I was hoping the rest of the trip wasn’t going to feel the same as it had so far. We were ready to leave Rhodes. I knew there was a quick hop on a not so big plane but hey Ive done that once already right? Well…. This was a little different. I had myself convinced everything was just fine until we got our seat assignments. I was seat # 5 and our group was 1-7 which I found to be odd. Ive never been put at the front of a plane before and to get us all up there was kind of rare. Come to find out, our plane wasn’t like last time, this one only held 16 passengers. That’s when I started to think “Oh man… this is going to suck”. Little did I know. We were the last passangers on out of respect and patience (not much of that so far in Greece) so when I got on I noticed that there were no numbers on the overhead compartments like every other plane I had been on. Turns out the only seats left were the 5 in the front and I somehow got stuck in the front middle row. Now being that it’s a small plane I was close to the pilot, and by close I mean I literally could be buckled in and touch the captain, copilot, and instrument panel. Ok fine, no big deal, its just another plane I thought. Ha! Everything you feel or thing you feel or worry about while flying suddenly multiplies when you can see it out the front window. As we take off the two pilots are yelling at each other in Greek, the obvious tenured pilot keeps slapping the other guys hands away from the controls when he touches something he didn’t want him to. He tried to reassure me by telling me they fought all the time when they flew. I sure didn’t feel any better. The copilot must have been a fighter pilot with the air force at some point because while climbing after takeoff we dove like a rollercoaster and I came real close to peeing my pants (note that the seats didn’t have armrests either… I freaked!). God bless the autopilot function. From then on it was pretty smooth sailing and landing looking through the front window was about the coolest thing eventhough the plane looked like I was trying to keep it under control. We were all over the place, left, right, up, down, and any other direction you can imagine. Nonetheless, eventhough it scared the shit out of me, it was probably one of the coolest things Ive seen this trip. When on the ground I talked to the pilot in broken English quickly and told him good job, thank you, sorry it’s a lot different looking out the front. He told me, “don’t worry, its scarry for me sometimes too”. Somehow that didn’t reassure me much. I took one last look at our plane and thanked God I made it on the ground without soiling myself.
From there we grabbed the rental bus… I mean car. Its really a big blue box on wheels. We squeezed through the streets of the town like a fat lady at the theme parks only to realize that we weren’t due at that particular hotel for another few days. That’s where we stayed on the way out but the non English speaking man pointed to a place on the map which in almost no way resembled the name of the town we were supposed to be in. We took off through the mountains of Crete for the complete opposite coast of the island hoping that’s where we were supposed to be. After an hour of driving through the mountains and many small towns and a lot of second guessing, we got lucky and passed by the place we were supposed to stay. The travel agent was asked to find some places a little bit away from the tourist crowd. This was out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Great place but out in the sticks. At least we got a swimming pool with this one. We ate a late lunch/early dinner and proceeded to the pool for a swim. About 8pm or so we headed the final 5km to the beach areas and found a great spot to watch the sunset and explore a bit. It was cold, windy and tons of sand flying around but a great photo opp. On the way back I got to experience firsthand how narrow the roads really are, how to squeeze inbetween buildings, cars and people, and how bad everyone else drives. Another day is down and a new adventure begins tomorrow in our new home for a couple days.
From there we grabbed the rental bus… I mean car. Its really a big blue box on wheels. We squeezed through the streets of the town like a fat lady at the theme parks only to realize that we weren’t due at that particular hotel for another few days. That’s where we stayed on the way out but the non English speaking man pointed to a place on the map which in almost no way resembled the name of the town we were supposed to be in. We took off through the mountains of Crete for the complete opposite coast of the island hoping that’s where we were supposed to be. After an hour of driving through the mountains and many small towns and a lot of second guessing, we got lucky and passed by the place we were supposed to stay. The travel agent was asked to find some places a little bit away from the tourist crowd. This was out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Great place but out in the sticks. At least we got a swimming pool with this one. We ate a late lunch/early dinner and proceeded to the pool for a swim. About 8pm or so we headed the final 5km to the beach areas and found a great spot to watch the sunset and explore a bit. It was cold, windy and tons of sand flying around but a great photo opp. On the way back I got to experience firsthand how narrow the roads really are, how to squeeze inbetween buildings, cars and people, and how bad everyone else drives. Another day is down and a new adventure begins tomorrow in our new home for a couple days.
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