Ionian - June 2010

Monday 24^th. May 2010

Greece is bust. The Germans have bailed out the Greek economy and the IMF has imposed heavy demands on what the Greek government has to do in return for shed loads of Euros.

However, life goes on and Zorba and his wife still manager a smile as we meet them in the street. Maybe it’s the thought of fresh Euros going through their tills that prompts the smile but somehow I doubt it. The Greeks are a happy tribe and it takes more than a mountain of debt and VAT at 23% (from 1^st. July) to shroud them in gloom. For a nation that built the Pathenon, invented Euclid geometry and taught the Romans a thing or two about celestial navigation then a blip in the economy is no more than a minor pimple on an otherwise impressive complexion.

We arrived in Corfu on Monday, one place where the air traffic controllers didn’t recently go on strike because they knew the island, and many of their friends and relatives, depend upon tourists for a livelihood. We got in at 10.30 local time, 8.30am UK time, so you can imagine what time we left Gatwick and by backwards plotting what time we left home. Suffice it to say we didn’t have any sleep for getting on for 36 hours. Crazy.

We got on the boat, a 31 foot French production number of a certain age. Perfectly sound boat if a little dated. Biggest minus is the lack of hot water which makes washing up a tad more of a chore than it usually is and a shower becomes a right old palaver involving a ’solar shower bag’, basically a black plastic bag which holds water which heats up with the sun. You then stand under the spray. It’s very green, has no CO2 footprint and is about as useless as a chocolate teapot. We hate ‘em.