On the few non-flyable days we had, we did the tourist bit and looked at the local Epidavaros Greek amphitheatre, went shopping, kayaking, rock-climbing, snorkelling and mountain biking. But mostly we just sat around waiting for the weather on those few "English-like" days.
Mari and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary while we were in Greece, and to help us celebrate, the rest of the crew decided a toga party was in order! Everyone grabbed the sheets off their bed and wrapped up as best we could. Add a few head wreaths of Eucalyptus leaves and we all looked the part of the Roman toga set. Just a pity we were in Greece, not Rome - still you can't have everything...
I asked the hotel owner if it would be possible to get in some local live traditional music, and he did us proud with a two piece band that played non-stop from 20h00 until just after 02h00 the next morning. We must have heard "Zorba" about 30 times!
John & Christophe learn a bit of Greek dancing from Dimitri,
the owner of
the hotel and his wife.
The party raged with much drinking and dancing and Mari and I were taken outside for an official portrait - which appears below.
The chief bottle washer in this place is a mad Frenchman called Christophe. He's allegedly ex-French Foreign Legion and a complete nutter.
Christophe, the mad Frenchman
We also saw some fairly scary reserve deployments.
It's not that throwing your reserve need be a scary thing
- it's just the ineptitude of these particular pilots makes the
otherwise very safe and life-saving procedure pretty dangerous.
The reserve throws themselves were done intentionally to
give those pilots who want to, a chance to throw their
reserve parachute in a safe environment over the sea near a
boat to better understand how it works and as a confidence
boost. This is a completely optional activity. Mari and I
declined (no, really?).
We were given the honorary names of "Eucalyptus Maximus" and "Bedsheet Japonica" - sounds to me more like a rare tropical disease, but as they say, "When in Rome..."
The Official Wedding Anniversary Portrait
Doing it all again...
In fact we so enjoyed ourselves in May, and the
situation in the UK was still so desperate with FMD that we
decided to return to Greece for another
two weeks in September (yup - that's one full month we spent flying in Greece
last year!).
John took this self portrait looking back while
thermalling over a quarry.
The sticker on the chin piece of John's helmet reads, "Warning! Idiot on
board!"
click on the wombat to return home...