Tip Number 18: Buy a spare battery for your camera in case it takes a crap on the most spectacular day.
Tip Number 19: Unless you have time and money, don’t visit a country that is fond of strikes, especially when they concern public transportation.
Tip Number 20: Fire Stadium= Fire Station
Tip Number 21: Always ask at least 3 people the same question...maybe more…because their answers are never the same.
Tip Number 22: BEWARE OF DOG
We wake up, get a late check out, hang out with our front desk man and meet a lady to share a cab with to the port in Cephalonia in order to get over to Zakynthos. Once we get over to the port, the water was just too beautiful in this little fishing village to not go snorkeling in so put on our goggles, plop in the water and swim around for a while. Once we arrived in Zakynthos we realized that the port was a lot more…well… absent then we expected it to be for it being the main port of Zakynthos. And that is because once again we had arrived at the wrong port on the wrong side of the island. Except this time there is no bus for us to hop on, actually there was not a whole lot of anything. So we pick a direction and start walking until a man comes running out from his restaurant, tells us to sit down and then tells us he will call us a cab since we look lost. Then he runs off and is lost for while. So we decide to eat while we are sitting there (Jef and I realized that this is probably a routine of this mans, to capture wandering travelers and leave them for a while sitting at one of his restaurant tables with a menu just long enough for them to eat his food haha). After we eat, I have to say, one of the worst meals of our lives our cab shows up and we were on the way to our hotel.
The Greek Islands truly are beautiful, with every house looking like its own little villa. Unfortunately the Greeks do need to learn how to build and use trash cans since some streets are completely littered with garbage. Once we arrive at our hotel I am completely blown away with how gorgeous it was. It was pink and massive right on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Our room was big and had an ocean view along with a view of the island town. And it was only a minute walk from both. We decided that since we only had the rest of that day and the next day to look around we went for a walk down town and were wrapped up in how magical and quaint it was. There are horses and carriages all over the town, everything is lit up with twinkly lights and all the people are friendly and talkative. On a whim we get signed up with an all Day Cruz around the island for following day so we got some ice-cream (of course) and went up to our hotel to get some rest.
The next morning is when we realized that Jef’s camera was officially on its way out and we were not going to be able to use it throughout the day of the cruz …sucky! Sooo we bought some disposables, which are kind of cool you know? Since it is kind of like a surprise waiting to arrive. So we got on our little cruz ship that actually had a fair amount of people on it. And after a long hour at the dock of the bay we left for our adventure. Since it is impossible it seems to escape awful American pop music anywhere you go we were thankful for having the i-pod with us. So we spent a lot of time making new playlists and mix cd’s in our mind. The island is gorgeous and surrounded by turquoise water. There are 350 caves around the island, some of which we got to snorkel through. We went to the beach where sea turtles lay their eggs, and where sadly not many make it back into the ocean. Then we went to the highlighted stop of the day Shipwreck Cove. One of the most beautiful beaches in the world, the sand is snow white and is surrounded by cliffs. On the beach there is a 100 year old smugglers ship that was abandoned and then wrecked upon the shore. It was used to smuggle booze and women apparently back in the day and you can still walk aboard it if you wanted. We got to spend plenty of time at this beach snorkeling and then we were off again.
We made some British friends who I guess love American accents, good to know someone does right? And there was a little boy with water wings and a foe-hawk who loved to talk about his fear of shark. This little boy later decided to brave up and go swimming in the pool that is on board the ship. He runs, he charges, and then he trips and flops/face plants right into the water. Afterward he gets back up and goes again; he was quite an entertainment factor.
We got back to the hotel that night and ate the best meal we had had so far in Greece, granted with the worst service. Then we went back to our room and watched the sunset over the town. Jef got sick again so I took a trip down to the ocean and went swimming and then listened to the most epic Reality sermon and came back covered in sand.
The next morning we were supposed to catch the ferry back to the main land of Greece and take a bus back to Athens to catch our flight the next day. Buttt that day was the day that the Greeks decided to hold a public transportation strike. At this point in the trip I didn’t even care or worry anymore because it wasn’t worth the effort and I knew that the Lord would again provide in some way. It turns out that there was a flight off the island at 5am the next morning to Athens which would be perfect! So we reserved some seats and met some other families that were stranded on the island and in a lot more of a pickle then us and then we went back to sleep for a while. We once again got a late check out and then talked about where we would be sleeping our last night in Greece. We have hammocks and I was stoked on that idea but the problem with Greece is that there are not a whole lot of trees. So we decided to just sleep in the airport that night. We spent the day at the beach and got some more sweets, come chocolate and banana crepes (the best in the world). We then decided to save the last of our money for a cab from the main town of Zakynthos to the airport since we couldn’t exchange American money due to the absence of American tourism at this island. So we had to walk from our small town of Tsivili to the main town of Zakynthos, which wasn’t too bad it followed the beach for around 3 miles and our packs were a bit lighter than before.
Once we arrived at the main town of Zakynthos my legs and feet needed a rest so we stopped at a sweet shop and then came to a crossroad. Do we try and walk to the airport as well so we can have money to buy ice-cream or do we not rick getting lost in the dark and just take a cab? Well we decided that we had all night to get there since it was only 930 and we went crazy and each got 4 scoops of ice cream! Ugh it was wonderous! Then we had a while to walk until we could find someone who spoke enough English to send us on our way to the airport, since no one has maps. We asked a couple people and then headed off at 1030 on what Jef called “The Ominous Walk of the Budgeted Backpacker”. This consisted of feeding stray kittens, smelling flowers and of course trying not to get eaten by guard dogs and trying not to get hit by all the random drag racing cars.
We walked 2.5 miles down a creepy road for a while where Jef almost got his leg ripped off by someone’s dog. Dogs are the main form of security in Greece, empty car lots will just have a random dog sitting in front of it along with every house. We eventually come to a hotel which tells us that it is 2.5 miles in the direction that we had just come from and then a right at a fire stadium. First…seriously…we’re exhausted. Second, what the heck is a fire stadium? So we wander back the way we came with our spirit dwindling bit by bit until we run into a random taxi driver (which we can no longer afford) to tell us that at a fire STATION we turn right. But we had no clue where this fire station was or what color it was so we were stopping at every building looking in it and walking down every crossroad. Eventually around 1:00 am we find the fire station and walk 2 miles down a street where all these random men were drag racing down with no regard to how close they are to hitting you. The airport was practically glowing when we saw it and it was open! There was no one around so we posted up on some benches for 3 hours of rest, which turned into 2 after another epic Reality sermon on worry then we woke up at 3:00 am to find out that the airport is still empty. We go back to sleep and then wake up at 5 and it is still empty. So we stay awake and finally someone shows up to tell us that our flight is at 7:00 not 5:00 and that we had to wait for the ticket lady to show up.
Since Greeks have no regard for lines we had 45mins to check in, go through security and get to our flight, and when we got up to the counter she said that our name was not on the registry. Just to ask someone else who said it was to send us back to the same woman who then realized that we were. So we checked in and got some wonderful orange juice then got on our little plane to Athens. Once in Athens we had 10 hrs to wait until we flew to Poland and then onto the great country of Armenia…
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