Steve's Dive and a Scooter Ride.

Written 24th August 2012

On Wednesday we had set the alarm for 9am so Steve would have plenty of time to wake up and have breakfast before going for his dive at 10am. I jerked awake and looked at my watch to see the time was 5 past 10! I swore and woke Steve who stumbled out of bed and into his clothes. I must have bumped the cord out of the computer in the night and the alarm only works if the power is connected. We were down at the dive centre at just past 10 past (bleary eyed and still half asleep) and they hadn't left yet luckily as someone else was running late. When the other fellow turned up, they all suited up and off they went.

I trailed along behind them to the beach and watched this swim out to the boat, get briefed and then head of in the boat. Steve said the dive was really cool. He hadn't done a sunken ship dive before. 

It was a container ship.

Here is Steve looking for crayfish. :)

I spent the time he was away reading my book on the beach and swimming. Bliss. The beach there is LOVELY!

We spent the afternoon doing not much and then in the evening we went out for yet another dinner with a view.

The wind blew Steve's glasses off the table onto the beach.

We had Mousaka again.

The night blossomed into another beautiful warm stunning one.

After our tea we had a drink at another place and went on the internet.

Then we bought chocolate and beers and went to the beach and lay on the loungers and played silly games and talked until the wee hours. You think you would run out of things to talk about having spent the last 5 months with each other pretty much 24/7 but we haven't. We had a lovely yarn.

The next day we slept in for ages. Then we hired a scooter. The lady that hired it to us was a bit of a sour-puss. She put Steve down as the driver when I passed her our licenses. I asked to be added as second driver. She stared at me in disapproval. "Have you ever driven a scooter?" She asked, looking skeptical on top of disapproving. "No", I said, "I'm going to learn." "NO!" Says she. "You no learn today." Her eyes are now bulging. "It high season. You come back in September you want to learn. You NO learn today. There accidents every day, you hear helicopter come. You NO learn. NO!" I was like crikey, okay lady! Massive lecture! She didn't even ask if Steve had ever driven a scooter! (He has but she didn't know that!) Steve thought it was funny that she was a sexist woman. So Steve drove us down the way a bit to another beach. But my helmet was too big (I have a tiny head) and the buckle was broken. So we took it back and changed it. Then we went back to the beach and had a yummy lunch of stuffed tomato and fried aubergine. Yum.

We consulted our map ("Where are we on this map?!) It was useless. We asked the waiter to tell us where we were. Then decided to drive around the top of the island.

This is Steve with our scooter.

We drove around for ages (stopping briefly to buy a bus ticket and get a timetable.) Then we stopped at a beach for a swim. But it had manly water. So we took some photos of our cool scooter gear.

Then we drove around further. The scenery was lovely. There we big cliffs on the sea side and rocky mountains in the interior. Everything was parched. We tried to get to the sea a few times but the gravel roads were too steep for our gutless scooter. But we eventually found one we could go down at called Ambram. Here it is.

After that we zipped back to Agios Prokopios for a yummy dinner at La Trattoria. 

And had a bit of another yarn on the beach. But not till the wee hours this time.

Another lovely day.

This morning we got up, packed up, said goodbye to Eva (who said we should come back next year), waited for the bus, caught the bus, listened to the bus driver honk his horn and yell abuse in Greek out the window, ate lunch, walked to the ferry, boarded her, sat on the upstairs deck, discovered the coffee had spilled in Steve's bag, cleaned the mess, moved tables, got to Ios, moved to a table down stairs, read/slept, and arrived at Santorini.

Santorini is beautiful. When you come in to port you can see the little white villages perched on the cliff tops. We were picked up and taken in a small bus with some other nice people who we chatted to on the way. There was Brandon and Libby from Perth, two Irish blokes and another young couple from Perth. It was nice having a yarn and enjoying the scenery. We arrived at our beach and got our room (114), 

 had a chill, a swim, and then I got to talk to Gemma, Dad and Ronda which was fun. After that we had a yummy tea and stocked up on breakfast supplies. 

What will tomorrow bring?

Love to you all, xoxoxoxo Amy

Scuba Diving Adventure.

Written 21^st August 2012

Today was SO fun! I went scuba diving for the first time! Steve and I were walking along the road on the way to the beach and we passed a dive shop. We went in to ask about prices and if they had beginner courses. They said they were running a introductory course in 15 minutes. At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it but then I decided to.

So 15 minutes later I was seated and listening to instructions on how to scuba dive. The theory went on for 45 minutes and our instructor was really good. He showed us some hand signals, how the regulator works, how to put your regulator back in your mouth if it comes out and get rid of the water, how to find your regulator if you loose it and how to clear the water from your mask if it gets in.

Then we all got suited up

and stomped down to the beach in our heavy gear.

It was so nice to get into that warm, crystal clear water. First we lay on our backs to get our flippers on. Then we all had to hold hands and put our faces under water to practice breathing and get used to it. It is pretty weird at first. All the bubbles are coming out by your face and you can breath so normally it feels odd. But after a while you get quite used to it.

Next we went down to the bottom one by one (it wasn't scary because it was only about two metres deep). Then we started to follow our instructor. Me and another girl had an instructor and a dad with his twin sons (who's 14^th birthday it was) had another guy. We kept following out instructor along the bottom gradually getting deeper and deeper.

Steve borrowed a snorkel and mask and flippers so he could come with me and he glided along gracefully with us.

He is so at home in the water. He's practically a fish! Or maybe a mer-man. :) We started seeing cute fish and weeds and strange balls that looked a bit like sponges but weren't. I was a bit worried at first because I was not sure if I would be able to equalise because I have never been able to do it when we snorkel.

As we got a little deeper I did begin to have some problems. The pressure was tight in my head and I couldn't make my ears pop. Finally I managed it and we went even deeper.

It's exciting being able to breath under the sea! You can look at everything so close up.

Steve looks like he's hunting me in this photo I recon. :)

We swam past a submerged toilet and Steve pretended to take a crap on it.

Haha, he is so funny. He cut his finger though quite bad. Poor boy! We swam on a little more. Then out instructor got some fish food and fed the little fishies! It was awesome. They were all swimming around us like a little tornado of mini fish! There were sweet plain ones and lovely colourful ones.

After the fish feeding frenzy we started back towards shore. The instructor showed us we could do flips and I had a go and got it right away. It was fun. We kept going slowly along looking at things.

It is amazing what you can see underwater when you can stay right down on the bottom! Little lives are going on in minuscule detail for you to observe. It's lovely! I was sad to get out of the water because it was SO fun! Steve was freezing because he didn't borrow a wetsuit. The water is pretty warm when you are swimming but we were in there for ages. The whole course including the theory was 3 hours. We went back to the dive centre and I got my certificate and photos.

Steve is going on a ship wreck dive tomorrow. He is excited!

This is the cut he got from the toilet.

After the diving we had another lunch with a view. Then we went to the beach for a read and I had a nice swim. After that it was dinner time already so we had dinner (with a view). We tried another Greek dish called Moussaka which is a bit like lasagna but had egg plant instead of pasta. It was delicious!

And that was another day in paradise!