September 28, 1996

We're keen on finding out-of-the-way places but this time we've found one from which we may never return. Because we're not sure we can! It's a situation similar to the hand that grabs a cookie through the mouth of a small jar - in is easy - getting back out with more than a handful of crumbs, that's the trick. We sucked in our breath as we squeezed our van past the pensions and restaurants lining the tiny harbor of Assos. I'm sure I heard the buildings suck in their breath as well. The walls are so tightly packed down narrow lanes with such sharp turns around them, I wondered if we were destined to spend the rest of our days at the tiny campground at the end of the road. Not that this would have been such a bad thing. We wouldn't have starved parked under fig and olive trees and, outside our kitchen turned bathroom turned bedroom window, the view was superb. If we lowered our heads to obscure the rock wall beside us, we could well have been afloat in the sea.

The thought of Noah crossed my mind. The waves were capped in white, rolling and smashing without ever reaching the shore. "What can we save from extinction if the worst were to happen?" I looked around our home. A pair of socks, a pair of writing books, two pears, a pair of shoes, two front seats. Yes, the world would be saved. And the worst was close that night. A storm hit that could easily have qualified as a Noah special. The trees bent; the trees bent; the tablecloths at the outdoor restaurant took orbit; the cassette player that the owner had left outside was freed of it's tape door; plastic cassette holders were tossed across the floor. The pelting of rain on our windows woke us up and kept us up. We heard olive branches scraping across our roof and figs fall like bombs from their trees. From our side window porthole we saw that we were tossing and turning with the waves as they lurched toward us like curled fists.

In the morning the world was quiet again. A single olive branch lay across our windshield - dry land. We surveyed the surrounding area, taking a walk far out on the arm of land which jutted in front of us and another along the road leading toward the harbor - all was still. The owner of the campground had left for Istanbul before the storm; we hoped his ride had been uneventful.

The next day we attempted to remove ourselves from the cookie jar. We pulled slowly toward the restaurant that two days before had seemed thinner. It must have swelled in the rain. The road twisted to the right and, beyond the two men seated at the outside entrance, I saw only water. We inched forward. As we got closer, one man pressed his foot it against his leg to let us pass. The other remained on his perch, wagging his hand to tell us to keep coming forward. "You mean they're not going to move?" It was a tighter than tight pass made more difficult by the human obstacles we had to avoid and the three cars lined up on the other side of the turn. "I'm not backing up; they're going to have to." Patience is indeed a virtue and eventually they did move, each one reversing in front of the other until they had maneuvered into the small alley along the water's edge. As best it could the Blue Chunder got a running start from the harbor up the hill leading out of Assos. We put it in first and followed. Not a cookie crumb was lost. We stayed in first gear for three kilometers to the hilltop and then veered off along a country road to follow the coastline.