Another breakfast of coffee and a cheese omelette. However, since it was Easter Sunday, there were also red-, yellow-, and purple-coloured hard boiled eggs in a big bowl. The Greek guests all laughed and grabbed eggs. When they sat down to eat, each person held up an egg and proceeded to smash their egg into the egg of another person at the table, like an you would "toast" a drink. There seemed to be a bit of a competition to see who could smash their egg without breaking it, because there was a bit of teasing of the person whose egg broke more.
After breakfast I did about 3 hours of work in my room. When I had finished writing the video script, I sent it off for review and then pondered what to do next. At breakfast, I had noticed a charcoal spit set up beside the poolside bar. They had just put a lamb on the spit to roast. The hotel's owner, Nikos, said that there would be an Easter dinner aound 1:00pm with lamb and salad. So, I decided to explore the beach and go for a swim before wandering back up around 1:30pm to mooch a free lunch.
It had been blowing a storm for the previous two days and the ocean was all white caps and spray. The only people enjoying it were the windsurfers who raced back and forth, parallel to the shore, with their sails full of the gale-force wind. Today it was calm and sunny, with the waves gently rolling onto the beach.
I'm a bit afraid of swimming in the ocean these days, primarily because I can't feel anything from the knees down as a result of my peripheral neuropathy. It makes wading into the ocean risky, because I can't feel what I'm stepping on, and I can easily step on something sharp and hurt myself. Thankfully, the beach and the sea floor were lovely and sandy, and the beach was very clean (no garbage).
The water was very shallow so I had to wade out quite far before I could lower myself into the water and swim. That raised my other fear of swimming in the ocean, which is my fear of rip tides. I'm not a strong swimmer so I don't like to get too far from shore. I decided to just paddle out and bob on the waves for a bit rather than swimming into deeper water.
After about 45 minutes I waded back to shore and went for a short walk along the beach. The sand was lovely and soft, but the soft footing aggravated my compartment syndrome and after a while my legs were stiff and I was struggling to lift my feet. I decided it was time to head up to the poolside bar to check out Easter dinner.
When I got to the bar, Nikos, Astrid, and the intrepid Mr. Vali were buzzing around getting everyting ready. They had the pit-roasted lamb, as well as barbecued burgers, lamb sausages, and chicken souvlaki. There were also roast potatoes, lettuce salad, tomato salad, feta, pita, and tzatziki. A few minutes after I arrived Mr. Vali clanged some plates together and called everyone up to eat. I helped myself to a big plate of lettuce salad, pita, tzatziki, sausage, roast potatoes, and lamb. There was also beer and wine on offer but I already felt guilty about cadging a free meal so I opted for water and left the wine to other guests.
After dinner I went into the pool and swam for about 1.5 hours. There was a young boy in the pool with me. He and his family looked Polynesian, rather than Greek, but when he spoke I couldn't tell if he was speaking English or not. After a while I caught a few words in English. When I decided to get out of the pool, I stopped to talk to his mother, who was sitting at the side of the pool. It turns out the father is Maori, the mother is from the Cook Islands, and the reason why I couldn't place the boy's accent is because he grew up in Ethiopia and had a very muddled accent. The mother works for the New Zealand embassy in Addis Ababa and gets a new international posting every few years. She said the boy had only lived in New Zealand for one year of his life.
I had another quiet night in, watching TV and surfing the internet on my phone before turning in early.
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