by Kyle James
8/28/15
Santorini, Greece
Immediately after waking up, I knew I was sick. My nose was sprinting, my head was pounding, and the amount of pressure in my sinuses made my hearing distorted. I could tell it wasn’t allergies. There was one jump yesterday when I’d closed my eyes and hit the water later than I had anticipated. Water shot up my nose and came out my mouth. The salt had burned my nasal passage and throat for ten minutes. I think this was the recipe for a sinus infection.
We took our same seats in the lobby and discovered the breakfast was identical to yesterday’s. This was great news. We could use a little stability in our lives. Petros walked over to our table and let us know that the moped rental guy would be here in half an hour to take us to the rental shop.
A twenty-year-old kid entered the building and waved at us to follow him. He didn’t speak very good English, and the extent of our conversation was “Moped?” “Yes.” “Good.” He dropped us off at the rental spot down the hill and immediately left to get other tourists.
I was worried they were going to ask me for a moped license, but it was still worth a try. There were plenty of parts of this island we wanted to explore. The owner did not seem to give a single shit. “Which one do you want?” he asked, barely looking up from his computer.
Ash sat on the back of the red bike and gave me directions as I tried to avoid large rocks. We were not in Mljet anymore. These roads were exponentially more dangerous than the nicely paved roads in Croatia. The asphalt had been taking a beating for a long time now. The worst part was our helmets—they were like horseback-riding helmets, and mine that slid up my head with the oncoming wind.
We decided to drive around Santorini and explore aimlessly. We climbed to a steep part of the island, where we came to an overlook and pulled over. We walked to the cliffside and gazed out over the water far below. I strolled to the edge to pee while Ash took pictures behind me. All of a sudden, a massive gust of wind hit me as I turned to ask Ash a question. The pee suddenly took off toward her. She screamed, “Kyle, you’re peeing on me!”
I tried to straighten the stream out, but then it hit me: You can’t just pee on yourself; that’s ridiculous.
“Run, Ash!” I yelled as if I had no control over the stream. When I’d finished, I walked up the hill to find a very unhappy Ash.
When we got home, the woman who’d served us breakfast was in the lobby/living room area. We sat down on the couches and must have exhaled loudly from our day because she walked over, smiled, and asked if I wanted some coffee. It was like she could read my mind. She brewed three cups and sat down to chat.
Tina was a Nigerian woman who now lived in Athens in the winter and worked here seven days a week in the summer. She was divorced but had a thirty-two-year-old daughter who was still living in Nigeria. I could feel how kind of a soul she was just by talking to her. She was one of those universal mothers.
After spending the evening with Tina, we were dying to eat some seafood. Petros had recommended a great, affordable place on Kamari Beach. We each ordered an entire sea bream and ate the fish from head to tail, leaving only a cartoon fish skeleton. We were walking home after a great meal, looking at the sunset, when Ash tripped over her Zara maxi dress for the thirty-sixth time since she’d bought it. It took all my power not to say, “I told you so.” I still failed. I knew that full-length dress was going to be trouble.
8/29/15
Santorini, Greece
Being sick at night blows. Being sick at night in a foreign bed in a foreign land really blows. Being sick at night in a foreign bed in a foreign land with no medicine really, really blows. The worst part about being this sick on the road is that rest is a necessary component to getting healthy. The opportunity cost of lying in bed all day to rest was far too high. I would be sacrificing spending time on the beach in the Greek isles.
It was apparent after my first few bites of breakfast that I needed to be in bed and that I needed medication. I was burning up, and my head and body ached. Tina came by with OJ and the first course of bread and asked if we wanted coffee or tea. She knew the answer; she was just going through protocol. When I responded, “No, thank you. I am going to try to go back to sleep,” she became concerned. Ash reassured her that I just had a cold; it was no big deal. Tina walked away slowly, as if she were thinking deeply, and then came back with green tea and lemon. She stood by me to make sure I drank it.
We finished eating and returned to our room so that I could try to rest until noon. I got back in my pajamas and was about to crash when there was a knock at the door. I opened it to find Tina holding another cup of tea. Universal mother.
Yesterday when we were talking to Tina, we found out that she was a very religious woman. She said she woke up every morning at sunrise to sit outside and pray. When she handed me the tea, she said, “You will be okay,” and recited a small prayer under her breath and crossed her chest. Then she looked up and smiled like she had just received good news and said again cheerfully, “You will be okay!”
The combination of the warm food, green tea, and Tina’s prayer sent me on a one-way flight back to REM sleep. Two hours later, we were getting ready to leave the hotel and head to Oia, the most famous town on the island of Santorini. I heard a knock at our door. Ash and I looked at each other and smiled, and when we opened the door, there was Tina with a bowl of noodles.
“For your sickness,” she said, holding out the bowl and smiling. She had clearly been worried about me, and I didn’t know how to thank her for being so kind. We kept trying to pay her for the food, but she would not allow it. The noodles were cooked with some sort of spice that truly opened up my nasal passages. I was leaking from the nose for a few minutes, but at least I could blow my nose.
Oia is the village you see on Google if you type in “Santorini” and search images. The massive cliffside village was covered with houses that looked like marshmallows with dark-blue tops. The drive to Oia was forty-five minutes of dodging bumps, buses, and busy drivers.
When we arrived, I felt like I was driving right into a Pinterest page. This was Cinque Terre 2.0 as far as girly bucket list places go. We parked the moped along the main strip and started walking up the single road that zigzagged through town. The buildings looked like white Play-Doh, and about halfway down the cliff they stopped as the earth became too steep to build on.
We agreed that if we were going to spend the money to eat on this cliffside balcony, we were really going to fucking do it. We ordered wine with appetizer dips and pita bread. The dips were exquisite, made with local olives and hummus. Ash ordered risotto and I had a chicken fillet. My dish was good, but Ashley’s was on another level. She had two large shrimp swimming in the sea of risotto and a single clamshell coming vertically out of the rice. It looked like it belonged on a magazine cover. The dessert menu had cigars on it, and it took every last ounce of my better thinking to not get one. My throat was still throbbing from my nasal faucet dripping all day.
It was a long and stressful ride, but we arrived home safe and sound. When we walked inside the hotel around 10:00 p.m., Tina was watching TV in the lobby and we sat down to watch with her. Before I could even think about it, she asked if I wanted more tea. I didn’t like her getting up to get me anything, but she refused to hear me out. My Santorini mom.
Tina called back into the lobby from the kitchen, “Princess, do you want some too?” I had thought I’d heard her call Ash Princess earlier in the day but wasn’t sure. Ash looked like her heart had just melted and she was trying to grasp it.
“No, thank you!” she said in her sweet voice.
While Tina boiled water, I thought about how great our Greek experience had been so far. Everyone we had met both here and in Rhodes had been kind and sincere. I was so glad we’d decided to make the trip despite the economical dilemma of “Grexit.” Greece had a surplus of good people, and just because the economy was in the shitter, didn’t mean we shouldn’t experience what this culture had to of
fer.
We hung out with Tina all night, and eventually Petros joined us. We watched some spin-off of The Hunger Games similar to Scary Movie, and it was surprisingly funny. At one point we were all gut-laughing, and I looked around to see my girlfriend, a short Greek man, and a tall Nigerian woman laughing at 1:00 a.m. at a spin-off in Santorini. These were the moments we were traveling for.
8/30/15
Santorini, Greece
It was another long night of snoring, sneezing, and coughing. I lied and told Tina I was feeling much better at breakfast so she didn’t feel like she had to take care of me. Petros recommended we visit a beach on the other side of the island called Perissa.
While we lay on cabanas for the price of two beers, we decided that we were going to watch the sunset at the Santos Wines Winery tonight. Petros made it clear this was the best sunset spot in Santorini. It was our last night, so this was our last sunset. Hopefully we had saved the best for last.
We hopped back on the moped, this time wearing our “nice outfits.” The drive to the winery was more sketch than the drive to Oia, but in a different way. The road that ascended to the plateau looked like a letter S that never ended. On one of the turns, the side of our moped actually touched the ground. It was a close call, but my superb driving skills prevailed and we made it to the Santos Wines Winery.
It is going to be hard for me to describe the beauty of the backdrop to the winery. We were clearly late to the party, and searched the balcony seating up and down for a place to sit. I was hardly looking for seats as I couldn’t stop gazing up at the golden coast of the cliff, spotting both Oia’s and Thira’s white-capped villages miles away.
We sat down at a table on the cliffside and remained transfixed on the sun calling it a night. We hadn’t planned on ordering anything other than a glass of wine, but when we glanced at the menu, there was a twelve-wine sampler for twenty-two euros—cheaper than two glasses of wine in most places. We ordered the sampler and waited for it to arrive.
When the waiter returned, he had twelve large cups of various wines. I became extremely jealous that Ash wouldn’t have to drive us home on the moped. She started rubbing her hands together like someone getting ready to take on a mega-burrito for a T-shirt. She read each wine description out loud, and we sipped them, trying to pinpoint the acidity, aroma, and dryness levels in the tastes. After we got through sipping the twelve wines, I resorted to eating all the olives and cheeses while Ash went back to finish the remaining wine.
I can say with complete sincerity that this experience in Santorini, Greece, was the best twenty-five dollars I had ever spent. The view alone was worth every dime. The olive and cheese tray alone was worth every dime. The wine alone was worth four times every dime.
When it was time to leave, we got on the moped and I put Ash’s arms around my chest as a seat belt. I was pretty certain she fell asleep on my back within minutes. I noticed that the headlights on our moped shone the brightest when I accelerated, clearly a malfunction of the bike. They barely lit up when I wasn’t accelerating. It was like the gas powered my vision.
This wasn’t overly difficult to work with until we got to the final descent. I jokingly said to Ash through the wind, “Please put your tray tables and seats in the upright position as we begin our descent into Kamari.” I turned back to see if she was laughing, but my suspicions had been confirmed: she was fast asleep.
The turns were actually much harder to manage than I’d thought they would be, and I had to accelerate for a quick second to get the lights on and then slam the brakes and use my feet to walk us around the corner slowly. There were no streetlights, and if I didn’t do this, I couldn’t see. The moon was hiding behind clouds and provided very little help. Soon we were finally home free and had made it to the bottom. I thought.
I accelerated in the direction of our home, but all of a sudden the road disappeared in front of me. The road banked 180 degrees to the right, and it was too late to stop. I tried to slam the brakes and put my food down to try and catch the road. The turn was full of gravel, and I am still unsure what exactly happened next, but I think I was running at some point. The moped slid out from under us on the gravel-covered turn, and the next thing I knew, I was on lying on the asphalt in the middle of the road.
I blacked out, and the only thought that fought its way through the adrenaline to my brain was: find Ashley. I scrambled to my feet and screamed, “Ashley! Are you okay?” At the precise moment I yelled this, I heard a cry come from across the road.
“Kyle! Are you okay?”
She told me she was fine and wasn’t hurt so I came back to life and started assessing our situation. We had to get off the road immediately. I grabbed the still-running moped and dragged it over to the side. The turn was so steep, I could barely get the moped off the road without picking up speed. On the side of the road, I did a quick check for injuries on both of us, and aside from a scratched knee each, we were fine. This was semi-remarkable to me. Nothing left to do but jump back on the horse.
I was shaking as we drove along the beach to the villas. I could feel my forearm and leg burn a little, and expected to find a bit of a road rash. Upon arrival to the hotel, we checked the moped for any damage and found nothing but a little scratch that might have even been there before we got it. I was just happy to be alive.
8/31/15
Santorini, Greece → Athens, Greece
I woke up at 4:00 a.m. to prep for my 5:00 a.m. fantasy football draft. I was in the war room (patio porch) ready to draft. The twelve cups of wine had gotten to Ash, and I picked my head up to hear her running to the bathroom.
We had to be out of our room by 1:00 p.m. today. I blew my nose, and a rust-colored amoeba-looking glob found its way into the tissues. It was time I took the moped down to the pharmacy. We were heading to Athens for two nights and then to Thailand. I had to go into Asia with a clean bill of health if I wanted a chance at not dying.
When I reached the pharmacy, I walked in and told the pharmacist I was pretty certain I had a sinus infection, and he threw me an antibiotic off the shelf and asked for six dollars. I have done this a few times now since we got to Europe, and it blows my mind every time. I grabbed a Sprite for Ash’s stomach, and jetted up the hill in good spirits. An antibiotic to a sick traveler is like a new video game to a teenager.
We were deciding between going down to the beach one more time or spending time with Tina and Petros. It was an easy decision. We watched a National Geographic show on snakes, and at one point Tina fell out of her chair when the snake attacked the camera. We all laughed until our sides hurt. My side already hurt from the crash, but I laughed through the pain.
Eventually Petros checked his clock and said we should get on the road. We both hugged Tina and exchanged e-mails. Tina had given us something we had not had in a long time: she had given us the love and care of a mother.
This place may have beaten us up a little bit, but it was a give-and-take world. It gave us cliffs to jump and pee off of, sunsets indescribable by the written word, and people who became like family. We were going to miss Santorini; the Acropole Sunrise Hotel had truly felt like home. We double-cheek kissed Petros and his beard and set off to Athens for our last stop in Europe.
I was into my third Lord’s Prayer during takeoff when my head felt like it had exploded. I grabbed my ears to make sure they were still attached. I had completely forgotten I had enough pressure in my head to make Michael Jordan miss a game-winner. I tried popping my ears, but it was no use; the pain was unbearable. I survived the flight, but we had twelve hours of flying coming up, and I was deeply concerned.
It was 2:00 a.m. when we landed in Athens due to a delay. We felt awful for our Airbnb host for keeping him up this late. We asked him if he could just leave the key somewhere, but he told us Athens was too dangerous for that. Well, that’s comforting.
Our sixth-floor Airbnb studio was spacious and, most important, cold. It was ninety-five degrees in Athens, even at nighttime. Af
ter showing us all the amenities of the place, our host opened up a bottle of liquor from the freezer, poured three double shots the size of Jell-O containers, and said a Greek toast. Ash and I looked at each other, shocked. It was 2:30 a.m. and neither of us was in the physical condition for shots, but we couldn’t say no. The man had just recited an epic Greek toast, picked us up from the airport, and kindly showed us around in the middle of the night. Cheers to our last European city—gulp, gulp, gulp.
9/1/15
Athens, Greece
I awoke at noon expecting to feel much better, but I was still in bad shape. It was as if the flight had stirred up and intensified all my symptoms. My ears were clogged with pressure, and my head was burning up. I really wanted to go out and see the Acropolis, but my health was my first priority at this point.
We left the studio only to get food and orange juice, and the heat outside was unlike any I had ever experienced: take the humidity of a Deep South summer day and combine it with the heat of an Arizona desert and you might find what we were experiencing in Athens. In the daytime, this place looked much more run-down and beat-up than it had last night. Most of the buildings were vacant and covered in graffiti, and there was trash everywhere. I am sure there are nicer parts of Athens; we just couldn’t afford to stay there. We grabbed a few groceries to get us through the next twenty-four hours, and headed home so I could take the second installment of my Z-Pak.
Ash was as bored as a kid at a Homeowners Association meeting. She decided to go to Zara. I didn’t like the idea of her going alone to a store half a mile away, but I had little energy to argue with her. She is an expert arguer, like me, but being at half health, I was no match. I soon fell asleep and tried to let my antibodies go to war.
I awoke to Ash wiping drool off my face. She had the look of a dog that had just shit all over your Persian rug. Oh no. “How much did you spend?”