Last epistle from Greece

It rained here last night. If I’m to believe the locals, there has been no rain for 2 mths. I don’t know that this will be a significant downfall because I see patchy blue sky around me and just a grey, glowering cloud above my head. But it means that my little veranda is all wet and I have had to spend time drying off all of the seats so that I can sit and type.
The power is off and so I am not able to make my tea.
This is going to be my last blog from Greece. I feel tremendously sad about it. It is so wonderful here. Very hard to leave. I said to Kyr yesterday as we were coming up from the pool, where he had been teaching me to dive deep, in two days this will seem like a dream. Tomorrow we leave at the crack of dawn because we have to return the rental car from where we originally got it about an hour away, and catch the bus @ 6:50 from the original hotel. We will probably leave here at 5:30. We will arrive in Amsterdam at noon and then probably rent a car and drive to Bas’s. Bas lives somewhere just outside of Amsterdam. We will spend the next 5 days exploring and visiting Joop’s relatives, while using Bas’ house as a base. Hopefully the Bas’ girls and Kyr will get along and there won’t be too much shyness.
We had originally planned to do all our favourite activities here with just more intensity today. Since that is the pool and snorkeling and going into town to email, I’m not sure if we’ll stick to that plan because of the weather. Yesterday Joop and I went snorkeling, luckily Kyr didn’t feel like it. We snorkeled far around the point and then a wind came up and created quite a current to swim against on our way home. It was a serious struggle. I kept lifting my head and saw that I was making no headway along the bank. My underwater world kept changing so I persevered but it was quite a workout.

I had my first semi-altercation with a Greek shopkeeper yesterday. Because I have never been away from home this long I was not too clever in packing all of my trusted medication and have run out of Tylenol and Chlortripilon. I thought I would approach the pharmacies and try to communicate what I was needing. At least at the first pharmacy, after quite a struggle I was able to get some Tylenol, panadol outside of North America, and even then I was giving the medical name of the panadol but they simply did not understand me. At the next pharmacy I went in and explained that I was looking for an old antihistamine and we called it Chlortripilon and I was having a hard time remembering the medical name but perhaps if they could show me some I would remember it and recognize it. The pharmacist practically leaned across the counter and rang my neck she was so incensed. “What is wrong with you?” She kept yelling, her hands wildly gesticulating in the air. I said that I was sorry and I realized that it was my difficulty in communicating but that no other antihistamine worked for me. She was so angry she just paced around the pharmacy behind the counter refusing to look at me. I just lowered my head in concentration – trying desperately to come up with the medical name. I don’t think she knew what to make of me, standing there with my head bowed, refusing to be run out of her store. Finally after a few minutes it came to me, or at least a tentative version so I wrote out on a piece of paper ‘Chlorphenamarate’. I called her over, and she reluctantly slunk back. I said in a very apologetic voice that I thought that this might be the name and did she recognize it? And that I was very sorry that I had not thought to bring the DIN number with me. Her attitude changed somewhat and she became nervous. All of her earlier bellowing that SHE was a pharmacist was in order to cow me, and I think she was surprised that I knew some pharmacy terms. She looked at the writing and then threw a book at me; it was a list of generic drug names. When I finally found it – Chlorphenamarine – she snatched the book from me and ran to her computer. She said reluctantly that it was an antihistamine, but that it was so old, there was simply no way she would ever have a drug that old. I smiled and thanked her and left. I was proud of myself because despite her aggression I only felt peaceful, not defensive or upset, just resigned to the fact it might be more difficult than I had anticipated. So a word of advice to everyone traveling – make sure you take the DIN numbers with you of all the drugs you may need. I never understood the necessity of putting that number on every label before.

There is a long band of ants beside our veranda, that is about 6cm wide and stretches for several meters into the pasture beside us. Kyr has tried to find the source but was unable. These ants are coming to the hole beside us, each carrying some crustaceous looking larvae, that are at least 4 times their size. They have to fling the larvae about trying to force it in the hole. There are equal number of ants going out. This goes on all day and resumes early in the morning. It must be a motherload of some type of larvae they have found. From a distance it is just a long black band several meters long that appears to be laid on the flagstones, only when you get closer do you realize that it is a moving ant train.

With this power outage, I wonder if we’ll be able to have our breakfast? One of the things that has become apparent is that most guests at this hotel are return visitors. For anyone ever contemplating coming here you must ask for suite #20. It is by far the best perched for privacy and ocean views.

Hopefully Bas will have wireless internet access so that blogging from the Netherlands will not be difficult.