It’s a Small World

As if to make up for yesterday’s anchor fiasco, our morning Med mooring in Pythagoreio Harbor on Samos was faultless. Or so I was told. I was actually asleep and barely heard the anchor chain doing it’s thing above my head. I don’t need to say that most of us really needed some land time. We slowly got around, some got coffee from one of the chic cafes on the street, some started laundry and others just were limply gazing around with wonder. It’s a charming little town! Narrow cobbled streets, beautiful plants, cute cats and bakeries that smelled like heaven! These towns are clean, calm and pretty. Not hectic fishing communities, and not really that touristy either. Just nice.

It was a free day, so Heath and Forrest went out to rent a couple little hatchback cars for us to buzz around the island in. Some of us ended up at the Tunnel of Eupalinos, an aqueduct built in the 6th century BC. That’s roughly the same age as the one King Hezakiah built in Israel. We had to don hardhats and then were led down a long, narrow tunnel. The tunnel we walked was the one they used to access and maintain the aqueduct tunnel and was quite a lot higher. You could look way down a narrow ditch to see the clay water pipe proper. Handholds were carved into the side of the ditch so the maintenance guys could climb down and do what they needed to do.

Lunch for Heath and I were delightful gyros from a small cafe. Absolutely delicious. And no dishes to do. Thats an enormous bonus. Doing dishes in the boat galley is a little squishy.

After that, the little blue car headed back to the boat so Forrest could put his lamb in the oven, and the red car went shooting over the mountain with Robs, Heath and I to see what we could see. Finally I ran out if exclamatory words, but Avril never did. We wound our way through olive groves, past vineyards, and next to glorious beaches. The road was incredibly winding and steep at places and would alternately drop down to the beach or climb the steep hillside. The North side of the island has quite a large forest on it, and our goal was to find a certain waterfall and cave we had heard about. The upper trail head proved elusive, so we ended up ambling through terraced orchards, groves and vineyards, sampling the fruits thereof and making humming noises of joy. Walnuts, grapes, almonds, chestnuts, and olives all made their way into our mouths and Avril and Heath sipped from a capped spring. It looked quite uncared for up there, with little abandoned stone houses nestled among the trees. An absolute picture! We eventually drove down to look for the bottom of the trail and voila! A nice path. It took a fair bit of scampering to get all the way to the cave and waterfall before we knew we had to head back to the harbor, so scamper we did. Fleet of foot, I believe is how the guys described us women. After a while we came to a cave/tunnel into the mountain and turning on our cellphone lights, we cautiously crept along. I would have crept even more cautiously if I had known how many ENORMOUS cave spiders were clinging to the walls and ceilings! There were little bats and cave crickets too. We got to a sort of drop off, cave in spot, and peering into the depths I saw a very sick looking donkey. It was curled up and totally pathetic, with its large ears poking up and eyes shut from exhaustion. All the rest joined in my concern with Heath throwing small rocks at it to see if it was alive and Avril commanding Rob to “go down and look”. It never moved, and after a while we realized it was, in fact, some sticks. I could still almost swear it was a donkey, but decided to believe the rest because I really didn’t feel like dealing with a donkey rescue operation. The waterfall we sought was dry this time of year, but we pretended it wasn’t.

Back at the harbor, we ate a perfectly roasted lamb shank by Forrest, Greek Salad by Avril and mashed potatoes by Heath. Zach and Camille opted for a hotel night to give Kindi more space to crawl around. Way too squishy and rocky in the boat to let a tiny girl crawl, and that girl loves to go. We’ve all fallen in love with her in spite of Zach’s saying she’s being grumpy.

We finished up our laundry and showered. The laundry situation was quite amazing. One washer that ate Euro’s at a great rate, had zero English on it, and refused to unlock when it was done unless you put in even more Euros, waited till it started again and then repeatedly hit

τέλος, τέλος, τέλος

Very dumb. The dryer didn’t dry at all. Which in one sense was handy cause you never had to empty the water trap. But the showers were roomy, clean and hot. That covers a multitude of other shortcomings. Also, stuff dries really well in this dry, windy climate, so we strung our clothes all over the boat and decorated the port, as it were. Very festive.

Avril and I got our jollies out of the cats and dogs of Samos. For sure the dogs that kept circling through the fancy supermarket and the cat that caught a fish and walked off with it sticking out of her mouth, flopping around.

And so ended a glorious day. I think we all voted Samos a serious win.