Sleep, on our voyage, wasn't always the kindest companion and neither was rest. Our milieu of scaling cliffs in a city bus and looking over my shoulder for angry Cretian's somehow gave me a desire for something a little more soothing to the soul. With a faint trace of optimism and the confidence it takes to win a battle, we ferried on. We had an island dead in our sights this time called Paros. It was a mid-sized island along the beaten path some where southeast of mainland Greece, west of Turkey and north of Egypt, in the salt water of the Mediterranean.
After docking the boat at Paros, the majority of the people on our smaller size ferry boat had disembarked and gone on shore to begin their usual investigation of the local shops along the water. This island seemed to closely resemble the other Greek islands with their barren, rock like formations jutting up out of the ocean in various sizes and shapes. The only exception is that of Santorini, which houses a rather unique looking civilization at a much higher elevation than any of the rest. Most of the islands are quite dry with very few tall trees and little vegetation. Positioned in a small bay, the harbor at Paros was embellished with much of the same ornamental Greek architecture as the others. The buildings were white and usually rectangular with arched window frames. I remember it having the same post cards as the other islands when I was trying to find something different to send home. It had several places where you could stay along the harbor side of the island where the whole community appeared to be very clean with relatively new accommodations everywhere.
After taking a quick look at the amusements, we noticed a small flattop ferry that was boarding passengers. It somewhat resembled a floating raft that was probably big enough to carry ten or fifteen people and was headed a short distance away to another island called Anti-Paros. We'd been told by the locals that it was a very small island with only a small hotel and one restaurant. I thought it sounded pleasantly mysterious and well worth a visit to temporarily escape from the beaten path. I'd been wanting to find a quiet place where we could regroup and collect ourselves for a few days and this sounded like it might give us that opportunity... I thought it would be nice to stay among some of the local people for a few days and enjoy a little of the hidden Greek culture without the added annoyance of clamoring tourists roaming around us. After persuading Edward that it would be an interesting thing to do, we took the small ferry to Anti-Paros where there was little if any enticement for tourists.
Not long after we got off the raft, or ferry, on this rather deserted looking island, we passed by a man who was working on a fishing boat. With an earnest desire to find a little peace and solitude, I asked him if there was any place on the island where we could get a quiet room. He didn't speak English and went and got a relative of his to help us understand one another. Through the interpreter, we learned that he was a Greek fisherman who lived on the island. After asking once again about trying to find a place to stay, he was reluctant to tell us about anything. I could certainly understand his position. If I were him, I know I wouldn't want to be inviting strange tourists to my peaceful, quiet island either! While I politely initiated some serious prompting, Edward, for some reason, tried his best to get me to just forget about it. It wasn't long after mentioning that we'd been wanting to get away from the rest of the tourists when the fisherman told us he would take us to his aunt's house on the other side of the island. He said she would rent us a room and that it would probably be the kind of place we were looking for......
We rode in the back of his pickup truck down a dusty road which wasn't much more than a two track, around the outside of the island to his aunt's house. On our way there, we could see that the hillside around the island was very dry. It looked like the separations of property on the island were marked by long fences that were made out of carefully stacked pieces of flat rock. The fences were about two feet wide by four or five feet tall and very long, extending over and down the hilly landscape of the island. The pieces of rock had been stacked on top of one another with unbelievable precision. The island wasn't very populated and the people that were there all seemed to be living along the shore line. Once we got to the fisherman's aunt's house which was about eighty yards up from the water and on the complete opposite side of the island from where we got off the ferry, we were introduced to his aunt, who then rented us a large unadorned bedroom with three beds in it.
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