View From Kavos Bay.
This picture was taken from a vantage point literally 10 meters from the door of our room.
After we had admired the view we discussed possible courses of entertainment for the remainder of the afternoon. After some discussion we chose to spend some time visiting the sleepy seaside village first, then return to take a dip in the cool blue water of the Mediterranean before cleaning up and heading to a seafood restaurant in town for dinner, if our mid-day excursion had turned up one we liked.
With this plan in mind, we dressed in clothes fit for a mid-day stroll and walked the kilometer or so to 'downtown' Agia Marina.
We didn't plan on Humphrey, or the fact that the Mediterranean is so cold as to make you wonder how it remains liquid at all.
We arrived in town and strolled through the city center window shopping and discussing local fashion and house furnishings. We grabbed a few pastries from a local shop and even located a very nice looking seafood place which we planned on trying for dinner. On our trip we discovered a small shop with very nice clothing where we continued a side-quest we'd been working on for the last three or four days: finding a skirt that 80 liked enough to purchase.
We finally found it, and thankfully it survived Humphrey, so she was able to wear it to dinner that evening.
Speaking of Humphrey, maybe it is time to introduce him.
Humphrey was a very very large dog with a Greek Sheep-Hound frame and German Shepard colouring that discovered us when we decided to walk a while barefoot on Agia Marina's tiny gray beach.
He looks like this.
Playing with Humphrey.
Allow me to make clear: Humphrey is not a small dog. That picture is deceptive--He is large. When he jumps, he puts his paws easily on my shoulders, and I stand 6 feet if I stand an inch.
He and Adrienne played a game.
It started as a game of fetch. Humphrey brought us a small item (or we found one, I forget which) and we threw it for him. He would bound into the surf (sending up 5 foot sprays as he did so) and return with it for us to throw again.
He soon discovered that there was a different game of retrieval that was more fun. 80 had set down her shoes to play with him, and in a moment of divine inspiration he caught one of them up in his mouth and bounced off through the surf towards one end of the beach with Adrienne hot on his heels, shouting for him to stop.
After much cajoling, fighting, and finally distracting (during which I attempted to collect all the other items he might find entertainingly chewy, and take pictures all the while) 80 managed to re-acquire her shoe.
VICTORY!
But then she had to keep entertaining him with other things, since he was a pretty big dog and if she lowered the shoe as low as her own shoulder level in front of him he'd just take it again.
Keeping Humphrey's Attention Away From The Shoes.
So after all this trouble, she returns to where I'm standing with her things and begins to put on her shoes. . . and Humphrey steals her entire bag!
Let me briefly recount the contents of this bag: a digital camera, a thumb drive with all of her schoolwork on it, various other important items, and wrapped around the strap, the plastic bag containing her brand new skirt.
At this point I stopped taking pictures and started trying to actively help, so sadly I don't have the absolutely grand moment of her and Humphrey playing tug-of-war with her bag. After a few moments tugging she makes a command decision and lets go. I have no idea why. I think I actually shouted in surprise. [Ad: yes he did.]
Humphrey cheerfully takes off with this bag and promptly scatters the items throughout a dense clump of seaweed.
We chase him down, retrieve the items, distract him again, and finally retrieve the bag, all of its contents, and the now slightly sandy but ultimately undamaged skirt.
We play with him a bit more while trying to calm him down and eventually leave the beach and Humphrey behind in favour of less exciting surroundings - namely our hotel.
When we arrived there, our aged host and his wife were taking a mid-afternoon snack, and his son was nowhere to be seen. When we arrived, he hopefully asked if we wanted a little drink ("some Ouzo?") and we agreed, after all, the Greek island tradition of an afternoon snack and a little Ouzo is one we would be fools to pass up.
We spent a lovely half hour sitting and attempting (mostly failing!) to communicate with him and his wife. His wife's biggest addition to the conversation with a smile and a sigh and the word "Kaput!" which she could say with such convincing emotion as to make you feel as if the entire world had cheerfully tired along with her.
He spoke a tiny bit of English and pretty decent German, so we attempted to converse as best we could, but it was largely futile. They gave us shots of Ouzo and fresh slices of tomato though, along with the traditional Greek dry break, hard as a crouton. We ate with gusto and they taught us a new tradition, a way of performing a Greek toast with a Collins glass (in which Ouzo is served). You grab the far edge of the glass between your fingertips and thumb, causing it to hang away from you, and then clink the bottom edges of your glass against the others. They said "Chin Chin!" which I think, probably like the French, is derived from the Italian "Chintani", meaning "To your health!"
We drank our Ouzo [Ad: which tastes like liquid black licorice] and expressed our intentions to swim in the Mediterranean Sea. He nodded and smiled. "You swim here!" He said, indicating the ladder at the base of the rocks in front of our hotel. "It is very special!"
By this, we can only assume he meant cold.
If you look back in the picture posted at the top, you can just see, in the bottom right of the image, a small white iron ladder that is bolted directly into the rock. This ladder descends maybe a meter before connecting with the Mediterranean, and is the perfect way to get the hell back out of the water before your skin turns blue.
So, using swimming as an excuse to beg out of a second shot of Ouzo, we made our way to our rooms, changed clothes, and returned to the base of the rocks to enjoy our swim. The water cannot have been above 12 degrees centigrade (54 F). I've gone swimming in 15 before, and eventually (though it takes some time) your skin adjusts to the point where the pins and needles feeling fades. In this water that feeling never faded.
We swam for as long as we could take it (80 at first only jumped in and immediately exited, but I eventually cajoled her back into the water for 5 minutes or so) and then returned to the terrace in front of our room, where I stretched out on the white rocks to absorb as much of the friendly sun as I could while 80 took a hot shower to return her body temperature to normal levels. [Ad: I'm a wimp when it comes to cold water. This past summer I wore a wetsuit when the water went below 82 F. 54 F is CRAZY COLD!]
After we had both cleaned up, we returned to our pick for dinner, and had a lovely time.
Well, Mostly.
It Still Looks Like An Octopus!
The place we had chosen was lovely, and we ordered appetizers and drinks (a pina colada and a Mythos) as well as a main course for two--a seafood sampler.
The appetizers were lovely, and our main course was amazing. It came with 3 different whole fish, two large pieces of fried fish filet, two prawns the size of my fist, and two handfuls of calamari.
The picture above is of 80 reacting to a 'baby' calamari, the ones that are cooked whole, and as she put it "still look like little octopi!"
We had a lovely time and the dinner was amazing. We took two hours to eat it all and enjoyed every minute of it. If I could remember the name of the place, I would recommend it highly by name, but instead suffice it to say this: If you are ever in Agia Marina, go slightly to the west side of the seafront and look for the hotel with the water wheel, you'll recognize it immediately, and it is well worth it. [Ad: Just past Hotel Liberty.]
After our fantastic meal, we returned to our room and made a valiant (but futile) effort to polish off Deception Point, our second Dan Brown book, and the bottle of white wine we had picked up in Lecce two days earlier. We were taking turns reading aloud (with me doing most of the reading, since I do the voices, which 80 finds funny, and 80's voice still hurt).
Success in one led to failure in the other and we started falling asleep before we had finished off the book.
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