Chalares Canyon, Ikaria

The Greek Island of Ikaria is a haven for bushwalkers and nature lovers.  Unlike many Greek Islands that tend to be dry and windswept (though still beautiful), Ikaria is thickly forested and covered in gorges, rivers and waterfalls… i’m starting to sound like a travel agent or a travel documentary!  Way too formal.

Well, as much as i love beaches, freshwater rivers and waterfalls amongst shady forests are really my favourites, there is something more surreal and almost imaginary about them.  Its probably something left over from my childhood when i would ride off on my bicycle into the bush  and spend the day wading around in creeks and rivers catching little freshwater crayfish and turtles (then letting them go again), only to turn up at home again hours later wet and smelling of the swamp!

Whatever the reason, for me Ikaria was a paradise of rivers, waterfalls and freshwater crayfish (i tend to eat those now…), with lots of long lovely walking trails through shady forests and rocky gorges, that would take you down to places like this one…Chalares Canyon, Ikaria.

I didn’t find any freshwater crayfish, but i did find some very cute little freshwater crabs and some very small shrimp…  I didn’t eat any of them, and i did spend many hours here just sitting.  Bliss.

Again, for those who are interested, this is an 18 image (actually 18 pairs of bracketed exposure) stitch shot on the Canon 5D Mk2 with the 16-35mm f2.8L lens set to 35mm, using the Really Right Stuff pano head.  they were all stitched in PT Gui, then manually blended to hold the detail in the brighter rocks and the darker shadows.  At 300dpi the image comes in natively at 2m long and takes up 3 Gb of space…