July 30 - Ios to Mykonos

This day has and will go down as one of the most painful and memorable days we have in Europa.

After getting to sleep at daybreak, the team packed up and headed down to the port to catch the ferry to Mykonos. As Jez mentioned in one of his previous blogs, the Greek Islands are windy. Santorini seems to be sheltered and hence miss the air onslaught. Apparently it is no coincidence that the Greek Islands that are more populated (Ios and Mykonos) are the windier ones. Back in the day these winds were used by ships as trade winds to deliver goods across the Mediterranean. These ships would have stop over’s in the Greek Islands en route to Europe.

So in short, it was windy. Whilst this wind was great for trade ships a few centuries ago, it was not so good for 20 hungover young adults trying to get from Ios to Mykonos in 2009.

The first half an hour was OK. The sea was fairly rough and the catamaran occasionally got some air. However, one of the elderly ladies on the ferry thought that she was in mortal danger and shrieked at the top of her lings every time we dropped back onto the ocean.

Then, the sea sickness began. First cab off the rank was a bloke towards the front of the ferry. Without a paper spew bag handy, he made a dash for a bin in front of him. Luckily, he did make it in time. However, as he was running like his life depended on it, feet pumping as hard as they could, a shout of ‘No!’ was heard from behind us. We turned to see a ferry employee chasing after the sea sick lad, arm outstretched with a spew bag in hand. He was too late.

There were a few people sitting together in the ferry, namely Jez, Jane, Molly, Courtney (Molly’s friend), BJ, Andrea, Jaz (part of the law contingent) and myself. The first of this crew to loose it was Jane. To make things more interesting, she had bought a nutella crepe just before boarding the ferry and had only started eating it whilst we were onboard. As I’m sure you can guess, the crepe was not digested by the time that it found its way back up. So Jane, having just discarded her crepe was heard to say: “That actually tasted pretty good.” BJ was in hysterics. Yummy.

After BJ and calmed down, she went to get Jane some more bags to help her out. As people were in desperate need for bags, BJ became an temporary employee of the ferry company, dutifully providing spew bags to weary passengers. A constant customer was a girl near the front of the ferry. She continually had her head in a bag and had a really nice friend who for the entire journey held her hair back and couriered the full bags to the bin.

Half way through the trip saw the emergence of ‘Spew Corner’ in which Jane, Jez and Jaz sat near the windows and repeatedly tried to lose as much weight as possible. At last count they collectively lost about 10 kilos between them and are currently seeing if they can do a subway commercial of some sorts.

At one stage in Spew Corner, Jez was lying down on the floor and Jaz and Jane were sitting up in their seats. Jane went for a good heave and landed a good portion of her breakfast entirely in the bag. The bag happened to be millimeters from Jez’s head, so he was treated to a nice silhouette and splash sound of Jane’s chunder.

The final part worth mentioning of Spew Corner was Jaz. Unfortunately for him, the sea sickness not affected his stomach but also his body movements. At one stage Jez looked over to see Jaz hugging a pole for dear life. Later on, I saw Jaz sitting down making no effect whatsoever to control his muscle movements. At this stage he was moving entirely with the sea and was one with the ocean.

After an eternity our prayer were answered and we reached the holy land. That night, a few of the girls went to Paradise Beach, where sleazy I T’s (Italians) poured vodka down their throats hoping to get lucky. They didn’t. The rest of us headed for a nice dinner after having a good old fashioned group spooning session.

Later,

Monty