The Monastery on the Collapsing Cliff?

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The alarm on my iPad goes off at 6am. It has a very annoying sound that I only associate with being woken up early when we're on holidays. I started humming it when I thought about setting the alarm last night, and then immediately wondered why I felt the need to hum something that's so irritating.

Today we've booked a boat cruise. Issy was hoping that it set off from somewhere nearby, but unfortunately the place we need to get to to catch it is about as far as you can get from Assos and still be on Kefalonia. She's not happy. She launches into the seasickness pills again, but decides to pass on adding the valium. Maybe today she'll only go into half a coma.

Our destination is Skala village in the far south-east corner of the island. There aren't too many people around at this time of the morning, but no shortage of goats. They're harder to see than usual in the semi-darkness, but we somehow manage to avoid any collisions. I think that maybe they've got a sixth sense for dodging cars as well as falling rocks. We see a lady in a village taking her cat for a walk on a lead. The cat looks quite happy. I wonder why people don't usually walk cats on leads. Surely they're the same as dogs, only more aloof. Maybe they feel that going for walks on leads is a bit beneath them.

We arrive in Skala and board our craft, where Issy's first move is to fall asleep on a seat on the deck. First stop is Shipwreck Beach on the adjacent island of Zakynthos. This spectacular expanse of sand is completely surrounded by towering white vertical cliffs, and is only accessible by sea. It's famous for the wreck of the MV Panagiotis which ran aground here during a storm in the 1980s. It was claimed at the time that it was being pursued by the Greek Navy on suspicion of smuggling cigarettes, wine and women, but there appear to be some doubts surrounding these claims. I wonder how the crew and the smuggled women got away. Maybe they didn't get away. Maybe they just stayed on the beach drinking wine and smoking cigarettes. The wreck is very high on the beach, so it must have been some storm that got it there. It's about half rusted away and our captain warns us against trying to climb on it. He says that about 400 tourists a year injure themselves doing just that, and the only way of getting them to hospital is by very slow boat. If what we can see of the people who are already here's anything to go by, the next injury is only a few minutes away. The captain says that the rust's so bad that the wreck won't be visible at all in a few years time. I wonder what they'll call this place then; just "Beach" doesn't sound overly descriptive.

We go ashore, and Issy falls asleep on the sand. It's now 10am, but because the cliffs are so high, the sun hasn't reached here yet, so at least she can doze without needing to worry about getting burnt. It's a bit of a struggle to wake her up again when it's time to leave. I'm not sure any of the other thousand or so people here have spent the whole morning in dreamland; I hope she'll remember at least some of it.

We cruise on around the western and northern sides of Zakynthos. The captain points out a massive slab of rock in the sea which he says used to be attached to the land. He says it had a monastery on it up on the clifftop. He points out some of the walls which are now just visible above the water line. He doesn't say anything about what happened to the monks. I hope they were all out that day. This whole place feels like earthquakes and falling rocks waiting to happen. We noticed as we drove around the coast road near Assos this morning that whole sections of the cliffs have been wrapped in a huge pieces of steel mesh to hold the rocks in place, and in other places they've built massive steel baskets presumably to catch rocks before they fall onto the road. I don't think any of this would have helped the monastery. I'm also not all that sure that a steel basket would have much chance of stopping a giant boulder from squashing your car, but no harm in trying I guess.

We continue on past a large cave in the cliff with stalactites hanging down from the ceiling, and then a number of smaller "blue caves" so named for the spectacular colours reflected from the water inside them. We stop offshore for a quick and very pleasant swim.

We cruise on and berth in the harbour next to a small village, where we enjoy lunch in a restaurant overlooking a long white sandy beach. We have no real idea where we are, but fortunately the table cloth is a map of Zakynthos. This seems to be a local "thing" - the table cloths at all the restaurants in Assos have been maps of Kefalonia. We ask the waiter to point out where we are, but the names are all in Greek, so we're really none the wiser. We stroll along the beach and have a quick dip before heading back to the boat. Issy's still dying to know the name of the village so she heads off to ask one of crew. She tells me that one of them got her to pronounce the name four times until she had it perfect, but she still can't remember what it was (it was Alykanas). I'm now beginning to have serious doubts about these seasick pills. My beloved seems to be wide awake now, but her short term memory's clearly shot. She claims that this morning's pills have now worn off, but I'm not too sure. She says that she'll need to take some more now for the boat ride back to Kefalonia and the long windy drive back to Assos. I begin to wonder if she'll know who I am by day's end.

We're supposed to stop for another swim, but the wind's sprung up and we're happy to take the captain's advice that it's too dangerous. We head back to Skala, and buckle in for the drive back to Assos. Issy nods off. Back in Assos she wakes up for just long enough to walk back to the apartment, and then falls asleep yet again. I wake her up in time to go out for dinner. She says she's still feeling "out of it". I think that this might be a good sign; at least she's not in denial.

Our dinner menu includes frozen squid for twelve euros, and fresh squid also for twelve euros. I wonder why anyone would order the frozen option, when you can get fresh version for the same price. Is there possibly something in the freezing process that I wasn't previously aware of which adds some goodness. Issy asks me what we're going to do tomorrow. I'm not sure, but I suspect it might be a good idea if it was something that didn't require the consumption of multiple doses of coma inducing seasickness tablets....

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