Gythion

Tuesday 27^th August

This was a relatively early start as our tender ticket was for 10am, and we joined the hordes waiting in the theatre. We did not have too long to wait and arrived at the port of Gythion by about 10:30.

Our first stop was the taxi rank, as I had found out about the small hilltop village of Skoutari that supposedly had wonderful views, and Margaret wanted us to go there. There was quite a queue at the taxi rank but we were prepared to wait our turn. However, we were not prepared for the announcement by the organiser: ‘It does not make economic sense for you to go there; I will send you to M... instead.’ It seems that most of the people on the ship are there to enjoy their holiday and to swim, so all they wanted was to go to the beach. We must be about the only tourists! The taxis were geared up to take them the 6-minute drive to a good beach for €10 and then to bring them back later in the day when they phoned. The taxis would not want to take on a longer drive. We were told to come back in an hour, when perhaps the queue for taxis would be gone. We therefore wandered the streets, seeing whatever we could of Gythion itself, which was not much!

When we returned, we had another battle explaining what we wanted, as there were still queues waiting for the beach. After several misunderstandings, and a visit to the restaurant for a cup of coffee while we waited, we managed to get what we wanted, which was a taxi to take us the 20-minute drive to Skoutari, wait for us (the organiser kept saying they would send a taxi back for us at the time we said – but we knew we would not be there long enough for that to be sensible) and drive us back. Then, talking to a Greek-American girl, we discovered that despite what we’d said, they were going to take us to the beach at Skoutari, instead of the hilltop town. All in all, it took 2 hours before we were finally in a taxi. Luckily our taxi driver was wonderful. He ended up at the beach by mistake, but we took photos while he tried to see if we could get into the locked church there.

He set off in the wrong direction for the town but finally found it. We spent about 10 minutes taking photos. We were very aware of the time and the fact that he had given us a fixed price and we did not want to take up too much time, seeing the drive had taken longer than we had been told it would.

By then he could tell that we appreciated his countryside and he took us home by the scenic route along the bay. It was a lot of palaver but the scenery was worth it.