I am the youngest one diving today. The eldest is a lovely chap from London called Dave who is 71, being the baby is not something that happens too often these days! First dive is calm and relatively uneventful, until we come across some enormous pipeing around six foot long and eight inches in diameter which Nikita the Dive Master du jour manages to pick up - ‘why?’ I ask in sign language - ‘why indeed?’ his hands and face reply! It was a bit of a struggle getting it back into the rib, where the water’s buoyancy was no longer an advantage.
Back onboard we’re attacked by gangs of wasps, so quickly scream off at a fantastic rate, and once started, the Captain decided to head across the water to Ithaca, and right down to the southernmost point. We have to do a rapid entry as the current is a little stronger than the secluded bays and bobbing around on the top we soon separate. Once below it’s more calm, but still enough for the first drift-dive of the week. A sea snail is on a ledge around 8m which is a first-ever for me - probably about the size of a man’s shoe, and carrying a hefty shell. We drop rapidly to around 20m and slowly proceed along the sea wall, which is near vertical here, effortlessly ascending or descending a few meters as needed to look at anything interesting. One lobster was hiding carefully, but another was much more visible, and she was a big girl (the roe between her legs speaks volumes) and looked magnificent. A moray eel with blue colourings is new to me - feisty, young and thin, it will probably grow into a mean beast! The temperature has sunk to a bone-chilling 17 degrees and everyone’s cold, but it’s a great dive and we stretch it out to 50 odd minutes. Back on the rib, we hug the rubber to get warm again, before we charge across the water back home, rock music blasting out from the stereo, like a pastich from the movie Apocalypse Now - what a memory?
Hubby is waiting in the dock, but I will be a while cleaning kit before I get to hear of his morning walk. We lunch in the trendy deli on the corner of the harbour, my BLT is the best ever! Today’s plan is to head back to the largest town, Argostoli, just for a wander, and a few other spots in the area. We take a new route up the hillside before returning to the road familiar because it’s the one we originally used on Saturday to get here, passing over the hight of the central mountain, and winding back around many switch-backs on the other side - it’s a great drive, although if I was the passenger I would probably be ill, as the driver it’s not a problem.
We wander around town for a while, looking at the theatre, municipal buildings and several churches, before walking along the water’s edge where we originally tendered from Nueiw Amsterdam back in 2010, our first taste of Kefalonia. The inlet is very pretty, almost fjord like but not as long. Afterwards we head to Katavothres at the top of the peninsula to check out a sea-wheel, where a natural geographical phenomena proved an endless sink-hole for seawater, meaning the suspended wheel always turns in the same direction as the sea passes under it. Apparently in the 1800s dye was introduced to attempt to find the water’s destination, and it was seen about two weeks later in Sami across the island 22 km away. We moved on to the lighthouse, fuelled by an ice-cream stop, and finally the Italian Monument - there a lot of history here and I’m sure many will remember the film Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, or at least the exquisite music by Stephen Warbeck, which tells one story of the occupation.
We return a different route over the mountain this time back via Sami and past the familiar area where the beautiful cave is, we’ve been twice so won’t bother this trip, before returning on the coast road at 30 behind a dawdling idiot causing a huge tail-back - I was remarkably calm throughout.
After changing we walk down to the harbour for dinner, finding another better than average place, this one called The Local. Hubby’s main was a local meat pie in filo, I had a delightful and enormous veal chop, enough for both of us really!
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