Alonnisos Day 5

I think it was a good thing that I had caught the bus back down to Patitiri and my accommodation, after heading that my traveling companions had all got their smash on until 3am in the morning. Not that I would have minded boozing on too, but when the temperature gets to 32 by 7am, it’s better not to be too hung over.

I fully expected that it would be quite a while before my compatriots surfaced, so I took my time this morning getting up, showered and looking beautiful. I gave the head a shave, and headed down to grab an omelet for breakfast. I tried a new place this morning – I’d been to the same place the last 2 mornings, and while their food was tasty (and their waitresses nice and chirpy), they was a little bit too much oil left on the plate at the end. Something about the Greeks – on average, they consume 30 litres of olive oil per year. Now, that might not seem like a lot at first glance, but if you break it down, and realize that that’s 80ml of olive oil a day (3 shot glasses), which doesn’t include the natural oils and fats that are in the food. It’s amazing that the Greeks aren’t larger people… well, until they get older, of course.
This new location had a great breakfast deal – an omelet with bacon, 4 slices of toast with honey, an orange juice and a Nescafe (that’s a coffee for the uninitiated) for 10 Euro. That works out to be about 17 Aussie dollars, but if you think that an eggs benedict costs about $12, then you throw a coffee, OJ and toast on top, it actually works out to be a pretty good deal. And it’s tasty, too. : )
I was joined just before midday by Lapzang, who had dropped Doolittle off at the internet café to check her e-mails and chat with a few people on Skype. He eyed off the remains of my breakfast, and ordered the same on the sly, hoping that is fiancée wouldn’t notice him spending a bit more money. Not that 10 Euros is all that much (in case you end up reading this, Nor).

Lapzang and I had bemoaned the fact that we didn’t have a great array of shirts to wear (I had only brought one over, and it needed a good iron – something that’s quite hard to come by while you’re traveling around, I tell you what!). I had spied with my little eye the other day a shop that had shirts starting at 5 Euros not too far up the hill from the internet place, so we met up with Doolittle and went to investigate. The store was so crowded with clothes and shoes that you had to walk sideways down the aisles, and woe betide anybody trying to come back the other way. I found 2 nice shirts that I liked, and tried them on, before going to pay for them.
The store owner took the shirts from me, and asked me where I was from. I told him Melbourne Australia, and he asked how much longer I was staying in Alonnisos. It was then that I made big Greek social faux pas – he asked where we were heading next. I truthfully told him Turkey. Oh-oh.
The shirt store owner launched into a quite interesting (and blessedly air-conditioned) history lesson of the area, starting from about 1000 BC. Fortunately, I had both studied this period of history in year 9 History – Ancient Civilizations, thanks Dr Collins – and watched 300, so I was ok with a bit of the info he was passing on. It was when he got to more recent events that I was made aware of my ignorance of world matters. We all know that the Greeks and Turks had been fighting at the Fall of Troy (and the Trojan Horse and the Face that Launched 1000 ships), but I had no idea that Greece and Turkey had been warring a number of times throughout the 20th Century (not just during WWI and WWII, but in the 70s as well). In fact, Greece had invaded Turkey and taken the western coast of the country, and the Greeks still considered a large part of Turkey to be Greater Greece. The shirt store owner told me that many of the places we would be visiting had Greek ruins there, and to be wary of what the Turkish people told us about the history of those areas. “A Wolf never changes” he summed up sagely with a knowing nod. I think I will have to spend a bit of time on Wikipedia looking this period of history up.

After the history lesson, we went down and joined John and Jasmin while they were having omelets at the place I had gone to on previous mornings. Lapzang, Doolittle and I sampled some of the establishment’s fine beverages while the others ate, and then we decided that it was a good day to head to the beach. We agreed that it would be better to go to Leftos Galios again today, rather than to the nude beach like yesterday. As we were heading back to the car, Doolittle liberated a watermelon from it’s cage outside the fruit and veg shop, since they are both tasty and very hydrating.
After driving back to Chora, the old town, we headed to Lapzang and Doolittle’s place to get our swimming togs, and walked past a group of children, whose faces lit up when they saw Lapzang carrying the watermelon. They started yelling at their mother, and Lapzang, with his broken Greek, assured us they were saying “Mummy! Look at the fat man carrying the watermelloo!” So cute!

Our arrival at Leftos Galios was welcomed by the staff there, who were quite happy to serve us 3 rounds of drinks, before we decided to go for a swim. Now, never fear, Doolittle was the designated driver for the day, so she chose not to consume any alcohol.
After our couple of beers, we headed out for a paddle, and since the water was so clear, we decided to swim to the bottom of the water. It only looked like it was about 10 feet or so, but our efforts were thwarted at first when we went down and discovered the bottom a little bit further than we had first estimated. I was the first person to get to the bottom, after a couple of tried – it was most likely about 8 metres deep. I surfaced, gasping for air and holding a rock aloft, to prove to the others that I had actually achieved the feat. That set off everybody attempting the same thing, and it was only after everybody had done it (and I had done it three times) that we realized out sinus cavities are not a perfectly sealed cavity. We ended up having our ears blocked for the next couple of hours, and sudden gushes of sea water coming out of our noses. In fact, Doolittle was still complaining about these gushes for the next 2 days.

After spending a good 2 hours in the water, we emerged onto the pebble beach and headed straight back to the bar area. We ordered another round, and then realized that it was 7pm, so we decided to check out the food menu and have some dinner there. I decided to order the lemon chicken, and everybody else ordered the calamari. Which was mighty nice and mighty fresh, I must add. We also tried some Saganaki – fried cheese – which was very tasty as well. I had just finished my meal and was telling everybody how nice it was when I had another gush of water come out my nose. By this stage, I didn’t think I had that much cavity space for water to go into, let alone just in my nasal cavity!
We decided to toast the night away with another round, and it was by that stage that we became aware that we were now the main course on the mosquito’s menu.
We finished our drinks, and headed back to the car. While on the way, I spoke with one of the bar staff about how wonderful it must be to work there. She said “no, I just run back and forth all day.” I’d much rather spend my summer in a Mediterranean setting doing that than admin work!

We made it back to Chora safely in one piece, and headed to John and Jasmins for a few drinks and some watermelloo. Since this was the first time that Jasmin had met us, and vice versa, a number of stories at John’s expense were brought out, as well as the occasional one that was at Lapzang’s or my expense. We got so engrossed that I missed the final bus back down to Patitiri town, so headed down to the local shop and cleared them out again of beers, before putting in another round of 3am smash-on-ness. John and Jasmin looked like they were ready to pass out (quite literally), so Lapzang, Doolittle and I headed back to their place… where we continued to drink until 5am.

We chose to pass out at that point, knowing that the sun would be up soon, and we would be much the worse for wear if we were still up too.