LA NEGRA

14. July 2012

We have been (again) lousy bloggers lately.. Bu, we have an excuse this time... The temperature.

We have arrived in Athens, which is, so far, a really really nice city. But jeeeesus is it hot here.. Just under 40 degres daytime, (sometimes above) 30 night time and 31.6 in the water in this very moment.. Not much motivation to do nothing at all, but suck on an icecube.
I have realized that one thing you can do, is laying on an airmattress, with thw water from the hose constantly running over yourself. Or, eat a big icecream way to fast, and then ride the scooter and drink very cold water at the same time. Also, stick your head in the icecream box at the kiosk works ok, but the kiosk owners seems less entusiastic about this one.
Today we found a new one, the massive, well airconditioned, super market, wich is also kind of a free buffee. Today we had various cold drinks, sausages, bread, cheese, sweet bakery, icecream, coffe.. Its cool, and it is for free.
What i can NOT recommend to do is start scrathing on cracks in the aft deck, realize that small cracks are biger than you thought, decide to grind the whole shababang down to the glass fiber, make new layers of epoxy and glassfiber and repaint it... This is, I repeat, a BAD idea.
Our neighbour looked at axel in a very serious way today and asked;
"Are you an idiot??"
I think he was halfway refereing to us staying in a marina in Athens at this time of the year, partly to the fact that we have been doing major repairs at these temperature.

Besides from complaining about the temperature, wich is our main interest for the moment, I can report that Greece is fantastic. FANTASTIC! Food is delicious, nature is beautiful, water is crystal clear... But what strikes us most of all, and again and again is that people are amazingly friendly and helpful. Just yesterday we were invited to one neighbours boat for a small drink and a disco dance session on the aft deck. (He is a dj, and convinced that the movie mamma mia is a musical masterpiece.)
And just as we return back to the boat, to savour our 1000th greek sallad some other neighbours knocks on the gangway and invites us in for dinner at their boat. And we had seriously only exchanged a brief hello until then.

So, to resume the last weeks or so.. In three words... SWEATY BUT LOVELY!