Europe Day 17: Corfu Day Two

Today was the day we were going to spend all day out on the water – on George’s Boat… but not George’s Boat. Another boat he owned driven by someone else. There was another Contiki group in Corfu with us – our partner tour but on the “backpack” level – and they got George’s actual boat. But really – we didn’t care – because today turned out to be an absolutely amazing day on the water regardless.


On the waterfront
We boarded our Not-George’s-Boat at the waterfront a little further… south I think… of Corfu city. It was a pretty nice boat – not glamourous or anything – but definitely as scary as it could have possibly been. Don’t ask me how or why – but I’ve been on a few boats you do NOT want to be in and this was nowhere near that quality. It had a bar and washrooms and lots of room for most of us to actually lie down and sun bathe.

Ana
Ana – our site rep – came on the tour with us and was a ton of fun. She really has dived into the relaxing life of living on a Greek island. She told us how really – some of it isn’t so hot – as she also has to work with the budget tours and at Contiki sites – the reps actually are the ones cooking their food and planning things for them that our hotels take care of – but she admits – the perks on the “other side” more than make up for it.

Jumping into pain
A little ways into the ride, we made our first stop in the middle of the Ionian Sea for “jumping time” where we all just dived into the water. As I watched everyone go for it there was no way I wasn’t going to go too. Silly me apparently – something went wrong. When I jumped off the boat and went barreling into the water – all of a sudden my whole head started burning severely – especially my ear canals. I thought maybe it would go away as the water emptied out of my head, but it just didn’t – and the pain became excruciating. It brought me to tears.

Tissue sponges
I had to get out and onto the boat, but after a few minutes the pain still hadn’t gone away. I went searching for some pain pills hoping it would numb the feeling – but then the captain of the boat sat with us and said it was probably cause the salt water got pushed into my ear canals and was stuck there. He told me to tightly twirl some tissue paper and make “ear sponges” – which really, were just tissue paper Q-tips – and put them in my ear to soak up the salt water. Lo and behold – the minute I did it – the pain went away. The thing is – I just didn’t get it. I’ve gone diving for goodness sakes – so salt water in my ears isn’t new. The captain said it was most likely that the water actually went into my ear canal – whereas usually it doesn’t.

Water Sports
We stopped for another swim spot a little further on and the bar was opened for drinks. After starting up again, we then headed for one of the large beaches on the eastern side of the island where all the water sports would be available for us to try.

Parasailing!
There were a ton of sports to choose from. Everything from a Banana Boat ride to water skiing was available. I, however, had my eye on the skies and convinced H-Rabbit that we should go parasailing! I think she thought that I wouldn’t go through with it – even though I had said I wanted to go parasailing ever since we hadn’t taken the chance in Cuba a few years ago. I promptly plopped my money down, so we were going – no matter what.

Ropes and Pulleys and…
Getting ready took a little doing, as they didn’t have a large selection of gear to wear. However – after we got settled, they led us to the beginning of the dock, placed us in between the ropes, and before the parachute, and gave us our instructions…

Just what?
… and what were those instructions? One line, one smile: Just walk! Can you believe that? All the guy told us was to “just walk”! Ok – he may have ALSO pointed to where we should hold our hands – but even that he said only matter-of-factly while we were still fiddling with the cables, and once we were off it didn’t matter. So – when he gave the call – we did exactly what he said – we just started walking down the dock… and we were off!

The view from up here
It was definitely one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done. If you want to feel like a bird – go parasailing! The view was spectacular, and feeling so weightless was just amazing. H-Rabbit gave us a tiny scare when she leaned forward a bit and almost tipped us over, though I think if we hadn’t panicked and just fell into a horizontal position, we wouldn’t have messed anything up. Albeit – up there – so far from the water – it was a bit scary. But it lasted only a second, and everything else was great – even our decent into the water when we were done – so I’m definitely parasailing any chance I get to in the future.

More pebbles…
When we were finished H-Rabbit and I took some time to check out the beach, but it turned out it was another pebble beach instead of a sand one and I wasn’t too impressed. No matter how smooth pebbles get or can be – it simply is NOT a happy beach bed to walk on – with or without shoes.

Lunch
After some water play we all clambered back onto the boat for lunch. They served some awesome food right from the galley. I think I forgot to mention – when we got to the beach for watersports, we actually hooked up with George’s ACTUAL boat and the other Contiki group – and for Lunch our boats were strung together. We had to walk along one to get to the other.

Hilarious George
During lunch – George was selling souvenirs from his boat. The t-shirts were absolutely hilarious and extremely “dirty”. Heather and I thought they were great – but we knew deep down they were throw away items – reminiscent a la frosh gear - and that we just didn’t need them. We did take pictures of people in theirs though.

It took awhile for everyone to finish all the water sports that they had signed up for since some people almost signed up for everything. I was content to sun bathe on the boat and have more great food and drinks. Yay for delicious Frappes!

Water, water, water
After everyone finally finished all of their sports, we took off again on the water. I absolutely love being out on the water. The wind, the waves, the water, the sun – it was a perfect day. We took time for a few more swimming spots. One was a nice alcove stop, but we were told to watch out for the bottom, as there were spiky black sea urchins that were poisonous lying around. Michelle and Tash brought out their underwater cameras and took a lot of photos of everyone beneath the water. It’s the Olympus hand-held versions – and I definitely need to get one of those. Will save on ever having to buy those disposable water ones.

Winding down
After that, our boat tour was winding down – but it was a really long day in the sun so I think the timing was perfect. I am definitely going to hold today in my memory forever – so perfect.

Easy evening
Two full days in the sun can definitely be tiring. When we got back to the hotel, we had some time before dinner, so we hung out at the pool and pool bar and had some crazy concoctions made by the very friendly bartender. After feeling like we’d swum off all the saltwater – we headed to dinner where we grabbed lots of buffet food and then settled on making plans just to walk into town – though it did require a lot of convincing, as I was quite tired.

Corfu in the dark
We walked down towards the town along the hotel road and met up with Caitlyn along the way. She had headed down on her own earlier but was heading back because it was a bit scary. However – upon meeting us – she decided to tag along, as she didn’t really get to see anything before heading back originally.

When everyday life is a festival
The city life at that time of night was amazing. Everyone was out – and I mean everyone! Apparently, families in Greece (especially on weekends – i.e. today being Sunday) eat dinner really late, and they all go out into town to these huge outdoor restaurant areas along the water. It was 10pm and people were just starting to eat, tons of kids were running around, and huge families, extended and otherwise gathered in groups and were chatting away. It looked like a festival but we were told this was an everyday thing.

Night Water
We walked all along the waterfront and could see all the forts along the coast lit up. After reaching what seemed like the end of the boardwalk and a road that would lead us to roads more frequented by taxis (to get back), we changed course to head into the centre of town.

Taxi!
Problem: there were no taxis there either! We couldn’t find one anywhere. Finally – I decided to just ask someone in one of the cafes we were passing by – even though it was most likely they wouldn’t speak English – which they didn’t. However, the people were extremely nice and kind of figured out what we needed. They pointed us to an area where they said would be lots of buses and taxis. Thing was – when we got there – there still weren’t any taxis!

Magical Taxi
This would be about the time we started to freak out a little bit in our heads because we knew there was no way we’d be able to walk all the way back – a) because we weren’t really sure of the roads and b) because we were dead tired. Then – just like that – a taxi magically just drove up right in front of us. Crazy! It took only minutes to drive back to the hotel and we are immediately hitting the sack to get ready for the long drive to Athens tomorrow… as soon as I finish this post!

Europe Day 16: Corfu Day One

Gravol puts you out!
While last night’s Gravol helped me get a pretty good sleep, it was still a little unnerving to be woken up by the announcements for the ferry’s first port of call. Definitely way too early for our own stop, and ended up being another stop at a port on the mainland of Greece. We still had to head to the islands.

Sunrise missed
Regardless of what I thought was an early call, it still wasn’t early enough to catch the sunrise, which was too bad – it would have been really awesome to watch it rise in a seaside setting on the boat. From that first port it was only another 30-60 minutes to our actual port in Corfu, so we spent our time packing quickly and lining up to disembark. I got “annoyed” by another attack of Little Miss Self-entitled – but I’ve promised myself not to let her ruin anymore of my trip. I really don’t understand how people can actually grow up being that way, but whatever. (For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, you’ll just have to ask me because she’s not even worth me spending time to explain it here.)

Corfu and Anna!
When we got off of the boat, we met our site rep Anna who was all smiles and cheer. She led us to another coach and driver (not permanent), who wasn’t too pleased with the weight of my bag. I just kind of looked at him with a sorry expression – but seriously man – if little ‘ole me was able to lug that up and down the three flights of stairs on the ferry, I don’t think he should have been complaining about one little throw into the luggage compartment.

Corfu-town
Our port was in the town of Kerkyra (Corfu) but our hotel was just outside in the town of Keloni (which is really more like a suburb of Corfu than a separate town). This area is on a huge hill, and while the coach could make it up to the hotel, the driver couldn’t make it up the additional hill-of-a-driveway that the hotel had, and we had to lug our luggage up there ourselves – definitely not a happy task.

Awesome hotel
Despite the huge hill, the hotel was awesome – like a little resort. We were given breakfast first right away – awesome buffet of food. We then checked in, and had some time to get ready, before we had to go into town. We also were going to have a meeting with Anna.

The opinions of others
So at this point – I should fill in some back information. Basically, Leona had told us throughout the whole trip, that we should not take the option to rent our own car and drive around the island. She told us about how the roads were a bit dangerous and the drivers were severely crazy. With this continued reminding throughout the trip – pretty much everyone on the bus was ready to NOT rent a car.

However – what should happen at the meeting with Anna? Renting a car and driving around Corfu was exactly what she suggested was the BEST idea out of the bunch before us (rent a car for the day, go into town by coach, visit the city beach by walking).

Not such a hard choice
It at first seemed like a hard choice before us – but in the end we decided that a trip into town wasn’t so exciting as seeing the island for ourselves, and the only chance for us to see the better beaches on the west side of the island would be to take off on our own. In the end, there were actually a lot of us that decided on the car – but because we were long in making our decision – the only people in our car was H-Rabbit, Caitlyn and myself. Chris and Liz decided to opt out, as they weren’t comfortable with the car issue. In the end – for me – it really wasn’t a big deal. I think maybe for Leona it was a bigger deal since they drive on the other side of the road (in Australia) – however, we drive on the same side as Corfu in Toronto, and the roads weren’t any worse that what I’ve driven on in other island locals, so c’est ca.

Ish-time not always a good thing
ISH time definitely affected our leaving time – there was a long period of waiting around for our car to be delivered by the rental company. In the meantime, Anna showed us where to go, and how to get there, on an island map. Eventually, the car people finally arrived – but with a manual car! So we had to wait some more for an automatic, since I was the only one who was going to drive and I can only drive automatic.

Empty means EMPTY
Finally, we got our car. In handing it over, the rental lady told us the tank was on empty, but it would get us to the closest gas station to fill up. Ha! Yeah, right! After we got in and cruised down to the main road down by the breakwater – the car didn’t even make it past the waterfront! It gave out in the middle of an intersection, and with a little maneuvering and quick gearing into neutral, I managed to coast the car into a parking spot right beside a store beside the intersection.

Yay for helpful locals!
Thankfully, the storeowner helped us call the car people and get them to come help us out. He didn’t speak much English, but with random sign language and sad faces, I think he realized what was wrong with us.

Hilarious live comedy
Thankfully - not too much ISH time in came into play this time around. The car rental people came fairly quickly and said over and over again that they were sorry and embarrassed. It was a hilarious comedy of errors watching them trying to get us on our way, by trying to get gas into tank to take us to the gas station. Basically, they had brought the gas in a plastic vegetable or corn oil jug, and they proceeded to make a funnel out of the map they were going to give us of the area to get the gas in, and then tried to funnel the gas into the tank. There was a mother, daughter and it seems maybe grandfather all in the mix chattering away to each other in Greece cause they just couldn’t get it to work. Finally – with the grandfather holding a pen into the gas tank opening to keep it open, the daughter holding the funnel-made-out-of-map, and the mother slowly pouring the gas in – they managed to get about 1/16 of a tank of gas in. As apologies – they said we could have the car for an hour longer than everyone else that had got a car – which was nice considering we had now spent half a day just trying to get out of the city, let alone To anywhere.

Laughing Gas
As we had a good laugh at the real-life comedy we witnessed – we had another good laugh when we finally got to the closest gas station. It was more than a kilometer away, meaning even if we hadn’t stalled right at the bottom of the hill, we would have stalled sometime after, cause we definitely would never have made it all the way to that first station. Greek people are definitely a gas. Get it? Hahaha.

Most amazing ride
On our way to the western isles, we definitely had one of the most amazing rides ever through countryside. Unlike all the dire warnings, driving was a total breeze. With all the same rules as Canada, the roads proved easy, and once you’re out of the city it’s just plain ‘ole small island driving: no one on the roads and awesome twisting turning pathways that make the ride feel more like an off-road rollercoaster.

Breathing in the beauty
Whether the driving was inland or along the coasts, there were a ton of amazing sights and views to behold. I can’t remember the name of the main western beach we made it to (will have to look that up), but we got there safely and spent a couple hours both sun bathing and have an awesome time in the ocean. While there, we met up with the Texans and Jolene as they had hit the same beach. When we were good and burnt, and after buying some beach gear, Jolene decided to join us in our car and we drove to a few other beaches and areas up the west coast of the island. There were some amazing photo ops and vistas. As our time for car return was nearing, we then headed back to the hotel along another route so we could see some other areas of the island.

Glupas!
Spelling of the above may be wrong – but it should be the name of the restaurant we went to tonight after we returned back from the beach. After such a great day, it was awesome to be treated to such a great night too. We started dinner with all of us having a shot of Ouzo at the entrance, and were then led into a large taverna with dancing all and everything. Dinner was absolutely amazing with tons and tons of courses. After we finished eating, we were then treated to an array of traditional Greek dancing and singing, which of course included many a broken plate as well as lighting the entire dance floor on fire! Everyone knows Greeks know how to party! After that – it was thankfully straight to bed as the day had been hugely filled and tomorrow we’re on the water all day long. It’s going to be one of the best days ever – I can feel it – and I don’t want to miss it.