Today was our excursion to Spinalonga island, named for being a spine shape, which it wasn’t, because the people who named it didn’t bother to actually go there first to ensure what they were seeing wasn’t merely two islands doing a very good job at looking like they were one island, which of course they were. Stavrula was our guide once again.

We went by bus to Eulonda, a town on the water, to board our boat that would take us to Spinalonga. Spinalonga was built up as a defensive fort originally, which is the source of the ruins. But it was used later as a Leper colony, much later… as in, the last one died in the 1950’s. Our tour guide reassured us that hardly anyone caught leperosy there anymore (har har) and she had been there many many times. The colony itself was mostly a defensive wall, which we toured, and mostly ruined houses. They had a small functioning church there, and I entered, deposited a coin in the box as a donation (if I recall, it was a 2 euro coin), and thus was permitted to light a candle. The candle is supposed to represent the fire of life or some such. I felt unqualified to be doing it, but at least my flesh didn’t ignite immediately upon entering the church as I had feared.

Mine is second from the left, may it burn forever, or 15 minutes

We departed the island and went along to a red beach, which was very rocky in getting to it. The heat was starting to pick up as well, but I opted not to swim, and instead to irritate Laura and Alicia by taking pictures of them swimming. After the swim we got our lunch which was included with the excursion, which we ate on the ship. It was challenging to cut through the meat on paper plates on our laps. Later we all entertained ourselves by throwing bits of bread (and later, with some futility, bits of pear) into the water to watch the masses of fish swarm to feed.

I couldn’t help but feel we were messing with their heads

We returned by boat to Eulonda and then bussed back to our hotel. Laura and Alicia went down to the beach, I went down a little later but was already too late, they were out of the water and just sunning. I didn’t want to go in alone (I needed people to distract the biting fishies after all) and just sunned myself. Though I suppose I was starting to burn since I would continually forget to put on sunblock.

It was around this day that my dehydration was starting to get a little more raging, and re-hydration would upset my stomach. I was also starting to get very bad acid at various times of the day, and ended up treating Alicia like a little pharmacy, getting her Pepto-chewables. Of course, little did I know that upset stomachs would be the least of my worries come the following day, when we met a little boat called Flying Cat 4.

To be continued