More from Kastelorizo

another day, another 30 euros....

it's been getting much hotter in Greece the past few days.....at the point now where the heat is a constant reminder that beer causes dehydration...responsible travellers drink water during the day...

a few notes on geography and such...the mediterranean contains a surprisingly small amount of sea life....there is none of the seaweed, barnacles, mussels that are so obvious on a vancouver shore line or dock piling.....though there are roughly the seem amount of small perch and such..... and the tides here are practically non-existent....i haven't seen anything close to a spanish banks tidal flat (though this may be due to the volcanic island geography) and the tide lines on the cliffs seem relatively minor... due to the small amount of water that can flow in and out of the med though gibralter and the black sea?? anybody know??.....and the haze...god it's ugly...it's really obvious when you're out on the open water.....a white haze that dulls the blue brilliance of the open sky down to a milky bluish blah......if you hold your fingers about 15 cm from your eyes and then measure an inch up from the horizon, that is the size of a white ring of haze tht sits on the meds (and europe's surface...recently read that its caused by excessive amount of CO2 in the atmosphere....what's new??) ...anyway, blue skies are a luxury that europe likely hasn't seen in a long time and may never again...i don't even want to get into the brown haze that is so apparent over Istanbul ( and Athens...though i haven't seen it) caused by those nasty sulphur compounds (smog to the uninitiated)...

anyway, we've hired a boat to take us over to Turkey tomorrow for 10 euros so this will be our last night in Greece....i'm looking forward to getting off the euro since it's eating a hole in my bank account...it seems that Greece has become exceedingly expensive the past two years (maybe even prohibitively so now for penny-pinching backpackers) due to the euro, though i'm not sure how much of the price increase is due to the currency (whether food prices have gone up due to the euro etc...), and how much is due to rising demand and higher profit margins for the tourism business....i do know, however, that there has been a large drop in tourists this year (Ios has seen only a third as many, 1500 vs 4500, visitors as last year and everywhere else says business is down, especially the places that cater to the lower end of the pay scale, ie: us...apparently the number of germans here this year is way down)...i get the feeling that a lot of places may have jacked up prices thinking the number of tourists would be about the same, or maybe to try and eke out the same profit as last year after realizing there weren;t gong to be (contrary to oh-so unassailable economic theory, price sould go down goddamit...they lied to me!!!...) but this obviously can't survive in the long-run if greece wants to keep its historically high flow of trvallers....perhaps the idea is to aim for the high-profit, big pocket, tourism market (which is already so obvious in the package tourist crap) and let the cheapos go to turkey/thailand, but that's a dangerous game that could put a lot of people out of business....anyway, the point is that if you're thinking about coming to Greece anytime soon be prepared to pay $15 Cdn a night for a room, $10-12 Cdn for a decent meal, $10-15 Cdn for an inter-city bus ride, and between $15-35 Cdn for a ferry ride of moderate length......ie: Canada prices...compared to two years ago that's a big differene...turkey should be a pleasant change

enough economics...though i seem to have it on the brain right now (when don't I?)...just finished reading the Ingenuity Gap by Thomas Homer-Dixon......if Noam Chomsky wasn't you're style and complete upheaval of the economic-political system makes you stock the cellar with canned goods, then a read of this book might be a more palatable version of roughly the same problem, though in a much more scientific framework that will appeal to you "reason goddamit...i need reason" types......you can't really argue with good science after all...can you?? .....anyway, he has quite the ingenious theory (pardon the pun) on how our society functions and you can't help but believe his story once it sinks in....it actually becomes quite obvious when you think about it....i won't go into the details becuase a blurb won't do it justice....just read the damn book instead of Daniel Steele this summer....and even if you're completely unconcerned about events outside of the latest Survivor and whether the bloody glove belongs to Michael Jackson or OJ, he still tells a good story...

blah...

this is what happens when i get free internet and it's goddamn hot outside.....

now to get another heinekin....

ryan