Syvota

So we bypassed Vasiliki and after reading about it, I’m glad we did. It sounds a bit too touristy and built up and is a mecca for windsurfers. Fiskardo gave us enough life. We want a few quiet stops before we head out.

Sivota is a lovely little bay tucked right in. It’s fully enclosed and you can’t even see the open water once you are in here. The hills rise straight up behind us and they are covered in olive trees and cypress. At 8 am the sun is already high and the temperature is rising fast. It is quiet here now, but in September this little village hosts the Ionian Regatta’s after-race party and apparently boats can be rafted nose to stern to nose three and four boats deep. THAT would be something to see. We’ve heard that this can happen when it’s really busy, but that it’s a trick that is mostly used by flotillas in high season.

A vegetable truck pulls up behind the boats and does a brisk business with the yachties. We all buy our food day to day and stockpile only a few things.

The only history I can find on Syvota is that it one historian thinks this was the possible landing site of Odysseus (that this might actually be the historical Ithaka) and that there is a community to the west that is thought to be near the cave of the nymphs.

Yesterday afternoon we watched a small fishing boat be launched. The boat was sitting on stumps next to a house on the road right behind the sailing boats. A large truck with a crane on it came by and hooked onto it and lifted it over itself and then into the water on the other side… squeezing it in between two other boats in the process. A story of a boat being removed from the water in Poros a few days after we had been there was recounted to us. Apparently there was a car parked where they wanted to pull the boat out to. So the truck pulled up to the car, they hooked the crane onto it, and lifted and moved the car down to the other end of the quay. Imagine coming back and finding your car in a completely different spot! You’d wonder just how many beers you’d really had! In Canada a tow truck probably would have towed it and the owner would have faced a cost to get it back. Here, they just move it out of the way. I like the Greek solution better. No harm done, no cost incurred.