Travel Photo Contest, Edition #3 - Black and White by: @lightcaptured [Serifos, Cyclades, Greece]

This is my entry for the #TravelPhotoContest by @lightcaptured from my time in Greece this past summer. This particular encounter was from a hike I took on the first island, Serifos, while hopping through the Cyclades. I ended up going to 9 different Greek islands in 24 days. I even did a 24-day steemit challenge over the course of this trip. If you missed it, no worries. I will be doing another one of these travel challenges in December of this year when I travel to Vietnam and Thailand, so be sure to stay tuned for this!!

The contest entry rules for the #TravelPhotoContest can be found here if you are interested in joining lightcaptured’s awesome travel photo contest! The more the merrier! Well, here goes nothing:

I was on my way up the stone laden staircase, heading to a small Greek Orthodox Church. The Church sits valiantly atop the island of Serifos’ Chora on the highest mountainous peak. From the harbor, the Chora– each island’s main town—appeared picturesque as the sun set amidst its defiantly perched Cross. From the east, the wind rolled off the Aegean Sea, and to the west, the sun slowly set beyond the Chora’s lively heart. The town was vacant. Only a few locals and tourists roamed about. The sun was hot that day, and the wind was howling strong. The masses of people don’t start coming until late July, early August. The island was in preparation for a massive bombardment of people venturing from Piraeus, the port from the mainland of Greece. High season comes, it stays for a short time, and is over in a flash. We were early, but this was clearly an intentional act.

Who wants to be surrounded by tourists anyway? It diffuses the localism, and drains the cultural shock from the experience at hand. In other words, ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ This is the way to have a genuinely authentic experience when venturing to a newfound land. The only way to truly exit the normality of daily living until completely unconstrained is to do things you may not normally be accustomed to. So, wherever you venture in the world, be sure to take part in cultural traditions. Try their food, listen to their music, try to learn the language, go to festivals and unique traditional events. Do what the locals do.