Day 8: Sunrise Kos… over the blue Aegean

I wondered if I would be tempted to brave the sunrise. After all, we were actually offered a little sleep-in this morning and it would have been nice. But I set the alarm and had decided that I would see how I felt when it rang. It didn’t come to that because the roosters on the island started crowing, waking me at about 5.55am, just in time for sunrise. So I donned some clothes and headed off up the hill to the top of the resort in search of an elusive sunrise. Unfortunately the weather was not as good as I would have liked and so the colour is not as intense in the pic as I would have liked… but it was a truly amazing experience. Walking up the hill it was still and crisp. The only noise that could be heard was the crowing of a rooster or two. As soon as the sun rose, the noise increased with lots of pigeons joining in the chorus. At that point the stillness of the morning was broken and the wind stirred and became very strong. It was an amazing contrast and an equally amazing solitary experience. 

Back down to breakfast and the buffet standard established at last night’s dinner was sustained at breakfast, right down to your own personal pot of tea. It appeared as though the prize winner for brekkie today was crepes with warm nutella sauce. Yum. And after breakfast we boarded the bus and set off to the tiny Catholic Church Angus Dei to have our morning Mass.

This was a real pilgrimage experience. Walking up the long driveway all the way to the church we looked a bit like pilgrims. It is a tiny church, run by the Franciscans who have had a presence in the islands since the crusades. Fr Luke, an English Franciscan addressed the group briefly after Mass talking about the history of Catholicism in the area and Orthodox Catholic relations. After Greek independence all church lands reverted to the state and so the Catholic presence in the islands was seriously eroded. Fr Luke had been on a ferry for 6 hours overnight from Rhodes to meet us. He expressed his high regard for Cardinal Pell and the Cardinal responded by making some controversial comments about his liking the celebration of the Eucharist with the celebrant's back to the people as had to happen in this tiny church. While at the church I chatted with one of the locals. She tells me that it is no wonder that our flight was bad yesterday. There were no ferries because of the wind and some flights were cancelled. We were lucky to get in I guess but it certainly was a scary experience, even in retrospect.

Back to the hotel to lounge around the pool… NOT… and pack our stuff before exploring Kos. The hotel has a large group of British tourists on spring holiday and we saw the funniest sight en route to our room: an English fellow with tiny speedos and lily white body walked boldly through the lobby carrying a hot pink plastic blow up surf mat. Go figure! I took the opportunity to head back up the hill and take another couple of pics from the same vantage point as I had done at sunrise. Then we sat around the pool before going off to the the first site visit of the day.

The  Asklepion is an ancient sacred site and healing centre some of it dating back to 4^th century BC. This is a very well excavated site. It features three levels and was the temple to Asklepius the child of Apollo and a human, Coronos.  It appears as though there was some tension between Hades the god of the dead and the famous healing god Asklepius because Asklepius was doing Hades out of business by curing all Hades potential customers. So Asklepius was struck down to solve the tension and the Asklepion grew up so that people could come and worship the god and ask for support spiritually or medically.

The area consisted of healing areas and sacred areas including a temple to Asklepius and a sacrificial altar. The site grew between 4^th century BCE and 2nd century CE and then fell into disuse. Our guide was at pains to point out that there were different degrees of illness. The simple ones were cured on the lower level, the surgical cases, fairly routinely on the middle level, but if you were really ill or terminally ill there was a complex ritual where you would stay in a particular room near the temple to Asklepius and you would wait to hear in your dream what the Gods had to say to you. The doctors would then interpret the dream and tell you if it was good news or bad news…  At one stage a church was built on the site which ceased to be used during the Ottoman Empire and over time it simply became covered. It was not excavated until the early years of the 20^th century. Around the site there are many many cats. It seems as though we have traded dogs for the Kats of Kos!

We were given free time in the plaza for lunch and so Anne and I found the market and bought some lovely fresh fruit. Yummy fresh dates and a banana followed up by tea in the square. Then our guide took us on a walk around town. We passed through the gateway to the old wall city and strolled past the Agora, the ancient market place which has a smattering of ruins. At one stage a church was built over the ancient ruins and then, brick by brick it was removed and relocated nearby so that the ruins could be intact. There is certain sadness in this area when you see two disused mosques in tatters and you realize the cost of religious intolerance. Then towards the end of the Agora area we found the tree of Hippocrates. It is a Plane tree under which Hippocrates used to sit and instruct students, and while it is probably nowhere near the original as it is dated to about 1100; it is quite possibly a seedling of a seedling of the original tree.

 At the end of this path we found the crusader Castle built in the 12-13^th century. Impressive views of the Aegean were to be had from its’ old drawbridge and we also saw evidence of the pilfering or “recycling’ of stone from the Asklepion and other sites in some of the carved stone over the lintel. It was then time to hit the shops and we wandered through lovely back alleys of the old town centre bumping into one group and then the next comparing our little purchases. Shopping culminated with a meeting at the top of the old town for a quick Zorba dance and dinner at the restaurant of the same name. We had a real Greek feast and they even served Galaktobeureko for desert. Yummmmmmmmm.

The real experience of the day however was reserved for the organizational debacle that is the Blue Star Ferry service. Tickets in hand we gathered our luggage at the dock and joined the ferry queue. Now ferry is probably a misnomer... It is a huge ship that carries many vehicles including multiple semi-trailers. The loading system runs something like this… the disembarking passengers from other ports gather their belongings and scamper down the huge drawbridge style gang plank playing chicken with the disembarking semi-trailers while the embarking passengers dodge the boarding vehicles as the jockey for position, some even backing up the gang plank while people are being ushered across by disinterested ferry staff.  The bags are all thrown higgledy piggily into a rack and then you clamber up to the top area to try to secure a seat… three hours of rolling sea travel follows and then the whole chaotic mess is repeated upon disembarkation in Patmos. It is a miracle that anyone gets the right bag and gets off alive.

So, very late it was and we finally arrived at the Skala hotel in Patmos. It was very nearly midnight so by the time showers and washing were had it was time for bed just after 1am. This pilgrim business is tiring.