Cavo Gavathas

Imagine: you are exploring the west coast of the island and when you arrive at Gavathas, you can't go any further because they've built a huge resort... This is going to happen on Crete when the Greek government, the Greek Church and the British investment Group Minoan get their way.

They want to change the westernmost point of Crete into Cavo Sidero, a huge holiday resort, that will be promoted as the biggest eco-friendly luxurious tourist project in Europe. The project will include villages built in traditional style and no less than three golf courses! http://www.minoangroup.com/cavosideroresort.htm

First of all, you should never trust something that is luxurious and eco- friendly. Eco and luxe don't go together. Like you can never fly eco-friendly, even if you pay a lot of money for your 'Green Seat'. Investment companies just put a green sticker on a project, call it eco-friendly and hope that people will believe them.

Take a look at the plans for Cavo Sidero. All scientists agree that Crete will slowly dry up thanks to climate change. Even a child can work out that such a huge project with 6 villages and 3 golf courses will use an enormous amount of water. Will Cretan agriculture have to stop because some tourists want to play golf on a bright green course? (Although it's the increasing Greek agriculture that is one of the causes of water shortages).

The project group says they respect the environment. But how can you keep the landscape green the whole year round? There aren't many landscapes on the Greek islands that remain green in the summer time...

There are many reasons to oppose this project, even if the only reason is that it's a shame that they will disturb such a huge part of the environment and privatise it. You can sign here (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Save-the-Cretan-landscape) a petition against the decision of the government, which sees Cavo Sidero as a prestige project and against the Greek church that sees money in it because they own the land and want to rent it out to the Minoan Group.

Moreover I think that mass tourism is out. Just like all those silly all inclusive hotels. Those are also pretty eco unfriendly. They waste too much food and they show no respect for the local people. Even on the big tourist island of Rhodes restaurants have had to close because the hotels want to do their own catering. Happily enough a lot of those all inclusive hotels are dominated by Russian tourists who are new to the international tourist scene and have no idea how to behave in public. Coming back from Turkey a lot of Dutch tourists say: never again on an all inclusive!

Lesvos knows only a few of these all inclusive hotels. When the first one opened in Skala Eresos the Greeks felt cheated: The English not only flew the working people to Lesvos, but also the food! So what are the locals getting out of it?

In the west of Lesvos is the little harbour village of Gavathas, not discovered yet by big groups of tourists. It's even prettier than Skala Sykaminia, which is famous for its little Church of the mermaid. Only in July and August will Gavathas have its share of Greek tourists. In the other months, when you are enjoying a meal in one of the two restaurants that look out over the harbour and the bay (there is a third restaurant without this magnificient view) or when you saunter along the street which most inhabitants view as their living room, you will think you have found a lost paradise.

It's as if investment people do everything to find places where they can disturb the peace. Because Gavathas has also been targeted by somebody who has plans that are too great. Between some houses they are trying to squeeze an all inclusive hotel. You won't believe it when you see how close the 5 or so buildings are to each other.

It doesn't look very spectacular and the buildings don't disturb the view of the village too much. But I still wonder how this hotel will change the lives of the small number of inhabitants. Most of them are fishermen and they always smile at the few tourists who visit their idyllic village. The doors of their small houses are always open and most of the day the villagers lounge on wooden benches on the street in front of their houses.

The sandy beach is still not spoilt by rows of sunbeds. That might change next year, if the hotel is ready. So let's hope that all inclusive tourists will not like going to such a little village where there is no shop or bar and you are far away from bigger villages and tourist centres.

At the end of Vatera beach there stands a huge concrete skeleton, like some warning fingers raised to the hills: here as well there was somebody who had the idea to build a big resort, but even before the place was ready, building stopped. Maybe in Gavathas as well, next year this project will still be just concrete. Then only the concrete makers will have made some money from it...

Copyright @ Smitaki 2008

Welcome to Europe!

The Greek government wants to get rid of its phone company: OTE. For months now they have been in talks with the German company Deutsche Telekom which now owns the majority of OTE shares, the first step for a take over.

The Greeks were already angry because of the privatisation of the pension funds and about low wages, but are even more than mad now. Proof is the spontaneous strikes and demonstrations. Strikes seem to have become a common part of daily life here in Greece, but I must say, at least the Greeks hit the streets or take action to defend their national institutions.

I mean, look at the Netherlands. It's crazy that you trust your money to somebody and suddenly your bank is sold to a bunch of foreign banks! I don't want to go to Fortis, Barclays or the Royal Bank of Scotland. Did anybody ask my opinion? No. The same for my web hosting company that was suddenly bought by a company that I have tried to avoid for the greater part of my life. Does the customer get compensated when he moves? Is he getting something from the changes? No. Only Judas gets away with hundreds, thousands or millions of euros. There goes my money!

For Greece it's just the first big takeover by a foreign company. The money taken by the Judas is probably given in a sealed envelop under the table (Fakelos), as is custom here. In the Netherlands that happens in the open and each time such shameful amounts are published, the Dutch take a deep breath and ask questions in parliament. Then the prime minister shrugs his shoulders because he claims there's nothing he can do, or a minister says that the grab-culture has to be stopped and then our political heroes go back to their daily work, which is like a quarrel between neigbours. Is anybody taking to the streets because they feel cheated? Are there any spontaneous strikes? No. But it's about time. According to the Dutch paper Volkskrant, the difference in wages between senior managers and the workers have tripled in 25 years! Is it any wonder life gets more and more expensive?

In Greece they know this grab-culture in the form of envelopes (fakelos). When you visit a doctor, when you have a child or you have to make a registration with a lawyer, then you take a fakelos to be sure that everything will get done. A fakelos contains an amount with at least two zeros. And of course Greek politicians are not much better than the Dutch. This winter there was a serious investigation into who got thick fakelos from the German company Siemens to ensure they would deliver all electronic supplies for the Olympic Games of Athens in 2004. And there is always some inquiry underway into a minister who has received too much money or who has transgressed his own laws.

Life in Greece these days is much more expensive than in the Netherlands. Even though the people fight against it. Last week truckers were striking, so were the drivers delivering petrol to the filling stations. University lecturers were on strike and some of the Olympic Airways crew. I probably forgot many more. Just as some weeks ago the electricity company went on strike and stopped daily life in nearly all of the country, last week again daily life was disrupted because of fuel shortage and so on.

In Lesvos we were not troubled too much. The Lidl supermarket was empty, there were no herbs or olive soaps in the co-operative shop and here and there there was a shortage of some things. Some people were worried whether they could leave the island, but I never saw them come back, so probably Olympic Airways got them to Athens. And we didn't have any fuel shortage because the island has such a huge stock that we didn't have to queue in order to get fuel, as they did in other parts of the country.

There was quite a different strike on a small island in the Aegean Sea: 121 refugees, aged between 10 and 16 years, went on hunger strike on the island of Leros, which they reached illegal from Turkey. They are housed in a hotel and nearby buildings but the conditions are inhuman.

Leros is part of the South Eastern Dodecanese and has a little over 8,000 inhabitants. Since the beginning of the year some 860 refugees, amongst them a lot of children, have reached the island. In Greece it is reported that more and more child refugees travelling alone are reaching the country. The people of Leros don't know what to do now. They have no expertise with such big numbers of refugees and they have no infrastructure to accommodate them. They will probably have to collect a lot of fakelos, if they want the Greek government to help them with this problem. Pretty soon the summer season starts on Leros, but all the hotel beds are already taken...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=a70Ljqx0vuk

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Visit of an ex-princess

The start of the summer season this year was pretty sudden. Thanks to Easter the village was made unsafe (A Dutch saying) by not only foreigners-having-spring-holidays, but also by Greeks-having-Easter- holiday. Well, they didn't really make the village unsafe, we don't have those boozing-and-yelling-youngsters. Most of the tourists here behave well, except for some Greek tourists who shout in restaurants because they're always in a hurry to have their food served.

Suddenly the hotels were fully booked and the village opened the shutters of all the shops, cafés and restaurants so that the main streets of Molyvos became busy again. Going for a walk in the mountains it's not unusual now to meet desperate people who have got lost due to difficulties with the Dutch translation of Mike Maunders walking guide or because they have no idea how to interpret the directions in the walking guides from the Andersons.

On the busiest days like Easter or the First of May the local tourists also arrived in Molyvos and on these days it was difficult to get a table in a restaurant. It sometimes was so busy that even the main road was closed, mainly due to Greeks who refused to visit the medival village on foot. Molyvos was incredibly busy and cosy and celebrated with movies and music, fireworks and parades.

However animated the start of the season was, it was difficult to warm up. Weather kept the people cold. Sometimes clouds and a cold wind made sure that temperatures were pretty low for the time of year. While in Holland and Belgium beaches were overcrowded, here the people are not so keen yet to take a dive into the blue sea.

Thanks to the end of the holidays most people returned home, then on Sunday night Molyvos was surprised by a Royal visit. It started with a huge sailing yacht approaching the harbour and then armed police took up strategic positions on the quays. Then a small boat brought Queen Sofia of Spain to shore.

This was an unofficial visit, so no red carpet was laid out. When I asked people why Queen Sofia was coming to Molyvos, most of the people who saw her arrive answered: shopping!

Shopping? In Molyvos? I really had to laugh at this. I could just see Queen Sofia entering the dusty supermarkets and the souvenir shops that for years have sold the same stuff, probably no different from elsewhere in the country. Or did she come for the Lesvorian specialities that used to be sold only in the co-operative store at the Donkey Station, but can now be found in many of the shops in the Agora? Lesvorian olive oil, the preserved sweet fruits, ouzos, all products with increasing international fame. I wondered what the glowing Mayor of Molyvos told Queen Sofia, walking side by side through the Agora.

Anyhow, she just missed the local musicians by some hours. After seeing a movie on rebetica music on Saturday Night, they took their instruments and played, sung and danced until late on Sunday Morning.

But Queen Sofia will have seen enough Greek dancing and singing in her life. She was born in 1938 in Athens as a Greek princess and daughter to king Paul I, the then ruling king of Greece. In 1962 she married the Spanish Prince Juan Carlos who became king of Spain in 1975. Sofia however lost her title of Greek princess in 1967, when democracy in Greece was 'restored'. Well, democracy... It was the junta that ended the kingdom and threw Sofia’s brother Constantine, who succeeded his father in 1964, from the throne. And even after the junta the Greeks didn't want their royalty back. In a referendum held in 1974 the majority of Greeks voted against a monarchy.

The ex-princess is not from Molyvos, nor from Lesvos, which certain people were whispering when she visited the village on Sunday night. And she was not welcomed like a queen, but who ever she spoke to seemed to be so honoured that you would never guess that this anti-royal referendum ever took place in Greece.

So why was the Spanish Queen visiting Molyvos? Was it a sentimental journey because she met her husband on a cruise among the Greek islands? Has their love Lesvorian roots? Because somewhere by an island they must have exchanged their first kiss...

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Lesvians against lesbians

This week 3 inhabitants of Lesvos started a process to protect the name Lesbian. Lesbian is the name for people who come from Lesvos, but it's also the name for a specific group of women. The publisher Dimitri Lambrou has had enough of the misuse of the name and wants to get a ban on the name lesbian being used by the 'Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece'.

You'd think that all this fuss is just to get some publicity. Because how in heaven can you fight against a name that for decades has found its place in the world? Dimitri Lambrou declares that when he gets his right in Greece, he will fight the case internationally. Which will be great fun, because then he will get the whole of the lesbian world (and here I mean women who love women) against him. They're getting ready for it, reading about his case in Greece. Just google Dimitri Lambrou and you'll see what those women want to do to him! Mr. Lambrou is in serious need of some bodyguards if he doesn't want to get hurt.

You would say that Mr. Lambrou doesn't have a case. First of all the inhabitants of the island of Lesvos are more often called Lesviots or Lesvonians (see: http://www.anglo-hellenic.com/vacancies/lesvos.htm) And secondly, thanks to the new alphabet and translation rules an inhabitant of the island is not called a Lesbian, but a Lesvian. Just like the island is no longer called Lesbos, but Lesvos. Because the second letter of the new Greek alphabet β is not beta anymore but vita! That is what I learned at my Greek classes.

And that is not such a great burden, but a very nice change whenever you surf on the internet. When you type Lesbos, you get thousands of sites that have nothing to do with the island, because they are meant for these special women. However when you type Lesvos, you get all the information you want on all kinds of sites about the island of Lesvos.

Greeks really have problems with names. Just look at the political dispute about the name FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). The fight between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia about which name this quite young country (it was founded in 1993) may use has taken years now.

Mr. Lambrou could also have researched why the island of Lesvos has two names. There are many Greeks who call the island Mytilini, the same name as its capital. You see this name on maps and even in the old times references to this island used the name Mytilini (Mytilene). It would be the most simple solution for the island to be officially named Mytilini. Then you would not have to go to court and the inhabitants would just be called Mytilenians.

And by the way, not only the island has two names. The little town of Molyvos also has two. Greeks mostly talk about Mithymna and this name is written on many road signs. Many a tourist will get lost because they could not find the name Molyvos...

But the lesbians also do not have right on their side. They named each other after the island because Sappho once lived here. According to them, Sappho was the first lesbian. However, when you carefully read everything that is written about this great poetess, you will never find any proof of Sappho being a lesbian. Most stories about Sappho point in the opposite direction: it is said she had a daughter and Sappho jumped from a rock because of her love for a man. So why, women love? Is that only because of her poems that glorify not only men but also women like the goddess of Aphrodite?

Mr. Lambrou has a point saying that the name lesbian hurts the inhabitants of Lesvos because a reason not to visit the island is that many tourists still think that Lesvos is an island exclusively for lesbians. Most of the tourists here on the island are from both sexes. And of course we may have a slightly higher amount of female visitors, but most of 'those' ladies go to the west to Eresos, where it's claimed that Sappho was born. The island is so big, that no one can be offended by that.

So, Mr. Lambrou, you'd better look into the translation rules for the use of the letter β (vita) and you should find out what name officially belongs to this island.

But, ladies lesbians, you also should think over your name: nobody ever proved that Sappho was a member of your club (and why aren't you called sapponians?). And then, the horrible things you say on the internet don't suit you. Not against this poor Mr. Lambrou who at least started a very interesting debate, nor against this beautiful island that gave you your name.

Readers: beware of the name Lesbos!

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Loud Speakers

I bet there are no village criers anymore in Europe. But they still exist, only now they are electronic criers. Here on the island, in each village they have an electronic village crier: everywhere there are loud-speakers that regularly announce important messages from the municipality. They announce for example when the electricity or the water will be cut because of repairs, they announce when there is a municipality meeting or when and where festivities will take place. But with this system you can also try to find your lost dog and people are even summoned to remove their car when they are parked in the wrong place (wich makes you the laughing stock of the town!).

We don't live in the village so we have no idea when it is forbidden to water your plants because there is not enough water, or at what time a concert will take place, which has been organised in the summer. That's good, because when I'm in the village and the village crier starts yelling messages I always get scared to death!

People living in the villages are used to it. For them it's a good way to stay tuned to what's happening in the village. But for people who are still not used to this electronic voice, the Holy Week which ends with Easter, was an ordeal, because the village crier is also used by the Church.

Masses in the Orthodox Church are very relaxed and look more like a social gathering than a Holy gathering. While the priest is saying the mass, the church-goers have only one ear and one eye cocked to the priest. The other eye and ear is for their fellow worshippers. They shake hands, they chat and they try to control their children, who are running and playing hide-and-seek between the legs of the adults. They all walk in and out of the church as if they were attending a reception.

What a difference to a catholic mass! I was raised a catholic and as a child I hated to go to church, where I had to attend an event that I didn't understand and where I had to keep quiet for at least an hour.

It's much easier for Greek children, because during the Orthodox celebrations they can run around with their friends. And for the adults it's also nicer. That's why most Greeks attend a mass at Easter: to meet friends and family and to exchange Easter greetings.

On Holy Saturday the Holy Light is flown in from Jerusalem to Athens, and from there to all other destinations and when this Holy Light arrives in the church around 23:00 the midnight mass can begin. A lot of people only go to church to be there at the height of the mass, around midnight, when the papas starts distributing the Holy Light to the church-goers who all brought a candle for the purpose. Then the church bells start ringing and fireworks are crackling in the night sky.

Christos Anexi (Christ has risen) is what you say to each other (though what a strange wish!). Then people hurry home to finally eat the long missed meat. They start with the majeritsa soup, made of the organs of the lamb that will later follow as a roasted or stuffed dish from the oven, served after the soup or the next day.

This Easter night I went to a friend in Petra who has a marvellous view of the beautiful church on the rock of Petra. And, very important that night, she has an open fire. Because although during the last few weeks the temperatures has tried more than once to reach 30°C, at Easter the winter cold seemed to have returned.

When the mass started, the chanting voice of the papas sounded through the loudspeakers and into the cozy warm living room. How luxuriously can you attend mass? At midnight the bells started ringing and hundreds of firecrackers were thrown from the huge rock. For some minutes fire works painted the sky with thousands of colourful stars, which made me feel like I was on a canal in Amsterdam on New Years Night. Happy Easter!

Between the firecrackers people started to descend slowly from the church, careful to keep their flames alive until they got home. But the priest kept on going with the mass. I thought that at midnight everybody went home for an Easter meal. But not the papas, he even had company from a second priest and together they chanted for another full hour. For whom, I asked myself...

This was not the only mass that was brought to you by the loudspeakers. All during the Holy Week before Easter masses were celebrated early in the morning or late at night. And you could attend all of them via the village crier! There was no escape: in the villages all important masses are served at home.

The Holy Fire from Jerusalem is called a miracle. But the weather can also be called a miracle, because it's starting to look like a tradition that the weather forecast for Easter is always bad. (by the way, there are no weather forecasts cried through the loudspeakers). Cold and rain, nice forecasts when you organised a souvla (roasted lamb over a fire). But on Sunday morning suddenly there was the sun and the blue sky. The fire under the lamb was not rained out and the guests were warmed by the sun. If that wasn't an Easter miracle...

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Tulips from Lesvos

As a child you collected cigar-bands, sugar-bags or stamps. Growing older the collectors boxes and albums were put into a cupboard and forgotten. Only getting much older people get to an age to restart collecting things...

The birdwatchers and botanists who visit Lesvos are in fact also collectors. Instead of albums with printed places where they have to place their stamps, they follow the books of scientists that have written where things have to flower, grow of fly.

Last week I wrote that here on Lesvos there are some 46 varieties of dragonflies and some 320 varieties of birds. The number of plants here on the island is estimated at about 1,400 to 1,500. A real job to find and document them all.

Last week I went for a walk with two botanists who had met each other only that same day. I soon saw my mistake: going for a walk with one botanist is nice and very interesting. Going for a walk with 2 botanists is a disaster: they put their noses into the long grasses and you can wait as long as you want, but for them no more walking. Their debating about names, sorts, forms and colours has no end.

So yesterday I went for a walk with only one botanist, which still demands some patience, because now it is high season not only for the birdwatchers, but also for the botanists. The island is booming with flowers and on each walk you will find different ones and all are to be photographed and documented. This time we went from Lafionas (close to Petra) to Klapados, a village deserted since the Turks that lived there were chased out in 1920 (rumour says they were all killed). The houses are now taken over by nature.

Standing at the foot of a little waterfall where a huge dark purple Arum (Arum dioscoridis) flowered, I regretted not having stayed home. While I waited for the botanist I followed a tortoise that strolled across the path, I looked for unknown flowers and I tried to identify the different songs of the birds that performed a deafening concert in the mountains. A little later however I didn't at all regret coming for a walk with the botanist: I saw tulips!

I must admit that I am still a Dutch woman who is crazy about tulips. Of course it is now well known that tulips didn't originally come from Holland. They come from somewhere in Central Asia. But it's the Dutch that cultivated the tulips since the 16th century and made all the colourful and fancy varieties that you now see all over the world.

In the 16th century the Austrian ambassador to Turkey took some tulips to his friend Carolus Clusius, who worked in the Royal garden of Vienna. A little later Clusius became professor at the university of Leiden (Holland) and took the tulips with him. He was crazy about tulips and started cultivating them, with beautiful new coloured ones as a result. In 1592 he published a book about tulips, the first book ever written on tulips. The years between 1630 and 1637 are known as the Dutch tulip mania. Tulip bulbs were hyped on the exchange market. A tulip bulb in those years was even more expensive than a house on a canal in Amsterdam! When the speculation crashed, many a merchant went bankrupt.

When you see the wild tulips here (the Aegean Tulip, Tulipa aegenensis), you wonder how come that these simple flowers have such a rich history. If you don't pay close attention you can easily confuse them with the red poppies or the red anemones that are also still flowering.

Here on the island the tulips grow on the higher mountain slopes (I would guess above 500 metres). Last year I though that when you wanted to see them, you had to climb Olympos or Lepetimnos all the way, a journey I made once and never again because of my fear of heights and when finally reaching the tulips, they were fenced in and far from the fences. On the road to Klapados, they were so near I could touch them. It took a great effort not to pick them, they are protected.

After the Arum and the tulip we got another surprise: a very strange flower, which looked like the Star of Bethlehem, but each flower had a large ball between its leaves. A flower with balls so to speak. I first thought that it might be chick peas, the balls had that shape and I must admit that I've still never seen the chick pea plant. But a botanist knows where to look and after consulting different books on plants in the Aegean area we got the name: a fruit bearing Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum sphaerocarpum), a rare form because they do not bear fruit every year. What happened to make them bear fruit is a big question...

So I'm not going to bother you with the names of all the other flowers we encountered. We walked through knee high colourful flowering meadows where bees were buzzing frantically and the sweet smell of honey made you think you had just entered the workplace of a beekeeper. (be careful: last week a woman was hospitalised after she was stung many times by bees while passing some beehives).

We passed forest boundaries where bright yellow Oriental Spring Sunflowers (Doronicum columnae) lit up amongst the dark undergrowth, we saw the mysterious Viagra (Dracunculus vulgaris) which had just opened its enormous flower, we smelled all those odours, we saw so many colours and finally I couldn't resist picking a bunch of bright blue cornflowers to take home.

Collecting is fun, especially when you have some 1500 plants to discover. But sometimes you get dizzy from the idea that you have to find them on such a big island. You have to be at the right place at the right time, because plants have their own calendar for when to appear. We have a few more weeks to go in this crazy world of flowers and then we are facing the drying out landscapes. Sometimes you wish it could always be spring...

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Under the Sahara

We live in a strange world... We don't live in the Sahara, but we live under the Sahara! For a few days clouds of sand have covered the sun and the blue sky. I'm not sure if the high temperatures are due to this Sahara sand. But it's certain that I had to dig deep into my closet to find some summer clothes. At 28°C even a light sweater is too hot.

Not only Lesvos is carrying the weight of the African Sahara, but the whole of Greece and who knows what other places in Europe. In Athens people with respiratory problems have been advised to stay indoors.

Our friend and professor of dragonflies, Wolgang Lopau, is however excited by this clammy weather: will the African Schrabacken dragonfly (anax ephipigel) hitch a ride with the Sahara sand? Wolfgang Lopau travels as much as he can around Greece to visit the haunts of the dragonflies. His home is Lesvos, where you can find at least 46 varieties of dragonflies. That makes Lesvos the biggest dragonfliy island in Greece, as well as the best researched island in Greece.

That's why we were happy to take Lopau to one of our favourite places on the island, which he did not yet know. Certainly it's a place of interest to him because the loamy soil there means that there are a lot of little ponds, even during hot summers.

Palios is a region south of Mandamados, towards Mytilini. Already next to Clio by the road you will see a little lake that shows the loamy soil we're dealing with. This area stretches for kilometres down to the coast and it offers a landscape of low mastic trees, strawberry trees, wild lavender, Cistus bushes and little ponds where frogs, tortoises, ducks and dragonflies live.

Close to the little hamlet of Palios there were graves thousands of years old. But now we are not so sure if there are graves. The square holes cut out of stone do seem like the graves they found here in Molyvos. But there are scientists that say that they used to be hot air ovens where pieces of loam were baked in the sun. When you consider this loam rich region, this theory is fairly possible.

Anyhow, Lopau was very happy with so much water. I saw him thinking hard: what dragonflies were hiding under the water?

A dragonfly starts as an egg in the mud, just below the waterline or scattered over the water. From the egg comes a larva which has to shed its skin 7 times, which can take anything from a few months up to 5 years. During all that time the larva hides in the water. At the last shedding of skin it will crawl out of the water (around May) and then the dragonfly wriggles itself out of the larva and takes a first short flight to find a place in the sun to dry.

On this warm day in April we saw some early heather dragonflies (Sympetrum fonscolombii) that were encouraged by the hot weather to take to the air. Also a Libella depressa, which had just shed its last skin and flew out with glittering brand new wet wings to find a place in the sun to dry.

Dragonflies are like fairytale creatures, with their 4 fragile transparent wings and a usually brightly coloured body. They live by ponds or lakes, a very few of them daring to live close to running water. Whenever you are looking for dragonflies, you have to search for water. Which can be challenging in Greece. Lopau has learned to study the landscape. For example where there are oleanders there is usually water. However it's best to ask the locals. Most of them kind of know dragonflies. But when Lopau shows them his book full of pictures of dragonflies, they generally can point him to a secret hidden little pond.

The day we went to Palios the Sahara sand was still not there and the sun had the sky to itself. Although we knew it was too early for dragonflies, Lopau turned out to be a mine of information. For example, I have no knowledge at all of birds, although I live on an island famous for its birds. At this moment bird watchers are flocking to the island to look for the 320 species, (according to the birdwatchers bible 'Birding on the Greek Island of Lesvos' by Richard Brooks), that live or take a break during their migration on Lesvos.

Even though we were mainly looking down in order to find dragonflies and orchids (Palios was full of a few kinds of orchids), thanks to Lopau in a few hours we saw an impressive list of birds: a Black Stork (Ciconia Nigra), a Ruddy Shelduck (Tadorna Ferruginea), a Cretzschmar's Bunting (Emberiza Caesia), a Crested Lark (Galerida Cristata), a Hooded Crow (Corvus Corone Sharpii), a Little Egret (Egretta Garzetta) and a Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe Hispanica).

Who makes these names?! Here is another list: Caloteryx Virgo Festina, Platycnemis Pennipes Pennipes, Ischnura Elegans Ebneri, Hemianax Ephippiger, Crocothemis Erythraea. They all live on Lesvos and are names for small creatures, welcome at the Dragonfly island. Another side of nature that makes Lesvos a very special island.

Copyright © Smitaki 2008