Waking up in beauty.

Friday, August 16

Our room has shutters, but when I wake up, early as usual, I see light shining through the cracks. I wheel over to take a look - and there is a view so splendid it takes your breath away - or, like my friend Tito says, "It's like Angra without the trees."

The color of the water is very different - here it is blue, where in Angra it is green, and what is so strange is to see those giants walls of layered lava rising high out of the sea, and all those white $$$$ dwellings clinging to the sides.

A couple of huge cruiseships keep a respectful distance, but in front of me, as people begin to wake up, there will be a lazy traffic of beautiful yachts and catamarans.

We have breakfast inside - outside the temperature and sun are rising swiftly - a huge tray brought by George, one of the nice young men who work at the hotel. My MacAir won't accept the wifi and I believe firmly, one must always ask a young person for help. But George, although interested,  cannot figure it out and I stay without internet. We receive a visit from our travel agent, Stella Gressis, who turns out to be a slim, young, attractive woman, who obviously loves her job. We talk and talk and discover her dad is a mathematician, and thus Stella decides we will spend some time with her parents the next day and have lunch together. She obviously feels very badly I won't have seen anything of the island.

After she leaves we stay in the airco and do battle with the  Brazilian insurance company, who has now entered the phase of new attendants calling sporadically asking for declarations that they already have, and so on. The issue is whether I, who cannot walk at all, can travel alone on business class with Oswaldo far away in economy, or if they have to fork out a ticket for him as well, something they're clearly reluctant to do. They appear to have done nothing about any reservations, so finally I get so sick of them I say, OK, don't bother. We'll figure it out outselves, but prepare yourself for a big battle in the social media, Globo, and so on.  After that I refuse to speak to them, and Oswaldo has to take over, speaking calmly to a succession of Alan, Beatriz, Diego, Gabriela, Stephanie.... The combination of intermittant lack of power/internet and communication with these people is very stressful, so stressful in fact that we decide to return to Athens on an earlier flight the day after tomorrow, so we can sort all of this out with power and internet. This costs us an extra $270, vai fazer o que?

Still we read, relax, have some more to eat, another beer, until the sun begins to de-intensify and a wind picks up. The power goes out again. We exit the hotel and the first thing I see is a bride. We both remember Victor as a little boy in Parque da Cidade loving to see the brides, who came there to take pictures, "Princesa bonita," he'd say with the cute little lisp he had then.

Then there are some dramatic steps down to a promenade, but we manage those, and after that we walk along together with the throngs of tourists, checking out the scene, looking at the stores. At some point we think of having an iced coffee. Oswaldo parks me in the street and goes down a couple of steps into a nice looking café. The owner, however says, "We have no power, no coffee, no water." Duh, we should have figured that out. We run into our new American friends, Debra and Alex, and chat for a while. They're off to see the famed sunset, which we can't see because it's on the other side of the island, up some, you guessed it, steps. I feel perhaps like this:

We had had plans to eat out, but it's still early and it also seems so complicated, so we decide to return to our hotel. Back at the stairs I discover I can slide my butt up the chalked wall and thus climb the stairs, leaving Oswaldo to heave the empty chair up. I'm so happy I laugh, when I do this - another little bit of independence. 

The wedding party is now all outside, with a group of buxom ladies lining up for a shot, 

but we're more interested in the grandmother, who's sitting at my level in what looks to be a light and nifty combination of wheelchair and walker. We have talked about the fact that a walker might be easier for me than crutches, and it seems kind of funny we'd see an interesting model in Santorini of all places!

Then we go back to our wonderful veranda, put our feet up, order gin and tonics (we still don't have light, but the restaurant seems to have it, which means ice cubes), and, later dinner and wine. I eat very good black noodles, which I can unfortunately not see, except as a sticky dark mass, by the flickering candle on our table.

Take a look at these beautiful photos:http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157635120843340/