All aboard

An early start this morning and we got organised to go boating. Breakfast, bags and the all important lathering and we were good to go. As soon as we stepped outside the door I started sweating, it seems it doesn’t matter if it’s 9 in the morning, or the scorching midday sun, the heat is equally unbearable. A walk to town and then snacks and extra water were bought and then we were good to go. Or at least we were as soon as our skipper had finished his breakfast ice cream. Spiros was to be the captain of our vessel, the Kenneth 23 (or at least a Greek version of this). I didn’t really want to find out what had happened to Kenneths 1 through to 22, just in case it put us off.
We set off from port in a northerly direction with the wind blowing gently from the southeast, probably only 4 or 5 knots, so it wasn’t going to disturb the calmness of the waters. The way the boat hire worked was that he would take us around and show us the spectacular sights and whenever we wanted to have a swim we just had to tell him. So after maybe 15 minutes, for no real reason other than the fact that the first one had to be somewhere, we asked him to anchor up. Funnily enough, the anchor had a bar on either side and a bump in the middle, very much resembling a W. It was also huge, so we were travelling around all day with a massive W anchor. Now that I have got that out of the way, where was I. Oh yes, we were all treading water in lovely crystal clear water, just taking it easy for 10 minutes or so. Then back in the boat and on we went. This was pretty much the pattern for the next couple of hours, although the scenery got more spectacular as we went, huge cliffs, massive caves, rocky beaches with large smooth rocks, it was awesome. We were in and out of the water loads of times, the W anchor was up and down all day like a…no the comparison escapes me for the moment. For some reason it is very easy to just bob about in the water, lazily treading water, or swimming from the boat to shore, not sure why but it was not tiring at all.
We had done three quarters of the way around Paxi and then we made a crossing to the neighbouring island of Antipaxi, I am not sure what they have got against the good people of Paxi, but the island is lovely. We stopped at a beach with the most pristine sand and water that seemed even more crystal clear than everywhere else we had been so far. We sat and had a drink in a taverna and then sat on the beach and ate the lunch we had picked up this morning, which was very tasty. It was so chilled on the beach, there were boats parked out at sea and there were people around but it didn’t feel busy at all. So it was nice just to relax there for a bit. Then it was back to the boat to carry on as before. Over the day we must have been in and out 10-12 times, and although the sun was blazing the whole time, I never really felt that hot, any time we started to warm up, we just got Spiros to stop again, had another swim, and all was good. It was an amazing day out.
We got back to port having completed our circuit, and although it hadn’t felt like hard work at all, I think we were all fairly worn out. By 10 minutes into our walk back to our villa we were all also very hot again, the fresh feeling didn’t last long. Everyone was tired, Jess had to conduct a 30 minute webinar with an inconsiderate family being noisy in the other room, then there was dinner to prepare, dishes to be done and clothes to be washed, which no one could really be bothered with so we were all very thankful our trusty manservant Juan was here to take care of all that.
After covering all the highlights today, and realising that we would just be repeating them again tomorrow, we decided a second boat trip would be overkill, no matter how much I was looking forward to everyone calling me skipper. So we cancelled that and I will just take back the Captain’s hat I bought myself. It means we don’t need to get up too early, but it also means we need to come up with something else to do.Les mer