We had a long, 10hr, passage from Astypalea to Amenia en route to pick up Amanda's youngest and friend from the SW tip of Rhodes.
We arrived at the island of Amenia at dusk, dropped the hook, ate and slept well. The next morning we went for a hike and met the islands only inhabitant, Kosta, who was extremely friendly and showed us what he was doing on the island. As a child he said he always felt St George in him and, after running two or three bars for a living, he decided to give it up in is early 50's and move to the island and renovate the Church there, which was dedicated to St George. All the materials needed to be shipped across the waters from Rhodes in his tiny motorboat. He has friends that bring items too. He told the story of getting permission from the 'Big Papa' (regional head of the church) to stay and work on the Church, as part of that process he collected him from Panormitis on Symi in his tiny boat (and scared him to death!) to show him his plans. He has done a magnificent job, creating not just a beautiful church but a beautiful home too. There are many ruined buildings on the site to work on and he's created places to stay for visitors to the island (for free) and a small museum room housing the artifacts he has found on the island.
Kostas' house.
We spent hours chatting to Kosta and drinking coffee, he gave us food as well as two Easter eggs (hard boiled eggs dyed red) and showed us how to crack them together to bring good luck. He told us how St George has provided him with an island, a home and more recently a wife, a lady who had come camping on the island with a friend. It was a shame we hadn't arrived a few hours earlier to the island. Kosta had entertained 200 people to celebrate St Georges day for the first time. Karos was very proud that the Big Papa was there along with people from the neighbouring island of Chalki. Karos explained that those people had always questioned what he was doing and his motives. H e was now hoping that things would be better going forward.
We can't do justice to Karos' story here, suffice to say we had an engaging time with him and left with his phone number and an invite to dinner next time we are close. We will endeavour to do that.
The island was host to a German submarine base during the war and we took a dinghy ride and short stroll to two barracks buildings where we found art drawn onto the walls by the wartime residents. The pictures were in remarkably good condition considering they were over 80 years old.
German soldiers artwork
We could have stayed there for much longer but we had to collect Ellis and George from the Sw tip of Rhodes. With not many suitable bays in the area Nigel had identified a peninsular of beach joining a small island to the main island. With a strong offshore wind forecast Nigel anticipated flat water on the leeward side and was almost right..... Some swell coming into the beach hadn't flattened off fully at pick up time giving an interesting dinghy trip in and off the beach! Boys safely onboard, we headed up the coast to the lovely bay and town of Lindos. The boys headed off in the Kayaks to explore the caves and cliffs whilst Amanda and Nigel toured the town with its passageways dotted with shops and restaurants. We also had a walk up the hill to the fort which would have been magnificent in its day.
Lindos is an upmarket tourist town with beach bars etc and rooftop restaurants, fortunately it was not overwhelmed with people at this time of year.
Lindos bay with Kerensa anchored in the middle
The most dramatic event of our 3 day stay there was a massive cloudburst which came out of nowhere one afternoon. We dived into a bar for shelter and a beer, watching the narrow passageways turn into raging torrents of water. Whilst the rain fell and turned to hail we suddenly realised that, in our efforts to get two teenagers out of bed before midday, we had forgotten to close the hatches 😱. During a rain break we dashed down the hills to where we had left the dinghy on the beach, only to find the beach in that area had literally been washed away by a newly created river of fresh water. This had happened in 4 places along the beach. Very fortunately for us a kind chap had moved the dinghy to stop it getting washed out to sea. He had lost several sunbeds, umbrellas and a stand with tools which was now buried somewhere in the newly shaped beach line. The dinghy was half full of water.
Picking up the dinghy
Back on the boat we set about drying all the wet stuff and were relieved that the water in Kerensa was not worse, Nigel had pulled the hatches down earlier in the day which helped alot. We got up early in the morning and filled the deck with drying items in the early morning sun and reflected on our amateur error!!
We have the boys for 2 more days and will drop them off in Rhodes before heading to Turkey for 3 months before returning to Greece.
