OCTOBER 12, TUESDAY

RICH FOREIGNERS

Again we wandered, this time down the left side of the island after leaving Naousa. We started the day by eating the boxed up half of yesterdays breakfast heated in a frying pan. And then took along the things we might need in the Chevy Spark. Whenever the main road cut inland we would take the narrow dirt roads down to the sea to see what we would find. We had heard of the fabled Golden Beach but it wasn‘t on any map. But our first turn left we hit it. It was not clear what was public and what was private. On the wide golden sands beach was a windsurfing rental place (we later learned that the world championships of wind surfing had been held here for many years). Unlike the previous placid days with lapping waves, today was blustery with angry waves beating against the rocks. There were four wind surfers out in the bay skimming the waves at dazzling speeds.

But in the other direction from where we parked were the rich in large, modern white house’s with large green lawns. We wondered if they had also paid for exclusive beach access and if we were trespassers.

But then we realized that the buildings were probably empty, occupied only by the rich for their summer vacations. At the end of the row of fancy houses was another blue and white Greek church.

We passed these blue and white chapels all day scattered over the landscape. It was hard to believe that the rich were worshipping here on Sunday mornings, or that the rich ever entered this beautiful church. It seemed more likely that someone very rich had built the beautiful church as an act of worship, as a way of gaining favor with God as well as demonstrating his wealth to others. All of these churches, including this one are locked.

But what most got our attention, besides the crashing sea, was the landscaping of grasses and of puffballs of wiry bushes in all shades of green and brown and pastels. In a landscape that is often barren and dry and rocky, these varied shades of tough little plants are what will grow.

They are beautiful. So we photographed the grasses and the white surging waves and then walked down to Golden Beach.

And then returned to our car and began searching for a restaurant. Where the houses of the rich are scattered along the sea front and up toward the hills there are no restaurants or stores. In Naousa there are restaurants all along the harbor front and around every corner. On Efi‘s street there are houses where people live, cheek to cheek, and know each other and are neighbors who sit on their small porches and talk to each other. We finally found a beautiful little town around a harbor filled with boats.

The waves splashed high against our harborside restaurant against a clear plastic shield. Seafood risotto with clams, mussels, squid, shrimp and who knows what else. Delicious.

Then were were off to side road and another beach without a name as far as we knew. And then we turned back to return to Naousa. Even though the red line indicating a major road was only an ordinary two lane road, we were determined to return back on a black scratch of a rural road, a road that turned quickly into a rutted dirt road angled up and up and up until we were high above the coast

with a view of faraway islands till we came to this blued domed monastery and then just as steeply dropped down on the other side back to the highway again.

By now it was almost five and time for a nap before going out to supper at Gavalas Christos, our favorite restaurant (after only 3 days) on a narrow lane in the shopping center of Naousa.

I ordered Chicken Fricassee and red wine at our outdoor table on the street when the heavens let loose and it poured. We were under a stairway leading to the second floor but everyone else left their tables and found protection. The waiters, used to this, continued to serve and take orders out of a window. The street became a flowing stream, but twenty minutes later the storm blew over and everything returned to normal and we walked back here to Efi‘s Rooms for the night.

But as I was going to sleep I began to think of the huge white houses where the rich spread out and shut off trespassers and each other, visitors to the island only in the summer, maybe arriving and leaving on their own boats anchored in the beautiful harbor. Without knowing much and already beginning to make unwarranted judgments as a clueless foreigner about people whose home this was. Before there were planes picking people up at one end of the world and before they could have three meals dropping them here with their shiny hard case rolling suitcases to settle into days of luxury in elegant sea front hotels, before there were any hotels at all or any industry how did the people sustain themselves on islands of barren rocky hills or flatland where only beautiful grasses and bushes grow. There were no windsurfers or beachside cabanas or restaurants. There were only olive trees and goats and people like Nicholas distilling their own Souma. The islands were linked with bucking wooden boats with white sails. The thickwalled houses were cold in winter and hot in summer and life was much harder and much shorter.

And then I realized that I was just as well thinking of beautiful green Asheville, which I do know a little bit about, where, it turns out, I am also a foreigner delighting in the restaurants serving every flavor on earth, with large comfortable hotels, and alluring shop window displays everywhere, a tourist town just as Naousa is a tourist town where the wealthy build large elegant houses and the ordinary people such as my Swannanoa barber are resentful of foreigners, northern American foreigners, taking over and are almost crowded out.

I am having a marvelous time with Susie exploring Paros and eating in beautiful restaurants and strolling white and blue checker boarded streets, for a month, when like the rich, it turns out actually one of the rich, I fly away. I‘m wondering.