to build that famous pyramid everyone keeps talking about…

Some of my proudest sends were:

  • Ivy 7a+ (first 7 on Kaly)
  • DNA 7a (3rd go)
  • Kerveros 7a (2nd go)
  • Kaly Pige 7a (2nd go)
  • Island in the Sun 7a+ (hardest project)
  • Aurora 7a (first 7a flash!)

I left the island feeling much stronger, more confident and happy with my climbing, despite the lack of sending higher grades. Many projects are left on my list for the next visit. Kaly – I’ll be back! Here are some more photos.

Greece

Digital Nomad Stop #2: Kalymnos

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Kalymnos, rock climbing paradise… Before 2021, I had never heard of this little Greek island – even though I have visited both of its famous neighbours, Kos and Rhodes. But as I researched where to go and as we are still in the middle of a pandemic… choices were a bit limited and Kalymnos soon seemed like the obvious choice!

I started my trip with a flight from Vienna airport, which – in season – has direct flights to Kos. From there I took a ferry to Kalymnos, arriving around sunset time.

The best time to arrive, especially if you were staying in an apartment in Masouri with a view of Telendos, like I did! I never quite got used to how beautiful my daily sunset view was.

Off to a great start… or so I thought. While I loved the apartment and immediately met lots of people to climb with, I also lost my first and at that time only client on my first proper day as a digital nomad. Oops! They felt sorry about having to let me go… but just didn’t have any work for me anymore. I soon got lucky again though, found two new clients and just enjoyed the first two weeks without work, climbing loads. It was hard to go back to working a couple of hours a week once I had work again! But in the end, it worked out really well: I spent most week day mornings climbing, finishing around 14.00 and then putting in a couple of hours of work and I also chose some work days, where I would only focus on my clients and get as much done as possible. The weekends were free of course and ideal for longer climbing sessions or trips to crags that were further away!

Some of my highlights on Kalymnos were:

  • Climbing a multi-pitch route and rappelling down into Grande Grotta afterwards, which meant rappelling 70m in the air! Super cool, and quite an interesting first rappel for me!
  • Visiting Telendos, climbing at Lambda and Irox and having dinner in the harbour afterwards. Unfortunately I never made it back to Telendos afterwards to climb at Eros – so that’s one for the tick list once I return to Kalymnos!
  • Trying deep water solo. It was more of a fun day out than lots of climbing for me, but we had an awesome group. It was a cool thing to try, but as I don’t really like jumping into water from high up, I was a bit too scared to try hard on the routes.
  • Sending three 6cs, one of them being a tufa route, which were so much harder for me than wall climbing! Unfortunately, I got scared for no reason on the 6c+ route which I was trying to send on one of my last days and time ran out to get back there and try again. One more for my „Kalymnos 2.0 tick list“.
  • …and of course, meeting so many amazing people and having a total of 37 wonderful climbing days, climbing 176 different routes! (Yes, I counted them and sorry not sorry I love stats.) I couldn’t have chosen any better place to start my nomad life!

Click on the pic below to get to my Flickr album of Kalymnos for more pics!