It’s amazing that as you approach Mykonos the wind can go from zero to 40kts in no time at all. We left Syros in about 30kts and halfway across it dropped to nothing before picking up to 40kts as we approached the Marina.

For somewhere as famous as Mykonos, the Marina is pretty average. It’s still half-finished and quite dusty. Worst of all, there’s a cable lying right across the middle for the laid lines that were never put in – so now its just an anchor fouler uperer. The trick is to make sure you drop your anchor way over near the other boats on the next finger so your chain lies across this and by the time you pick up your anchor you have cleared the problem. Its great fun watching all the charter boats try and get their anchor dislodged – its 150 euro to get a diver to help out. We were lucky – we got a side on berth in between some other cats.

Safely moored up, we set off to explore Mykonos. Despite its manic-ness, it’s still one of my favourites. This time, we hired a car and visited all the great beaches with all their ultra cool beach bars. Wandering through all the shops, people watching and taking lots of photos. Milo got a little bit excited when he saw the resident pelican walk into a bar. Sounds like the start of a joke.

In Syros, we got a nice note on the back of La Mischief from Jan and Dean, who we spent a night dancing on the back of La Mischief with in the Balearics, saying they were in the vicinity. So it was good to catch up with them in Mykonos. We spent a great night eating out and visiting a gay piano bar to 3am in the morning (Hey – its hard to find live music in Mykonos…its all DJ stuff).

Meanwhile Milo and Alex were also trying out the nocturnal nightlife in Mykonos. The night club at Super Paradise afforded Dee the chance to practice her Spanish the next morning. Now that’s cryptic.

We incorporated a trip to Delos, in our stay at Mykonos. Once again, we took the ferry as the wind stayed up the entire time we were at Mykonos. Delos used to be the trading centre of the Cyclades, with all the circles of the Cyclades (hence the name) emanating from there. It was pretty hot, but  Alex, Milo and I managed to tramp our way around all of it, whilst Dee stayed on Mykonos shopping!!!

With Mykonos done and dusted it was onto the next party island, Ios, via a short stop at the top of Paros to take some beautiful sunset shots and enjoy a wet dingy ride back from town.

Ios is full of young Aussies – thanks largely to Contiki. The wall was pretty full and it was once again blowing its socks off, so we went around to our favourite bay when the water is soooo clear. We dingied in and visited one of the coolest beach bars we had come across. And in the evenings we would catch a bus up to the Chora and walk (stumble) down the hill to the bay. We visited the Lord Byron restaurant for dinner – at one stage he wanted to buy Ios evidently.

There were however a few things we didn’t do. We didn’t visit the Slammers bar where kids go to drink shots in a motorcycle helmet before being hit on the head with anything that comes to hand. We didn’t do the 5 shots for 5 euros. We did however go to the Lost Boys bar and take some photos as my hockey team is referred to as the Lost Boys.

However, Santorini was beckoning, so it was time to pull up anchoring and head south to the photographers heaven.