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Trip of a Lifetime
Greece

It was to be the trip of a lifetime. We’d sail the Aegean on a 44-foot cutter, visiting turquoise Turkish coves and serene Greek islands that have escaped infiltration by most tourists. But when terrorists struck at our homeland three weeks before we were to depart, the prospect of traveling halfway around the world – closer to the impending war – seemed foolish to some. Could a group of Americans still enjoy a holiday at the edge of the Muslim world? Should we?

Aegean Escape followed our voyage aboard the T.G. Ellyson as it sailed from the Greek island of Kos, along the Turkish coast to Rhodes. What we found was a blessed respite from the anxiety gripping the U.S. As sun and waves leached the fear from our American consciousness, a welcome Aegean peace took root. From Turkey’s Kalaboshi Cove and Loryma Bay, to the quiet Greek harbors of Tilos and Halki, the local people taught us a lesson in the essential human spirit – beneath it all, we are one.

Kos – Twixt East and West

If this taxi driver manages to kill me after I’ve cheated the terrorists over four flights and 8,000 miles, I’m going to be furious. Worse yet, I’ll owe Fred an apology.

A half-dozen young Greek men fill the tiny terminal with cigarette smoke, waiting apathetically for the conveyor to deliver the knapsacks that will supply them for the lonely weeks that lay ahead. They are the only other passengers with us on the pre-dawn flight from Athens to Kos, one of fourteen islands misnamed the Dodecanese on the easternmost fringe of Greece.

Anticipation is keeping exhaustion at bay. After thirty hours of travel from Sacramento with little sleep, my heart is proving itself stronger than fatigue. Sleep can wait.

“We’re in Greece,” I whisper to my father after we’ve gathered our bags.

It’s a day I never expected to happen – one that almost didn’t. How easy it was six months ago to jump at the chance to join my father for a once-in-a-lifetime voyage in the Aegean. And how worrisome to actually leave my husband and daughters to board one of the first half-filled international flights to cross the Atlantic after terrorists paralyzed the American airline system.

Relieved to be once again on terra firma, I’m finally free to resume wistful daydreams of where our Mediterranean journey will take us. Next week, to book-end our lives, Dad and I will return to the Athens suburb where we spent four happy years as a young family in the sixties. But on this miraculous morning, we deliver ourselves to the sea.

Outside, at the curb in front of Kos’s rural airport, the young Greeks are throwing their bags into the trunks of two new Mercedes sedans. A pallid sky is just beginning to lighten, exposing our first glimpse of Kos. My father and I join our traveling companions, Dad’s friends Neal and Leni, who have hired a taxi to take us the twenty-five kilometers to Kos’s new marina. There we’ll join the crew of the T.G. Ellyson, a 44-foot cutter that we’ll call home for the next seven days as we explore the islands and the Turkish coast.

I slump with relief into the back seat of the Volvo cab, my eyes fixed on the landscape being revealed by the promise of daylight. Dawn comes stitched in gold… Will Homer slip into my Aegean dreams?

There had been many days in the past few weeks when I questioned the wisdom of traveling so far from home, when I questioned traveling at all with the world on the verge of war. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon brought tourism from the United States to its knees. The entire planet seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for the inevitable military response against Islamic extremists in Afghanistan. I’ve no idea what the future will bring. In the meantime, we’re taking our chances that the impending hostilities won’t derail our trip.

Somehow it seems appropriate we’ll await the first 21^st century confrontation between the Eastern and Western worlds here, on the demarcation of the Ottoman Empire, the limit-line of the Crusades.

It wasn’t easy to make the decision to come. On the one hand, I knew the chance to make this trip with my father probably wouldn’t come again. On the other hand, the fear and misgiving in my husband’s voice still rings in my ears.

“This isn’t the time to be so far from home. Can’t you go another time?”

“Trust me, please. We’ll be fine.”

Now, we are on the outskirts of the Middle East, testing the theory that terrorists won’t bother our little party of four. I cling to the prospect of discovering some primal, unsung chorus waiting deep within me for the sea to unlock.