Cat Fish

Symi - Day 5

If you check the map below you can see how close we are to Turkey here, about 8 miles I believe. Along with Cyprus, Symi was a bone of contention between the two countries for a long time. Twenty seven years ago you could not travel from one to the other.....legally. I was younger then and a little dumber (a little) and took a trip in a speed boat from this very spot at around 4am, one saturday morning with 2 greeks, an ozzy and my mate to go shopping in the famous bazzar in Datca. No lights, no passports and patrol boats were the order of the day. Thirty bum-breaking minutes later we pulled up into the turkish harbour and made for a bar on the beach as there were several hours before anything else opened.

As we sat down to order our drinks our greek host recognised the barman and they turned out to be old friends. Eventually the barman told us he needed to go and get changed for work and left us to it. Some time later he returned and was dressed in a sparkly white uniform - he was the port harbour master as well.

We looked, shopped, got hasseled and our eyes opened to quite a different world - amazing, I won't go on. When we came to leave, the bloody boat broke down in the middle of the harbour, which was only embarassing rather than dangerous by this stage, but very embarrasing none the less.

Today you can catch a choice of regular boats over there every Saturday and even visit this duty free shop for your fags and booze on the way.