Not Quite a Stunning Fjord

---

Issy seems to be improving by the day, and I think cabin fever may well now have overtaken COVID as the biggest threat to her sanity, if not her health. The Rembrandts will apparently be spending the day “painting from a taverna on a stunning fjord” at Vathy on the other side of the island. We’re probably still too contagious to risk sitting in a bus with them, but I’m sure they‘ll produce some suitably realistic artwork to show us where they’ve been.

It’s quite nice sitting up here on our balcony, or it would be if it wasn’t for the smell. It seems that the sewer at the hotel next door’s blocked, and a truck’s turned up to try to clear it out. Sewer problems are apparently almost a way of life in Greece. We read that the pipes are only half the diameter of those in most of the rest of the western world. There are signs in all the bathrooms warning you not to put any paper down the toilet; they give you a small rubbish bin to put it in instead. They haven’t cleaned our room since they found out we’ve got COVID, and the little rubbish bin’s starting to get just a tad on the full side. …. I think that was probably just a little bit too much information; I hope no one’s trying to eat breakfast while they’re reading this.

We decide we’re sufficiently non-contagious to spend a few hours away from the smell down on the very pleasant Masouri Beach which is only a few hundred metres down the road from the hotel. It mightn’t be a taverna on a stunning fjord, but it is at least a temporary cure for the dreaded cabin fever. The signs again claim that the sunlounges are free, but I’m still looking for the catch. I’ve brought my reading glasses this time, but if there’s fine print it’s too fine for them to detect. We settle in, and I head down for a refreshing dip.

We decide to get really brave. We mask up and take a late afternoon taxi ride into the port town of Pothia. We read that it’s the island’s capital and main port; we landed here when we arrived in Kalymnos on the ferry. As seems to be the case with every Greek island, there’s also a Chora town nearby which used to be the capital. It‘s up on the hillside away from the threat of marauding pirates. Pothia was only built in 1850 when the marauding pirates apparently decided to take their business elsewhere.

We wander along the attractive waterfront inside the well protected harbour. There’s a large flotilla of fishing boats here, and it looks like it’s also a mecca for some very fancy looking pleasure craft from a diverse range of locations around the Mediterranean and northern Europe. There’s no shortage of reminders of the island’s sponge diving heritage - sponges for sale, and a statue showing a free diver shaking hands with a diver in a full suit and helmet. We heard from Diana the other day that free diving was the Kalymnians forte. They struggled with the suits when these were introduced, and there were apparently lots of fatalities from the bends and other similar mishaps.

We dine along the waterfront. Our waiter’s got a full-on Aussie accent. He tells us that his parents are Greek, but he grew up in Darwin, which is consistent with what we heard a few days ago about many Kalymnians going to Darwin to help out with the rebuild after Cyclone Tracy hit in 1974. He tells that his parents also ran a Greek restaurant not too far from where we live in Melbourne for many years. The whole town looked a bit dead when we got here - Pothia that is, not Melbourne (although that might be a bit dead now too, it’s about 3am there and freezing cold) - we struggled to find a restaurant with any people in it. There are about fifty tables in the one we picked and only two of them were occupied. It’s a very different story by the time we finish eating. It’s dark now, all the restaurants seem to be nearly full, and the whole town‘s buzzing. Where did all these people suddenly come from?

We eventually manage to flag down a taxi to take us back to Myrties. Woah, what was that? A deafening bang, followed a minute or so later by another one, and alarms now seem to be going off all around us. We hope the bangs are associated with some sort of religious festival, because none of the other options that readily come to mind are all the attractive - the Donald’s managed to get his hands on the nuclear codes, alien invasion, all the usual suspects … Meanwhile taxi driver man’s charging through the backstreets away from the bangs like there’s no tomorrow. I s’pose there could be worse places to be if he’s trying to escape from whatever it is that just happened.

---

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Sanity is in Question
I'll have to read more about the Rembrandt group. Hopefully, you'll be healthy again soon.