Below Belief

We know what has to be done today and head straight for the beach. There are all the expected clientele, the bars, the boats and the bungees. Plenty of nubile young women, but also many more old ones. The sun is hot, the water is warm and blue and the bungee jumpers there to keep us entertained. After a full day in the sun, we return to the site, purchasing on the way, from the corner shop called Safeway (not far from Asda and just opposite Tesco), food enough for tea. Spend the evening playing chess and suffering slightly from the powers the suns rays have played on us.
Money worries are becoming slightly more prevalent now the end is drawing closer. Can we afford to spend all that we have done? Consider slimming down the operations so we can last out until Wednesday on what we’ve got, but this is made more difficult when we decide that tomorrow we’d like to go motor biking to see more of the island than just the beach. The old argument – that there is no point in skimping now when in three years time our careers with Arthur Anderson will pay for our motor-biking in less than an hour – soon surfaces and any idea of slimming it down goes out of the window. We’ve only got four days left. might as well go out in style.
Restless night as the true horror of the sunburn makes itself hotly apparent. The bus is late and by the time we reach Rhodes we are already hungry for lunch. Our hopes of motor biking are dashed by the fact we have no licences. Chris has left his in the tent and I, rather more prohibitively, have left mine at home. Concerned that we’ll see nothing more of Rhodes than the crowded beach and the tourist centre, we jump on the first bus we find, claiming to be headed for a somewhere called ‘Butterflies’. It turns out to be a good choice. Butterfly valley is a conservation area for ‘worn-out butterflies’ who must not be disturbed for fear of wasting their reproductive energies. They are also, claims the notice, ‘heavily nocturnal’. Can’t help wondering whether this technically makes them moths.Perhaps it is just a convenient way of making sure everyone feels sympathetic when they don’t see any butterflies. As it turns out, the valley is a haven, not for the butterflies, but for us. Here we can get away from the whinging crowds and get great views of the island from leafy heights. None venture higher than us and we are rewarded for our efforts. At the top it is deafeningly silent, and magically hot.
As we return into Rhodes and fail to find anywhere selling fresh food for tea we feel totally disheartened with the place. Too many tourists and not enough mental stimulation. Having said this, we then proceed to demonstrate our need for mental stimulation by finding a bar and watching ‘Ace Ventura’ – possibly the poorest film I have ever sat through. Perhaps, after all, we are just common tourists too or worse still, perhaps Rhodes has turned us into common tourists. After a couple of beers the frustrations fade away and we return a lot happier with the intention of going to bed. On the way home at Faliraki we change our minds. Faliraki is a heaving mass of pubs and clubs all designed for the British night out. We decide there and then that if we can’t beat them, we’d better join them and that no ‘package holiday’ could possibly be tacky enough without a night out here. Most of these people have spent £300 for two weeks here. We are spending £180 to leave as soon as possible. As we see it, it’s all a case of who comes out with the better deal.
Anyway, return to Faliraki we do. This time washed, brushed up and without rucksack and cameras. Quickly find our feet in the two drink for one deals – usually with free shots thrown in on top. Oscar’s bar seems to be where it’s at and no sooner have we started dancing than we are invited up on the bar to strut our stuff. As Chris and I form the major advertisement for Oscar, whoever he might be, I realise we have not only joined these pathetic people, we have beaten them at their own game. Free shots for the bar dancing and we need them. We have to cope with Alan, the short Welshman, holidaying alone and the two Mancunians who’ve come here for drugs and women but who seem to be doing a pretty poor job of getting either. They sit in the corner, wasted and our comments about velcro knee pads for Welshman nearly cause a fight to develop between them and Alan. Cocktails in the King’s garden next and as it quickly approaches 1am, Reflexions night club – a stylish place where things are happening with powders and razor blades in the toilets and the dancing goes on all night. The clientele is British, but not necessarily willing. They’ve had it all before, and not even Chris’ Cantab charm is enough to win over one particular busty blonde. We leave, painfully deaf at 4.15am to begin the two mile walk home. Decide I hate the place more than ever before.

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