I woke up this morning with panda eyes. My Oakley Jawbones are wonderful sunglasses but they are close fitting wraps. And yesterday I really did catch the sun. Much laughter at my expense when people saw my red face with pale rings around my eyes.
Anyway, today was the last of the organised trips. A day out on Captain Vasilys (that is REALLY unlikely to be spelt properly, but hey ho) Barbeque Cruise. A somewhat different boat trip to yesterdays trip with Captain Jack.
We startd with a coach trip to the south of the island. Getting old hands at this, there was no running for coaches, no getting confused or anything of comedy value I'm afraid. Simply a coach down to the harbour at the bottom of the island. There we got on a rather attractive and nice sized boat. We found ourselves a table and a seat and watched as the boat departed.
For a boat trip that lasted basically a whole day we didn't really get all that far. We covered a lot of distance but it all seemed to be back and forth, to and fro. The captain didn't seem able to make up his mind about where he was going. But this was somewhat mitigated by the fact that whenever he dropped anchor then there was an opportunity for swimming. Nothing as sedate as lowering yourself in, you were expected to jump off the side of the boat. This took a certain amount of nerve and the first time of trying Junior was somewhat hesitant. She soon got into her stride though. And it wasn't long before she had progressed from jumping to diving Without wanting to sound like too proud a parent, there were comments about this young girl diving in.
On one such stop I swam away further from the boat. All of a sudden below me I saw a cluster of fish. Wondering what they were doing, I stopped to watch. And, to my surprise, realised that they were centred around an octopus. Fascinated I watched on. The octopus would move on and then lift a rock. If a fish was feeling brave enough then it would dart in trying to grab whatever it could from under the octopuses nose (or beak). Every so often the octopus would get fed up with this and wave a few tentacles at the fish, driving them a short distance off. But as soon as it went back to hunting then the fish would gather around again. This fits into the category of things I wanted to do, ie see an octopus in the wild (this is not counting the two I saw in Menorca when I was snorkeling, to my shock I was confronted by two octopi {I think that's the correct plural} heading right for my face. It was like a scene out of Monty Python with the killer rabbit being replaced by killer octopus. But when my heart had started beating again it something didn't seem right, and looking up over the surface of the water it dawned on me that these were dead octopi attached to a fishing line being dragged by a scuba diver returning to shore), and I returned to the boat with a big smile.
We also had a chance for fishing from the boat as well. We didn't catch anything, possibly because Juniors patience wasn't strong or long enough so we kept pulling the line up too quickly. But we did get a few nibbles.
I have forgotten to mention that I had found the joys of Metaxa by this point. Metaxa 5 star is the Greek brandy, a bit sweeter than the french stuff but still very nice. And I fancied one as a night cap this evening back at the hotel. I went to the bar, but the two barmen were missing. The bar at the hotel seems to operate a strange sytem which involves two relatively professional barmen and an occassional blonde (not her being blonde that was occassional, but her presence at the bar). The occassional blonde lived up to all the rumours about blondes and was generally fairly vague about what she should be doing. The night before she hadn't known what Metaxa was but one of the guys was there to help her. Tonight she knew what Metaxa was and what glass to serve it in (proving that short term memory wasn't a problem) but was less clear about volume. Now in all the time there I never saw an official "measure", it was always, at best, guesswork. But guesswork with someone as vague as she was, was a dangerous thing. She poured. And poured. And poured. And poured some more. In the end my large brandy glass was over two thirds full. I returned to my table with a full glass and a large smile! And a very good nightcap.
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