We decided yesterday to pay a bit extra to keep one of our two rooms in the Cos hotel--with its shower, and the towels from both rooms--so we could have some leisurely time at the beach and still shower afterwards and not have to worry about our luggage. In the photo at left, you can clearly see the Turkish coast just about four miles away. We are not much further than that from Cos now, though the bit of peninsula shown here intervenes so that we cannot quite see Cos.
A tattered European Union flag flies over the outermost turret of the old crusaders' castle, by the last corner of officially European land where we stood awaiting our short passage to Asia. We were counting on the word of our travel agent in Bodrum that passage was taken care of, and the first word we got from officials in the passport control and embarkation shed was anything but encouraging. Eventually one of the ferry captains came up with a faxed voucher for us, which was a relief, but we learned now for the first time that three thousand drachmes in Greek cash was required of each of us for some kind of Greek tax, a kind of penalty I guess for visiting hated Turkey. The amount was not formidable but we had deliberately tapered our ATM withdrawals at the end so that we would wind up with only a trifling amount of Greek cash, as we had no expectation of being anywhere soon again where it would be accepted, and currency exchange is always a rather infuriating rip-off. Thus we came up short. But the customs man lent the keys to his motor-scooter or mihanáki to the ferry captain, and he ferried me on the back of it, unhelmeted of course, to the ATM and back. Since he was the captain, I figured the boat would not leave before we got back. But when we got our boarding passes at last, and started towards his boat clutching them tight, another captain spotted them and shanghaied us onto his boat. I figured resistance was futile, so we meekly hove our luggage aboard and climbed on.
We cleared the harbor past this Luxembourgeois tall ship. (We had looked at it a bit while waiting for the passport control and embarkation shed to open, and I was struck by the incongruity between the square-rigging on the foremast and such modern touches as roller spars and covered lifeboats.) Our boat left first by a few minutes (for some reason all three or four Cos-to-Bodrum ferries all share the same daily departure time), but turned out considerably slower than the one I had aimed for, so that I worried that the man who was to meet us at the other end with our rental car might give up on us after seeing the faster boat empty out. Also I worried that there might be some other surprise cash-only tax or fee at the Turkish end, that our travel agent had also omitted to mention.
When we reached the dock, however--beside yet another splendid crusaders' castle--all worked out reasonably well, with a few exceptions. I followed the crowd into the passport-stamping line when in fact I had first to visit the visa office and there fork over the American currency obtained with so much difficulty in Rhodes; also the car turned out to be a considerable walk and wait away and to be yet again rather too small. With the trunk bungeed shut (an operation in which I managed to gash my finger), and excess baggage yet again crowding the passenger seats, we managed to make our way, with one or two stops for directions, to this hotel. Along the way, unfortunately, one small bag containing precious stuffed animals fell out of the half-open trunk where it had been a little too gently stuffed. I obtained vodka and ice at the bar for my finger, and also sticking-plasters, from a kind Scottish couple there who noticed my seemingly extraterrestrial approach to my "drink."
The hotel is a pleasant place right on the beach. Both at dinner and at breakfast here we felt almost as if we had not left Greece, since the food is in large measure the same both places: the cacik we had with dinner was pretty much indistinguishable from Greek tzatziki, and this morning I breakfasted on bread with feta and olives as had become my wont in Greece. And the German frauen bring their alien sunbathing practices alike to the beaches of both countries.