Emporios to Masouri

After last night's strong winds had blown through, the new day dawned much quieter and more peaceful. We spent this morning taking the dingy round the corner to explore the next couple of coves east, before returning for swimming, reading, and packing ready to go on the next steps of our respective journeys.

Went for lunch in Kostas taverna - feta with sesame, Greek salad, and fried aubergine and zucchini. As we were eating another English Moody appeared, although my dad misidentified it as a Bavaria(!) until he checked the livery with the binoculars. The tracer a called a taxi, we waited in the shade of the taverna for it to arrive and I got in to go to Masouri.

Arriving 20 minutes later after an extremely beautiful journey around a spectacular series of bays, I got dropped off right outside my hotel, and sorted out my registration. There was some confusion over the dates - I think they thought we were arriving tomorrow as originally planned before Tom moved things forward by a day - but it was all ok.


After settling in, having a proper shower, and putting on some non-salty clothes, I feel cleaner than I have in days. I'm now planning to laze away the afternoon until the heat dies down, then I'm going to take a trip to the market to pick up some more soap and shampoo and maybe some bottled water, and wait for the others to arrive some time between 9-10 this evening.

The Bone Collector

While with my folks, they mentioned that one of their guests had persuaded them to read Jeffery Deaver's The Bone Collector. Not wanting to lag behind the curve, I read it this afternoon.

Lincoln Rhyme was New York's best forensic scientist until an accident left him quadriplegic and suicidal. But when a former colleague arrives with a juicy case, Rhyme reluctantly allows himself to become involved. Recognising that the only person who attempted to protect the evidence of the crime scene was patrol cop Amelia Sachs, Rhyme recruits Sachs to be his eyes and ears on the case.

Following clues left at the scene of the first two murders, Rhyme and Sachs race to decode the evidence to locate the murderer's next victims before it is too late. Despite some close calls, the police manage to save most of the other victims, but struggle when a fire in a church causes the next set of clues to be lost. Eventually, the murderer starts to become frustrated when his actions are thwarted one to many times and turns his attention to the police.

Despite the absurd conclusion, Deaver does a nice job of capturing the mind of psychology both of the increasingly unhinged murderer and of Rhymes, who has lost all enthusiasm for life following his accident. There are a few errors in the science — obvious enough that I was able to pick them up without recourse to wikipedia — but otherwise the details seem pretty well done.

The others arrive

The others arrived a little before midnight local time, having managed to get themselves from Kos airport, via Mastichari, to Pothia and, eventually Masouri. After a little bit of pondering, Eve and Izzy opted for the room next to ours, deciding that access to the large balcony was more important than two single beds.

Tom showed up to check the arrangements for the morning, something that made us all decide to opt for hotel breakfasts, and we knocked off ready for the early start — far worse for those still running on BST — the next morning.