

I am in Portland now, and the weather is dreadful! I thought of going biking+camping on the weekend to visit natural hot springs (they are especially tempting in such weather), but it’s probably to cold to sleep in a tent (it is about +5…+7ºC at night), especially if I get wet while riding the bike… A car would help, but I can’t drive 😦 OK, getting driver’s license is on must-do list for the summer!
As some readers with whom I maintain personal contact know, I broke my foot in the end of November. So I couldn’t maintain practically any activities, let alone naturist ones. I hope this week I will get rid of the plaster on my foot and will not need crutches anymore! Let’s see what the doctor says.
We went from Ioannina, passing through picturesque mountainous landscapes, and camped at a small beach close to Syvota (Σύβοτα).
Like at most of the Greek beaches, you won’t see any signs for nudists there and when we arrived there in the late afternoon none was clothes-free. At night, however, when others left and the temperature was still very warm, there was no reason to remain clad. When I went for a night swim, something truly special happened: as I always swim in goggles (the only thing I like to wear while swimming ;-)), I could see that my body left thousands of tiny sparkling traces in the water – it looked like golden ‘stardust’ that fairies leave when they fly around, so I called myself an underwater fay. In Sweden there is an annual competition for water fairies who play different music instruments standing in the river. Then I think in Greece there should be the next stage of the competition: for water fairies dancing in the sea at night! Then spectators will have to submerge as well, but it is not a problem, since in August the average night temperature in Greece is warmer than the average day temperature in Sweden and the sea stays warm… Biological explanation for this phenomenon is that bioluminescent plankton, which is abundant in the Mediterranean in the late summer, responds to mechanical disturbance with glowing.
When we woke up in the morning I already felt confident enough to stay naked but when I got out of the tent I saw that there was a straight couple and the man was also sans clothes. Then we swam to the rocks and jumped from them (see the video above). That man also came there and showed us a better dive. He was a friendly French guy and suggested us to show how to dive. Well, I tried just from less than half of the height of those rocks and wasn’t very successful 😦 Hope I’ll learn to dive from such height next year!
When we returned there was another couple, Greeks, who looked at us; probably they didn’t expect to see naked people there, and I thought it might be uncomfortable for them, but in fact soon they disrobed completely as well. So until a yacht with a big italian family arrived, the beach had become mostly naturist =)
And small pebbles of the beach were also perfect to try out a slingshot which I bought in Ioannina (it is sold there as a souvenir for some reason).
Don’t worry, I wouldn’t use it against this beautiful Scarce Swallowtail but rather to protect from the aggressive textile invaders 😀