Below Belief

The journey is punctuated every couple of hours when the driver keeps stopping by the side of the road, or in hot and dusty service areas, and switches all the lights on, mainly for Chris to go to the toilet.
Eventually, three hours later than expected, we arrive in Marmaris on the south coast. It has a pretty bay and a crowded marina full of expensive-looking white yachts. We find the ferry-port and sit outside until it opens up. The ticket agent is a young guy who offers us bread and plenty of helpful advice. He even lets us pay in a mixture of three different currencies which is useful and quite lucky because we are completely unprepared for buying tickets and there is only one sailing a day. Later, a herd of brightly dressed tourists of the very worst kind – middle aged Germans and Brits – slowly builds. They all clutch their passports and tickets – obviously on a day trip to Rhodes – and seem leaderless and directionless. Ear to the ground, as ever, though, Chris senses a stampede. He is right. As the door opens to let passengers in there is a dash for the entrance and the herd takes on form. We let it all pass by and sneak in the side door where no-one has thought of queuing.
Half-an-hour later we are locked inside a hydrofoil with several dozen of the same crowd, most of whom seem to be middle-aged couples, wives bickering at their husbands. Hope this isn’t representative of the population of Rhodes. It is! The place is full of them. We try to resist backstabbing, but it’s all too easy to pick faults in everyone we see. Rhodes has perfected the art, if indeed it is one, of attracting boring couples from Brummieland and Manchester and London for knock-down-bargain-basement holidays. We find a campsite, set in the most striking ‘spaghetti western’ country, and miles away from the commercial hustle bustle of Rhodes city itself. It is closing in five days time but this doesn’t seem to matter. It has a pool, a shop and a boarded-up restaurant.
After a swim, a shower, a shave and a rest I feel quite human again. To complete the process, we cook up a sausage bolognaise – our first ‘proper’ meal in 30 hours – and feel a lot better. The moon is high and bright, the sky is clear, we have reached the final country and the Mediterranean coast on our journey and I am happy.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 31st, 1996 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.