Another hopeful attempt at Diving: update- Success!

After our last dispiriting experience of finding a good diving place, we opted this time to use the tools Greeks have used for centuries... friends of friends. So we contacted our 'lo-ong time living on Corfu' friend and he contacted his Greek friend and so now we think we have found a good divemaster.

[Picture to the right of man standing is divemaster from hell- avoid him.]

Plus, I believe I now know what may have happened to make for the "world's worst and longest day doing nothing with a short late and disappointing diving experience".

In the Rough Guide to Corfu and the Ionian Islands (1997), there is an interesting entry on Nissaki: "Nissaki is more a vague area than a place: three excellent pebble beaches, one dominated by the gigantic and rather soulless Nissaki Beach Hotel... " (aka Krouzeri Beach) blah-blah-blah... and slight referral to the other two, the last being Kaminaki Beach. It was one of of course the "original" Nissaki beach, that now has a brand new diving "school" where of course we went, and so that must have been how we were suckered into our mistake. No mention of course was made that there is ANOTHER diving school that meets at A Nissaki beach. (hahhahahhaha, joke's on us! so amusing. not.)

Anyway, Costas will pick up Benoit from the beach in front of the Nissaki Beach Hotel (which is "close" to the other beach by about 2 miles???) it is actually named "Krouzeri Beach" tho it's part of the area of Nissaki. From there, they will go to a different dive site (as Costas is familiar with the other "divemaster" and where he takes his people...)

More to follow on this post!

~~~

And they return! Needless to say, there actually IS good diving on Corfu. Mr Costas Revis established his business in 1977 and knows what he's doing.

The Waterhoppers Diving Centre is the place to count on. The safety levels are high, the number of instructors is more than adequete and they do what they say they're going to do - ON TIME and with a smile. They have a wide variety of types of dives and they can arrange something for whatever skill level you need. The centre is PADI, ANDI, CMAS and NITROX - TRIMAX certified.

But most of all ... a good time was had by all! Benoit went down 40 meters and saw a great wreck with lots of soft coral and little beasties around it. He was most pleased. (and T said that the whole deal was 5 euro cheaper than the "divemaster from hell".)

[Costas is the guy in the center -hard to make out- he's driving the boat.]

The trick is to drive the curvy road and when you see the sign for the Nisaki Beach Hotel (which appears suddenly after a lot of curvy road and then sort of seems to go down the side of a very steep "cliff") It's THAT Nissaki Beach.

There's also a very nice and shady taverna for those 'who sit and wait'...

For others interested, there are dive boats that will pick you up in Ipsos as well as a completely other location of the company in Paleocastritsa to see the cave diving on that side of the island.

Tonite we're going to my favorite restaurant- Christa's Creperie. More tomorrow!

Catch up time...

Ah a nice quiet Sunday morning... looking out the window I can't help but notice the sun is rising in a very RED sky. What is that old saw "red sky at morning, sailors take warning... red sky at night sailors delight"? Hmmm.

So. This is going to be a longer post than normal, as I am catching up...

This evening it's time for another birthday party - my friend Sammy- only THIS one is at the beach in Avlaki (a 40 minute drive from here, near Casseopi.) It doesn't start until six, so this whole day is for puttering around until we have to leave.

The past few days have been strange for me. I am sure it's partly because grandson is gone and we really enjoyed having him underfoot. Partly it's because the Belgian cousins are still here (for another week- they leave next Saturday).

I feel lethargic and detached from myself, like I'm going through the motions of hospitality. I think that must be because we've just had people in the house with us for more than two months, and for two people who spend most of the year pretty much alone, that change is enough to fry the 'be nice' circuits in the brain, causing a lot of second guessing and self doubt ie: "am I being nice?", "was that sarcastic?", "why did that just piss me off?" etc.

This too shall pass.

As for a catch up: Benoit and the diving fiasco-

Sadly, there would seem to be NOTHING to recommend the dive school in Nissaki to ANYone who is interested.

The Greek divemaster is pompous, overbearing and even more subjective on time and space that most other Corfiots. (ie- the promised dive that Benoit showed up for at 10 AM that was to take place at 11 AM ended up taking place at 6:30 PM!)

As far as I am concerned however patient and understanding I could try and be, nothing made sense about this situation. And from everything I know about diving when you are licensed and certified - as Benoit is- it should have been a simple situation of renting equipment, going out for a dive with a boat and possibly a few other licensed divers and - 3 hours start to finish, done and dusted. [As Benoit did exactly that last year in Italy, and previous years in Thailand, Viet Nam and Mexico, I find it difficult to understand the challenges imagined by the Greek divemaster that caused this mistake.]

So FYI- and of course a note penned to my future referrals for guests... "Do not book diving for Nissaki. EVER."

~~~


On a lighter note, T and Jenny spent the afternoon Friday making free-hand designed lizard cookies (biscuits) for friend Sammy's b'day. (She loves lizards, what can I say?)

At some point the sugar must have gotten to them because things got a little strange for a while ... Suddenly it seems we were confronted with "the afternoon of the living cookie lizards"...

Fortunatly eating a few of them caused everyone to lose their panic and laugh at the strangeness of it all. (Which just caused more maniacal laughter due to sugar overload...)

~~~

Friday evening we went to Kontokali (Gouvia) near the marina and had a fish dinner at Takis and then went to listen to Roy and his band play Blues music. A nice mellow evening. We got there early when the band was just setting up in order to get a seat! Once they start playing, people are standing in the street (or dancing, as the case may be!)



A good time was had by all.

~~~

Yesterday was the day T took the cousins to visit to Paleocastritsa, and Angelocastro for the afternoon, while I made a birthday cake (actually TWO cakes as I dropped the first one and it broke beyond repair when I burned my hand whilst I was getting it out of the pan. grr.) I also made some Blue cheese salad dressing (sauce) as that was a special request by the birthday girl.

We finally have a picture from the mens bathroom at the Panorama restaurant --- the most beautiful view of the west side of Corfu!!!

Needless to say I will only include a picture of the window, and not the rest of the room!

They had a good time visiting Angelocastro which for some reason now charges a nominal fee to climb up to the top of the fortress, but ironically closes on Saturday in prime tourist season at 2:30 PM! Sometimes I just do NOT understand the Greeks love/hate relationship with tourism.

Another view:

~~~
Then last but not least it was time for us to have dins at home. I made BBQ'd ribs (did them Friday and left them to marinate in the sauce for Saturday dinner) And Jenny set about making her special Dauphinois potatoes. They are her unique creation. It's basically garlic, potatoes (sliced very thin w the mandolin slicer and layered), cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and pepper and LOTS of cream - then baked at 170 for about an hour.

Last nights dinner was a feast. The potatoes were delish, the ribs addictive, and for dessert we had the broken b'day cake! I don't think we'll have to actually eat anything else til this evening!

So that's my catch up. I really can't afford NOT to write every day! Ah well.


[NOTE: Blue Cheese Dressing recipe posted in comment section]

~~~

the eaglet has landed

And is safe back in the arms of his loving family...

Grandson's father (my oldest son) actually remembered to send me an email to tell me he arrived safe and sound and a little bit 'wired' from the long journey. (23 hours of continuous travel is still 23 hours, no matter how old you are!)

The first thing T and I said this morning at about the time Son was writing the note was "I bet he's already showing them the card tricks!!"

~~~

Today I remain at home and putter around with "things" and "things I haven't finished."

These include:
- making up a batch of BBQ sauce
- cooking a pot roast in the pressure cooker
- finishing the laundry (which is clean and wet and in the basket, but needs to be hung up outside in the hot)
- cleaning the grandson guestroom
- putting all my clean clothes- that have been neatly folded since my last attack of laundry- away
- playing with the dog, who follows me soulfully from room to room
- and I suppose- finally- trying to write something intelligent for the blog.

~~~

Meanwhile, T (tour guide'par excellance') and the Belgian cousins have gone off again, back to Nissaki, today, so that Benoit- Jenny's husband- can go skin diving around an old wreck off the north east coast. (I told T to stay OUT of the water!)

I am amazed at T's stamina. Last evening, I picked him up at the airport at 7 pm, after his wild and boring 24 hours in Athens seeing grandson off- wild because of the taxi strike the evening they arrived, boring because after grandson left at noon yesterday, he just sat around in the airport for 6 hours til his plane left to come home.

From the airport we went to pick up the cousins who had spent the better part of the day shopping and excursion-ing.

+++

So we decided to go out dinner!

From the foot of the old fortress (completed circa 1550's) where they waited, we went to the foot of the "new" fortress (completed circa 1645) , to have dinner at - I think- one of the best restaurants in Corfu: Retro Nuevo . The food is simply wonderful and the prices will reflect that - about 37.50 euros per person (including drinks and wine). Though for the rest of Europe that's a bargain!

True it was Wednesday and yes, the economy is hard hit--- but I couldn't believe we were the only customers!!

It's become my second favorite restaurant. As we'll probably visit my first favorite and my third favorite with the cousins, I'll write about them later. I will ALSO include pictures, but unfortunately they're on the camera that's with T for the day, so they'll go up and be posted later today.

We started with cocktails- and they have a wonderful selection: T of course had scotch, I had Campari and soda and Benoit has a Mai Tai!! All were served with panache.

We had wonderful starters shared by all of us - shrimp and mango rolled in Kadaifi pastry, little seafood pouches to dip in teryaki sauce, a lovely salad with spinach leaves, wild greens, strawberries and walnuts with paper thin slices of serrano ham.


For our main courses we all picked vastly different things to eat: T had a pasta with smoked salmon and a delightful vodka sauce, Jenny had pork fillets with a lovely Corfiot citrus-y kumquat sauce and Parmesan pureed potatoes in a croquette shell, Benoit had the Retro Nuevo salad with a variety of greens, speck and Parmesan with a brilliant balsamic, cream and poppy seed dressing, and I had "Greek specialty" of mixed grill souvlaki with lemon oil sauce and yogurt dip- it was the best I've ever tasted- juicy, seasoned just right, fire-browned from the grill, and the homemade chips, that were like golden coins on the plate.

We washed it all down with a really nice South African pinot grigio.

For dessert we left it to the able Panos (the owner/proprietor), to bring us a plate of the "tastes" of dessert, which included basically a little chocolate souffle which we all dug our little spoons into and jenny finished, a lemon cheesecake mousse which benoit finished, a white chocolate panacotta with strawberry syrup, and yogurt-cream in fruits of the forest sauce in a crunchy pastry nest both of which T and I made significant inroads into but couldn't quite finish.

Fortunately I had a button on my pants that I could open and my shirt flowed handily over it so no one knew!!

We walked to the entrance of the new fortress a ways "up" on old cobblestones, from the restaurant, which was a good thing as we all needed to move a bit and get some exercise after that huge feast!

Then back down to the car and all tucked in bed by 11 pm.

Nissaki and a great day at the beach...

Everyone (but me) went to the North of the island and had a grand day out in Nissaki. (Lunch in Agni at Tsoula's!) I stayed home and baked a chocolate cake...



Today everyone has gone to the South of the island to Prassoudi to visit the lovely sandy beaches near the salt pan lake of Korission (Photos tomorrow.)

I am going to experiment and make some home made ricotta cheese, to go in some lovely lasagna. It should be interesting!