We were woken, though not too early, by gunfire. It was far enough off to be put down to someone after rabbits. A while after, someone started singing, either opera or religious verse and by the time we were up, they had been joined by a chainsaw but it was still a fairly peacful spot for all this. We had until two as our ferry was due to leave at three and I wanted to be in town at about twelve thirty to explore the tourist shops and bazzar mentioned in the guide so we didn't have that long to explore. We headed up into the nearby hills to see what we could see. We quickly found a bumpy looking track and went around exploring the network of tracks that it led too. We found a few weird and empty underground garages, road building equipment and a part built road plus a brand new dam with onsite cement works. There was none anywhere actually working but it was Saturday and the Greek seem to take their weekends very seriously. There was a super steep gnarly track on the front side of the dam whick looked like it led to a good tarmac road. I let Alex do the top part by himself, the photo goes nowhere near to showing how steep it was. Unfortunately, we found a barrier between us and the good tarmac road down the valley so had to come all the way back up, I was brave enough to stay in this time and the ol' TLC managed it, no worries but at the top Alex had to stop and put on extra deodourant and have something sweet as he'd been so pumped full of adrenaline. He'd been considering how stuck we'd be if we'd NOT made it back up the hill!
Alex droped me off in town for some retail therepy while he went to get fuel at the cheap place we'd seen the previous night. We arranged to meet at the port at two. I was frustrated to find absolutely no sign of the exciting sounding bazar, further more every single shop in the whole town was shut except for the odd cafe and patisserie. I trudged on, down hearted but brigtened a little when I saw somw baclava in a shop window. I went in and asked for a mix of five of the mini ones, watching the costs after our ferry expenses. The man took one look at my presumably downhearted face and insited I have them for free which was incredibly sweet of him. Having nowhere else to go I headed for the port early. Alex passed me on route but didn't see my frantic waving and I lost him again. I felt hot, unwashed, disapointed and needed the loo. I trudged on and around the back of the port found a very quiet wee stretch where I could solve at least two of these factors and emerged feeling a lot fresher and realising that the main problem was that I was hungry. I walked back around to town, bought a tasty kebab and even found some touristy shops now open so was in a much better mood when Alex and I met up. In my wanderings, I had found the right area of the port so we went around to it, a little concerned to find no buzz just thirty minutes before departure. Alex went in and asked and it appeared, for some reason, they were now leaving at five instead. We ended up parking nearby and reading in the car, just in case they changed their minds.
They stuck to it however and I was rather concerned that the tiny ferry, just big enough for two cars, and a handful of foot passengers would be really rolly but it was fine. The sunset over the island that we were rewarded with for pretty much the whole hour and a half trip made me very glad that the times had changed and I just couldn't stop taking photos. It was exciting to be arriving at a whole new continent by boat and I didn't feel a bit sorry at leaving Greece: I had found that the coast not as beautiful as Croatia, the mountains less drametic than Slovenia, the cost of anything high, the opening hours eratic at best, traditional Greek food not so easy to come by and the ruins not, reportedly, so impressive as Turkey. An unfair summery possibly but that had been my experiences, roll on Turkey!
It took a little while to get through customs as we had to arrange local car insurance and get a visa but once through, our first stop was an ATM for Lira. On the way back to the car we spotted a nice little resturant filled with locals so stopped in for an extrememly delicious grilled Sea Bass. Alex had read about an area of coast near by with quiet little coves so without too much trouble we found another lovely spot down by the sea to spend the night.
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