The morning of Palm Sunday we spent in the little north Ithacan harbor village of Fríkes, waiting for a ferry that never came; we eventually discovered that it had been canceled on account of winds at the other end of the run, registering seven or eight on the Beaufort scale.
Being marooned an extra day on Ithaca, Larissa and I opted to try to find the "Cave of the Nymphs." Homer locates the cave close by the little harbor of Phorcys, where the Phaeacians put Odysseus ashore asleep, and where he woke up in Ithaca for the first time in twenty years. The cave is where he stashed the treasure the Phaeacians had given him, in substitution for his long-lost share of the booty from Troy. We never found the cave: the directions in the guidebooks did not seem to match reality, and the signs we did find led us into a maze of pathways, so that by the time I thought I had found the right one, heading way uphill, we decided to turn back, not being equipped for another arduous walk (which the guidebooks had never mentioned as part of this excursion). Perhaps it is sour grapes, but the identification of the signposted cave with that in Odyssey 13 seems particularly dubious, the moreso if it is so far from the beach; one of our books suggested that a better candidate had been inadvertently destroyed by quarrying years ago. The little harbor identified by sign as that of Phorcys (left), on the other hand, seems an excellent match with Homer's description, including a fair prospect of Mount Neritum opposite (seen in photo at right, with the little harbor down below in the distance, center). And I am glad we got in another bit of hiking on the island in any case.
As it was confessedly likely that the next day's ferry from Fríkes would be likewise canceled, I bought us tickets for 7:00 a.m. ferry to Pátras (a much larger craft) instead. So we said goodbye to Vathí and to the island of Ithaca itself at last. This to be was the first and longest of three ferries that day: from just north of Pátras we got a short open ferry to Andírio, so short we never even bothered to get out of the car; and after driving from there to Igoumenítsa (with a lunch stop in Mesolonghi, where Byron died) we got another ferry here.
This last ferry was also an open ferry, in the sense that it was a smallish craft with most of the car deck open to the sky, and it took about two hours to make a trip of twenty nautical miles against a fierce headwind. Those of us hardy enough to go topside in that wind got treated to a lovely sunset over the island of Corfu or Corcyra (Kérkyra), the westernmost land of Greece. Afterwards we found our way with surprising ease in the dark to our reserved hotel and even to a pro tem parking spot not far away. In the hotel room, I found it took a while to get my land legs back after spending so much of a long day on the sea--the room felt as if it had a little roll and pitch to it.
This morning I left the hotel with the others yet abed to do the long-overdue laundry at a rare laundromat that we happened to spot on our way from the port last night. It turned out self-service was optional, so I opted for a "service wash," went for breakfast, and got caught up on this journal. The laundry should be ready now, though.