The Travel Tanty
GREECE | Saturday, 30 May 2009 | Views [578]
I am the first to admit I am prone to the odd temper tantrum when travelling. The most infamous of these being the Dicky Donkey incident. But who could blame me? Young female. Alone. On a deserted road. In Egypt. Need I say more. So when we hire a jalopy of a scooter from the sourest rental guy in existence I feel a tanty coming on and I refuse to hop on the back. Once started up, this two wheeled tin can is puffing out clouds of black smoke as though its Steamboat Willie. Being one who detests seeing vehicles clearly spewing pollutants into the air, I become indignant at the thought of riding on the back of such an obvious environment killer in the beautiful Greek Islands and convey as much to The Doctor. He however has no intention of interacting with Sour Man ever again and refuses to get off the scooter which means we enter a stale-mate position. After about ten minutes of eyeballing each other waiting to see who will crack first, I finally give up and storm off into the House of Sourness demanding that our scooter is replaced with a less polluting model. Sour Man, obviously tired of dealing with young obnoxious tourists, takes me outside and proceeds to start up every scooter out the front saying “Look! Look! All the same!”. It is clear he has no intention of replacing Willie so I relent, jump on the back and we scooter off. The Doctor wins.
Now I feel both annoyed and guilty as well as unsafe. As Willie putt-putt-putts along, I notice The Doctor sitting in an odd position, leaning forward over the handles. When I ask him why he’s sitting like that, he replies “So we don’t flip backwards”. Oh great. I hadn’t known this piece of junk was so unstable we could end up vertical, riding solely on the back wheel like stunt drivers at the Easter Show, but now I do I feel so much better. My tanty is now stemming from a fear for life and the concern of not wanting to lose mine. Admittedly, also purely for reasons of vanity as I do not want my lovely new tan ruined by scraped and scabby skin. The hotelier had been kind enough to tell us prior to our departure this morning to be careful on the roads as two locals had recently been killed in a crash. Brilliant. Not to worry though, Willie may be a pile of trash, but The Doctor is an experienced motorbike rider. But hang on, what’s this, surely he’s not...yes he is! He is riding through the roundabout in the wrong direction!! Apparently he has had one of his memory lapses, forgetting that we should be driving on the right not the left and cuts across two lanes of oncoming traffic as I scream into his ear “What are you doing!!!!”. I instantly regret surrendering my moral high ground and curse Willie and his sour owner.
I attempt to buck up though, reminding myself that we are in Mykonos and heading to the beach known as Paradise! How can I justify being in a bad mood? I decide to ditch my tanty and look ahead to the pristine waters and soft sand, warm sun and beautiful backdrops that await me. We dutifully follow the signs to Paradise and come to the end of the road - a dirt carpark. Surely this isn’t it? Its not a very attractive area. Not somewhere to be labelled a ‘paradise’ anyway. Its all dirt hills and rock mountains sans the typical Cycladic white cube buildings with bright blue shutters to pretty them up. We pass a burnt out, graffitied bus and The Doctor observes that “It looks like Afghanistan”. Once on the beach we settle into two of the thousands of banana lounges covering the entire stretch of beach, only to be told that that will cost 7.50 euros please (ie A$15). Refusing to pay we head to the small area of clear space at the back of the beach and lay down in what is essentially gravel. Agreeing that this isn’t much fun, we pack up and head off soon after. On the other side of the island, we find a true paradise beach at Panormos. Barely inhabited, fine white sand, crystal water, and a nice breeze convince us that, even though we took a scooter ride to Paradise and it was hell, Mykonos was worth the effort after all.
It may be surprising but I am not the only one in this duo capable of cracking a decent tanty. Following an overnight ferry ride from Athens to Crete (in the cheap deck seats, of course - why pay for a private cabin when you can sleep in a seat with a hundred or so others?) we arrive in Heraklion at 5.30am on near zero hours of sleep. The deck area was far from being full, however as punishment for being such cheap-skates, The Almighty sent unto us an eccentric geriatric who talked non-stop all night in his loud, deep, gravel-like voice. In fact I am not sure that he was even talking to anyone per se, just talking to himself or anyone else who cared to listen. Which, judging from all the shushing from other sleep deprived passengers, was no one at all. Outraged at the thought of having his insightful philosophical theories on life silenced, he proceeded on a rant in Greek which I am fairly certain can be translated as “How dare you shush me...I refuse to be quiet and for your insolence I will now perform a classical ten minute piece of air trumpet”. With a thumb to his lips, cheeks puffed out and fingers moving up and down as though playing the keys, Trumpet Man marched around the deck “toot-toot-toot”ing on his imaginary horn (I am not making this up). Suffice to say, neither The Doctor nor I were feeling very refreshed on our arrival and when four stray dogs started tailing one of us (lets just say it wasn’t me) all over town whilst we searched for our hotel, said person got a tad annoyed.
My hysterical laughter at this sight probably didn’t help matters as it meant I was useless in a) keeping the dogs away or b) looking for the hotel. In my defence though, seeing these dogs leap up and flock to The Doctor for no apparent reason as he walked by them, as if he was the returned messiah was hilarious. They took no interest in anything or anyone else other than The Doctor - they had him surrounded on the deserted early morning streets of Crete, sniffing his bag, rubbing against his legs and looking up at him expectantly, tails a-wagging. You would have thought that he was their master who had just returned home and was dishing out the Chump. Walking some distance further three of the dogs gave up the pursuit but one stubborn, mangy mutt refused to let The Doctor continue life without him by his side. Quite grumpy by this stage, and receiving no help from me, The Doctor cracked it and literally took off running down the road, wheelie suitcase in tow, in a last ditch effort to lose Mangy Mutt. I lost sight of him as he turned a corner. All I could see was Mangy Mutt stopping at said corner, tail still wagging. As I followed in the direction of The Doctor, I noticed something stepping out of the shadows just ahead of me. It was The Doctor. He hadn’t run off after all - he had pressed himself up against the wall, behind a telephone box, as if trying to blend into the brickwork and fool this dog into running by him, just like crims do in the movies when they want to evade the police. It didn’t work. Mangy Mutt ended up chaperoning us to our destination and was so heart-broken at the thought of losing his new master, he actually followed us up the stairs inside the entrance of the hotel before I shooed him away. Looking sad and disappointed, he turned around. We never did see him again.
