The Rest Of Our Holiday
The rest of our trip was a whirlwind of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen, partying until the sun came up, and eating the best organic food this planet has to offer.
The extreme happiness that we felt seemed to stifle my usual need to be constantly grazing. We only ate two proper meals a day. Breakfast, which was included in our room, and dinner, which we would eat at a different taverna every night, apart from when we would ride up to the highest point on the island and have a makeshift picnic. Our breakfasts were either an omelet with huge slices of fresh bread, a big plate of beautiful fresh fruit, or a bowl of the thickest most glorious plain Greek yoghurt with honey and nuts.
The fresh produce in Greece is better than any I have tasted. Everything is organic and fresh from the land. Unlike the tomatoes we get here, almost white when you cut them open and essentially tasteless. The tomatoes in Greece are as big as your face and are red and juicy like I remember them tasting when I was a child. I thought South Africa was home to some of the most fertile land in the world… clearly not. In the evenings we would see Jimmy running around trying to catch a chicken for the evenings dinner. Now you don’t get fresher than that.
At around midnight we would be finished dinner and then wonder off to our rooms to get ready for a full night of madness. We would then meet back in the square and spend the rest of the night dancing on the floors, on the chairs and most importantly on the tables. Bronny became the self-appointed chief table officer, and would inspect the bar counters to ensure that they were sturdy enough to dance on. It didn’t take long for her to be given the great African nickname Zodwa, as she was prone to dropping it like it was hot and shaking her ass like any good South African black girl should, apart from her being white of course. We had wonderful bonding moments like learning art of the slap drop and hearing stories like “Shex wit da devil.”
These memories of laughing hysterically everyday, walking the cobbled streets at 5 in the morning, and the view of riding our scooters and quad in convoy with the babies on the back; have kept me going for the last year.
I miss the freedoms of Greece, being allowed to drive a scooter without a license, not wearing a helmet, making bonfires and drinking alcohol on the beach. All things we could never do, even living in South Africa where the rules are made to be broken, we could never light an open fire on the beach… the police would have a field day.
It’s just over a week until the big trip. As excited as I am, the reality of leaving the safety net of my family and boyfriend for three months is setting in. Although sitting in my freezing office, at a computer I have spent the last 8 months behind, I am reminded that there are worse things to be nervous about than spending summer on a Greek island without most of my loved ones.
