Kos Town

Vasco da Gama
Ian Strathcarron
Mon 7 Sep 2009 05:46
Kos Town is a very sweet place.  The modern part reminds Ian (and me) of Key West in Florida - two-storey houses set in gardens and boulevards planted with palms, bouganvillea, hibiscus and oleander trees - but on almost every street corner there are some ancient remains - a statue of Alexander the Great, a Greek agora (market place), Roman baths, a temple of Dionysus.  Everything is sort of jumbled together as there were always earthquakes and each new civilisation rebuilt the town from the remnants of the past.
 
We are tied up alongside the Castle of Neratzia, built by the Knights of St. John in the 14th Century to protect the island from raids by the Turks.  We had an unfortunate encounter with a Turk yesterday when he brought his boat too close to our mooring line and snapped the rope attaching us to our kedge anchor and chain.  A friendly German neighbour in a yacht alongside helped Ian to paddle our dinghy into the middle of the bay to re-attach ourselves to our spare anchor.  The Turk has agreed to replace our lost anchor as there is apparently no hope of finding our old one as the sea bed in this harbour is full of ancient and modern bits of anchor, rope and chain, lost over more than three thousand years.
 
It is very hot during the day with a temperature of about 34oC.  We stay on the boat to keep cool (and to keep an eye on any marauding Frenchmen or Turks!), but the nights are very pleasant, under the full moon and the with the sky full of stars.