A Taxi Tour

The last post about our end-of-summer visitors.  As you can see, October was all about short sleeves, days on the beach and even the tortoises hadn't gone into hibernation.  

My niece visited with her two young children and had the great idea to have a taxi driver take her and the children around the island on a 'tiki-tour' as they call it in New Zealand.  As always we had a member of the extended family who fit the bill.  Manolis  is the son of the godmother of my sister-in-law's son (my greek nephew).

The last I heard he was driving the rubbish truck but he has moved on to a taxi now and can now add  'tiki-tour' guide to his curriculum vitae.

Exploring the ruins at Poseidon's temple...

inspecting the few stones that remain.  There's not much left up there now but the view down towards Vagionia Bay and the ancient harbour is magnificent.  Our kids used to love climbing over what little is left of the marble walls and even digging in the dirt.  The few marble blocks that remain are mostly fenced off now and digging is a 'no, no'  but  this site is unsupervised, free to visit and all need is a good imagination and the knowledge of a local to enjoy a brief visit.

On to the church at the monastery to light a candle and even kiss a few icons, if you're 'of the faith'.

Manolis shows them the resin from a pine tree.  Poros is covered in pine trees and once upon a time there was good money to be made tapping the trees and  collecting the sticky punguent resin.  Think maple syrup.  Well, maybe not.  But the maple tree is tapped the same way for it's syrup.  Do correct me if I'm wrong.

Meeting the 40 or so wild cats at the Church of the Holy Belt.  Kittens are often dumped here and local cat lovers come up every day rain or shine to feed them.  They are sterilised by volunteers but still seem to multiply.

Julie and her band scrambled up to the clock tower above the harbour, and explored the back streets.

                                               

Another of the highlights was a trip across the bay on the 'Socrates', the water taxi owned by my son-in-law.  They drove the boat and dived off into the sea.  Great fun!

Poros has something for everyone whatever the season!