Well, what can I say? A week ago, things looked promising. We had 3 or 4 contacts lined up to the point where we could live for next to nothing for the next month and a half and within a couple of days all of that has changed. We now have no contacts, nowhere to stay, and nowhere to go. We are currently in a cockroach infested hostel in a beautiful port town in Crete. We don't have the money however to stay in hostels for the next 2 months. We are doing fine for the moment, aside from a little sickness and tiredness. One of my companions is leaving later today to go back home leaving just Keia and I here until David and Christina make it from Turkey. They should be arriving tomorrow if all goes as planned. David however has been sick which has delayed them a few days already.
Funny story. We got off the boat 3 days ago in Crete at 5:30 in the morning and took a bus to Kastelli, the town of our apparent contacts. Upon arriving we checked into a small campground that had a pretty nice pool and tents to sleep in since we don't have our own. The trouble was that Keia and Jed didn't have sleeping mats, and I did. So being the gentleman I am, I gave mine to Keia and Jed and I slept on the flat ground with jagged rocks finding our abdomins, thighs, and back every few minutes making it a horrible night of tossing and turning.Before that however we were very hungry so Keia and I went to the corner store and bought a frozen pizza to come back and cook. The place we were staying had sufficient cooking appliances so we thought we might as well make good use of them. We found a mini-oven and began heating it up while we sat outside the kitchen playing cards. There were a few knobs on the oven and we didn't know exactly what they meant so we turned two of them. After 5 minutes or so I went back into the kitchen to check on the progress of the oven. A horrid smell was waiting for me as I walked into a cloud of smoke in the kitchen. I ran over to the oven and saw that it smoke was billowing out from the top of it. I took a few things off the oven only to discover that there was a stove on top and we had unknowingly turned it on. I ended up burning a few wicker baskets used for bread and leaving the kitchen with a lingering smell of burnt wicker.
We didn't let that deter us from our mission since we hadn't cooked a good meal in a good few days so we carried on. We cooked the pizza and it was delicious. The maintanance guy who didn't speak any English was in and out of the kitchen fixing himself some iced coffee's and he cast a few odd looks in our direction but we carried on with our card game. While we were eating our wonderful pizza the owner of the place came back and went into the kitchen. Our hearts were pounding as we slowly chewed our stupendous pizza. We went into the kitchen and the man was looking around the kitchen with a bedazzled look on his face and Keia was like, "we cooked a pizza, is that okay? Are we allowed to use the kitchen?"
Dumbstruck the man replies, "No!"
"Sorry, we didn't know, we'll clean up here and get out of your way."
We had also bought spagetti with the intention of cooking it later that night for dinner. He was looking through our grocery bags which were on the counter trying to piece together what was going on. Keia grabbed our groceries and left. I stood there awkwardly washing our dishes as they stood behind me watching. It was well worth it.
Our first night at this new hostel I saw a cockroach on the floor outside as I was reading. I didn't really care much since I've been in the desert, amazon, and the Moroccan mountains within the last few months but that wasn't the last I saw of him. I was tossing and turning through the night and at one point I sat up because of some noisy guests and I saw that Keia, who's bed is a few feet from mine, was awake also. She sat up and just as she was going to lie back down, Mr. Cock-a-lock-a as she calls him, ran across her sweater (pillow). She flung it at the wall and it fell behind her bed. I saw it behind my bed so I switched positions so my feet were by the wall instead. A few minutes later it was crawling up the bed post and up to the top bunk right by Jed's head. We didn't say anything to Jed but then just seconds later it was crawling down the wall back towards my bed. I tried to smack it with my flip-flop but it did nothing and the bugger ran under my bed into all my stuff. I tried wrapping myself up in my sleeping bag but it was just too hot so I had to sleep with one eye open as I lay there vulnerable to this wretched pest.
What else? Oh, we did get to cook our spagetti at our new hostel...it was D-lish! We have all become addicted to iced coffee and will have to restrain ourselves from having one every hour.
I must go and take a walk by myself before I have to meet up with Kool and the Gang so hopefully this gives you a good taste of what we've been doing. Please pray that it comes to more than this soon.
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