All good things come to an end, today is that day for our stay on Kefalonia. Having seen these little yellow and blue dinky-boats amongst all the “proper ones” all week, we’ve booked our last day on one.
They are hired by the day, one has to watch a training video (which was intermittent as the connection speed is a little hit and miss) then do a short training in the harbour, then it’s off into the great beyond! Except there’s a very small area we’re allowed to explore, but it’s perfect for a day. Heading north from the harbour, past our hotel, which is the furthest building, there are 12 coves with small beaches, only two of which are accessible from other than the sea.
We make a beeline for the northernmost cove 12, just to see how long (about 75 mins) then slowly head back in and out of all the coves, before settling in at number eight to drop anchor and open the champagne.
Hubby having been shopping whilst I was training, we’re fully stocked with deli sandwiches, crisps and said champers on ice, plus pastries for later. We while away an hour on lunch, and a swim, as others arrive, depart, lunch, play around us. It’s all very pleasant.
Then we decide to move on, move cove-hopping - stopping, admiring the scenery and people watching. We wave at Albert on the anchored dive boat as we pass, he’s obviously letting Nikita do all the work this afternoon!
Passing by the harbour, we go South a bit alongside the coast road to Sami, but it’s less interesting and so we turn north again and head all the way back to our lunch spot, anchor again and consume pastries! I did wonder about another swim, but it’s a bit cold so thought better if it.
The wind was getting up and the swells enough to throw us about a bit, which was great fun, but slowing down I hug the coastline a bit closer, soon it drops again.
As we head back into the harbour, one of the for-hire yachts is making a proper balls-up of manoeuvring and I reverse throttle to get out of the way, we spot some flotsam so go and retrieve this whilst we’re waiting, it turns out to be an aluminium step, and we later learn it fell off the yacht, so I tell the skipper we’ll leave it at the hire place.
Somehow I manage to park perfectly first time, and the hire-boy is amazed how much fuel we’ve consumed, it seems most are not so inclined to be as adventurous as we were. Six hours of fun, total cost €106 including €31 of petrol, so not cheap but a great day we probably won’t repeat for a while.
Just for the record, I’ve decided I require my water-bound experiences to satisfy the following tests:
Minions - around 1:1 ratio of crew to passengers;
Provender - gourmet food and quality wine is the minimum standard;
Construction - built from metal not fibreglass.
So two out of three isn’t too bad, but the third test failed!!
Onwards to the deli to get ice-cream, then we wander back to the hotel, up the bloody 143 steps to change and back down to the pool for an hour. Then we’re back upstairs to commence packing, shower and change, then to the bar for our last Rosé in Kefalonia.
We took our usual route into town but as The Local is at the end of the village a bit of a longer walk than usual. Our lovely maitre D from Athens was waiting for us. Tonight’s offering was a Veal T-Bone. The meal as always was excellent coupled with a lovely wine from Crete. As we have a ridiculously early start tomorrow we set off back to the Kefalonia Bay Palace for the final time. We reckon we will be back. So, to bed with the alarm set for 3.30am. Not good but we know what awaits us at the pier side in Piraeus so worth it.
Comments
Post a Comment