The sail (or motorsail given the little wind) from Santorini to Folegandros was uneventful. Dad deployed his meditative strategy to combat motion sickness which doubled as an infallible method to make himself discreet and not be on our backs as he feared: go down and sleep. He would use it often throughout the two-week cruise to Athens.

We dropped anchor late afternoon in Agkali bay surrounded by half a dozen boats, who watched us manoeuvre (twice), including Stabo (who had anchored a few minutes before, weren’t concerned about us being too close at all, and even came swimming by to greet us as soon as they saw us dive in). We tried to arrange a hike to Hora at sunset with them, but opted, when we got to shore, for the bus that had serendipitously materialised before us.

A few raindrops cooled the air but didn’t deter us from having ice creams from an enticing pastry shop (where Dad bought cakes for dessert later) and justify a 40-min walk back to the boat to burn off the extra calories just ingested or about to be. We briefly inspected the sleepy village during what must have been siesta time, took a detour by the ridge, and met Artemis, a young woman working at the visibly new (and somewhat empty) luxury resort AVATON (in Greek: inaccessible and unapproachable place, sacred and inviolable) where we marveled at the immaculate complex and breath-taking views, couldn’t help but ask for a picture, and Thomas agreed to take me for our 50^th wedding anniversary, too bad we’re not married – yet.

On our way down, guess who we met again, Stabo of course!, who tipped us off about generous caper bushes lining the path, and how to preserve freshly harvested capers in salt. We had to watch out carefully as we had no idea what the plant looked like, however, once our brain had registered its appearance with rampant burgundy stems holding bright green nearly-round-chubby-love-heart-shaped leaves the size of a two-dollar coin with burgundy edging, and spade blossoms of varied maturity up to delicate flowers with white silky petals opening around a flamboyant bouquet of purple etamines, every time a caper bush was in the vicinity, it immediately set our neurons on fire with a mind-blowing pattern-recognition ability that would make any AI flinch, and how fast and easy was it to train!

We couldn’t linger, unfortunately, in this charming island as the next day the wind had turned, and we set sail again, for the much-lauded Sifnos.