Getting Real

Friday October 14, 2011

I was awake before dawn thinking about seminary and knowing back home everyone was just ending their day and here we were starting another clear sky day. You could hear the motoring of the fishing boats off in search of an early catch. The sunrise over the marina was picture worthy-I smile as I write that knowing Tyson and Garth will just snicker and think "what isn't picture worthy to them". We had decided we wanted to do some walking today as we seem to have ridden a bus or a taxi every where. This isn't a real walking-friendly country as the roads are windy, narrow and without shoulders and the drivers are just crazy. A pedestrian is something to be completely ignored. Disregarding all this, we googled a beach area that was just to the south of the town 4-5 kilometers and decided we would go see what the little town and its beach was like. As we walked along the stone walk of the marine I could see crowds of people gathered around some of the boats and thought it was tourists- early site-seers anxiously waiting to be on their way. As we approached I could see I was wrong. These were locals chattering in the loud quick-paced rhythm of their native tongue. A woman on the first boat we approached was setting boxes out on the wharf. They were full of fish. The locals were haggling over the early morning catch. Restaurant cooks stocking up, the markets ordering bags of this and that. As we walked by each of the boats lined up we could see they had success, there were all sizes and kinds of fish and customers were taking big bags of this and that. This was fish at its very freshest.

On the way out of town we walked past a school yard of children probably having recess The school yard was small by western standards and all paved but there were trees and benches, play equipment and most of important of all a small "football" field with nets at both ends,where a large groups of the kids who looked to be about grade 5 and 6 were having a high energy game of soccer. There was a huge cheering section of mostly girls who continued to chant encouragement. They even had a paper banner waving. There were several children just doing their own thing hardly aware of the soccer game and when the ball rolled over past them the game just went on with both teams going after the ball kicking it or heading it into the fray again. There was obviously no "out of bounds" When a team scored, a raucous cheer went up. The game players were both girls and boys with the latter in the majority. It was hard to tell how many on a team as the whole area seemed to be just a mass of kids running this way and that. It was really fun to watch. Pictures were hard to take as the playground was enclosed with a steel barred fence and the area was a foot and a half higher than the sidewalk and fairly shadowed. Most of all we didn't want to be mistaken for anything other than curious tourists.

We took the road where the sign said Argasi 4 km. That was where we were headed. We went up over a bridge and another sign directed us to turn left and announced Argasi 3km. Wow we did that kilometer in record speed. We walked past a church and through little suburb of Zakynthos, walked 10 minutes and then we came to a stop sign with more arrows pointing the directions of the little towns. Argasi straight ahead 4 km. Oh now we had just walked 10 minutes backwards. Hey this is Greece remember! No surprises here. The road was narrow with houses along the side of it. Some places we would hurry to get around a blind corner before traffic came. If we could hear approaching vehicles we would wait for them to pass. We could tell when we were approaching Argasi as there were hotel signs pointing up little side roads. Eventually we were on a pathway and entering town . It looked like a tourist town that had rolled up its welcome mats until the next season. Almost everything was closed. A small group of tourists were standing waiting for a bus and I said to Dad "not a good sign if even the tourists want out of here". There was a sign that said Central Beach. We walked the block to the sea and oh what a site! This time I shall not be using any of my fabulous superlatives. Instead I shall say dump yard! The beach was littered with plastic bottles and bottle tops, paper and plastic and old rotting seaweed. We were met by a smell of composting sea litter and a swarm of sand flies. There was an old wrecked boat that must have sat deserted for years. Litter pick up is not the norm in this county. The only cool thing was there were structural remains of an old arched building that was now sitting 10 feet out in the sea. The date over the door was 1850. There some private beach areas further along that were very narrow but looked like they at least had some clean sand and water. We walked further up the way looking for an area that had public access but all the beach area was filled with commercial endeavors. I crossed Argasi off my list of places I may want to return to and we headed back to Zakynthos town. We stopped to take pictures of an old church and wade in the clear water along a rocky stretch of beach on the way back to town. The afternoon was spent poking around the town, we bought our bus tickets for our ride back to Athens tomorrow and had a little siesta. It was definitely a taste-the-real-culture kind of day.