The Test Drive

Again we have been busy picking olives. Now we understand how to pick like the locals and not worry about all the leaves we have made some progress. We picked nine of our trees on Sunday with the help of our friends. The first five of these trees were reasonably heavily laden giving us four sacks. On Monday we only managed five trees by ourselves, giving a slightly disappointing one and a half sacks. We now have, including our friends, a total of seven sacks that will be pressed on Wednesday.

Today, Tuesday we went to Kalamata to test-drive a car. On the way we stopped at Kardamyli, as we now have the forms for customs relating to our personal effects that should arrive next week. The letter from the shipping agent asked us to take these forms to the police station to have our signature witnessed. We hoped that we would find the police officer in a good mood again!

What had gone wrong this morning? He was most unhelpful and wouldn’t even explain what we were required to fill in on the form, let alone witness our signature and sent us packing.

The test drive was quite an experience; Pano, took us out of town throwing the car first one way then the other. He threw the car round in a complete circle two or three times demonstrating the turning circle, then decided to do an emergency stop, a warning might have been nice. All the time speaking very loudly and enthusiastically in Greek whilst gesturing with his hands, of course ninety percent of this was totally incomprehensible to us, but that didn’t deter him! Not finished yet and I am already feeling queasy, Pano drives us to some wasteland which adjoins a small unused beach. Here he becomes world champion rally cross driver! We literally fly round and round the wasteland, in and out of the water, up and down the sand dunes, four-wheel drive off, now on, Ashley and I holding on for dear life. When we return to the dealership Panos’ helpful wife Paula laughs and apologises for not warning us. Pano had asked her to tell us the nature of the test drive but she got side tracked by a telephone call. We are impressed and decide to buy the car; it will be delivered 20 December.

When we had finished our business Paula offered to take us to offices in Kalamata were we could get our custom forms witnessed and signed. She kindly drove us back into town, first making a detour to the bank to withdraw the deposit, and we had the paper work completed in just a couple of minutes. How nice most people are!