THERE! WE’RE HERE!

Minor stresses on the trip from Athens to Kos: travellers on eight flights simultaneously trying to go through security with all the usual volatile Mediterranean behaviour: queue-jumping, irate objections, raised voices, heated exchanges, semaphore-like waving of the hands and snorts of exasperation.

Security was scarily cursory and a teenage lad in front of me who was travelling with a Swiss Army knife was told he really wasn’t supposed to be carrying it on a flight and was then handed it back…

The small prop-plane was cramped and hot and delayed by half-an-hour while attempts were made to accommodate the CASES which people insisted on carrying as hand-baggage (weight limitations on hold luggage are just 15 kilograms instead of the usual 23 kilos) in tiny over-head lockers and under seats and which were, finally, hauled away to be accommodated somewhere in the tail area of the plane.

At Kos instead of the usual ferry we took the smaller, quicker Dolphin: a little boat that bounced and buffeted its way across the choppy waters (a high wind was whipping up the sea into white-capped waves) with water cascading over the luggage stacked in the back of the boat, inadequately protected by a large sheet of plastic vaguely secured by a medium-sized ROCK!

The one comforting thought for passengers was that if they felt at all bilious their needs had been thoughtfully catered for in the form of a plentiful supply of paper bags stuffed in a containiner on the cabin wall and marked in bold felt-tip pen - ‘EMETOY’!

And so, after a final taxi ride we arrived to a warm welcome from the Glinatisi family in Emporios.


Nikolas, the elder son, said (in his broken English but with his ever-charming smile): “You have come home!”

And, indeed, that is what it feels like…