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| Yialos and Harani, Monday 8 a.m. |
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| Yialos and Harani, Tuesday 8 a.m. As the heat haze builds, the monastery over on Nimos is fading away. |
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| Monday morning in Yialos. The Pentecost bank holiday long weekend but very few boats in comparison to previous years. |
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| The Customs House is nearing completion. The office furniture and fittings for the duty free shop arrived on Friday and are now inside. |
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| The view from the balcony at Symi Visitor Accommodation just after 11 this morning. Symi is very quiet for the third week in June and all the businesses are down on last year, which was down on the previous year and so on. Even the excursion boats don't seem to have many people on them so Rhodes must be quiet too. |
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| As Symi's shoreline is mostly steep cliffs very little level land is wasted and in the harbour the buildings are tightly packed. There was never a tradition for horse-drawn vehicles here on Symi so the lanes are very narrow in places. The balcony on this building almost overlaps the awning of the greengrocer opposite. Note the washing line - no one is coy about hanging their washing out in the street here and sunshine is free. |
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| We may all be flagging in the on going heatwave but the grape vines are going mad. This one on the Kali Strata is heading up the electricity lines. |
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| Free range hens taking advantage of a leaky water pipe in Lieni. |
The heatwave rolls on and Symi continues to sizzle in the 40s. The rocks are soaking up the heat, turning Symi into a giant storage heater and it was over 30 degrees at midnight last night. Extreme heat conditions are normal in July but rarely start this early, in the third week of June, so it is going to be a very long hot summer for the Symiots. The air is thick with haze and visibility is dropping by the day, as you can see from the first two photographs, taken 24 hours apart.
Anyone with any sense is under an umbrella on the beach or lingering in the air conditioning at the bank or supermarket. Now that we have air conditioning in the office we have noticed that those who pop in to say 'hello' show a marked reluctance to leave again - and who can blame them?
Have a good week.
Regards,
Adriana
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