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| The wild oregano has faded to dusty beige and the St John's Wort is one of the few wild flowers left to add interest to an increasingly arid landscape. |
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| Pedi bay was very busy during the Eid al-Fitr celebrations. |
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| The new stone house at the end of my road is taking shape. It is a very labour intensive method of construction as the local stone has to be 'dressed' before it can be used. Many man hours go into chipping rock into symmetrical shapes and useful sizes. All new buildings in Greece, no matter whether brick or stone, also have to meet strict building standards for earthquakes and have to have a reinforced concrete earthquake proof framework. |
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| Watch the birdie! |
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| Looking down the Kali Strata from about a quarter of the way down. |
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| At first glance there may only seem to be 2 boats in this picture but if you look carefully, there are also two big power yachts on this side of the harbour with only their bows visible. |
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| One of the two butcher's shops in the harbour. There is also now a proper fresh fish monger which opened this week. I 'll have a photograph of that for you on Monday. |
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| The view from the Symi Visitor this morning. The fuel station sends a mini -tanker round to bunker the water taxis. This service is also available for yachts if they don't want to go over to the bunkering jetty. |
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| When the sea looks like this at 8 in the morning, the rest of the day is sure to be very hot. |
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| Yachts lying off Harani on Monday. |
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| It has been very hot this week with little wind to speak of apart from local catabatic winds coming off the mountain in the early evening. Everything seems to be shimmering in the heat. |
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| Monday morning in Yialos. There were similar scenes of tangled anchors for several hours on Monday as boats that had come over for Bayram tried to leave in a different order to that in which they had arrived. It is much more sensible to anchor in Pedi than Yialos during peak periods. |
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| There was also an Israeli flotilla in town. |
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| There is no formal ferry service to Datca in Turkey as there just isn't enough demand. It is possible, however, to arrange to go over on one of these boats for the Saturday market. The contact details are advertised on the boats. |
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| What was I saying about tangled anchors? |
And so June draws to a sizzling close in what is being regarded as one of the hottest heatwaves to roll out of Africa in decades. The heat is only expected to break later next week but on Symi that doesn't make a huge amount of difference as once the rock as heated up, it stays hot until September. Temperatures are in the forties during the day and the thirties at night.
Anyone who does not have to work is at the beach, enjoying cooling swims and frosted glasses that tinkle with ice cubes. The rest of us find excuses to linger in the bank, the supermarket and anywhere else where the air conditioning is reasonably efficient.
The Symi Sea Dream is now back in service although the rumoured evening program from Rhodes to Symi has so far failed to materialise. A new development on the ferry front is that the
Blue Star Patmos has been replaced by the smaller Paros and has managed to fit in another Symi route. She passes through Symi at about 2 a.m. on Sunday mornings en route to Rhodes (yes, I know!) and then leaves Rhodes again at 4 p.m. on Monday afternoon, getting to Symi about an hour and a half later, en route to Pireaus. For more information, please see our
travel blog as well as the
Blue Star website.
Our
travel blog also shows some flight possibilities that connect up with ferries to Symi so that you don't have to overnight in Rhodes. You could yet get to Symi this summer!
Have a good weekend.
Regards,
Adriana
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