Memorable Travel: Crete, Greece

There were 16 of us sleeping in my great grandfather's village house in the mountains. It was surrounded by olive trees, animals, and the constant screeching, strangely relaxing sound of the cicadas in the distance. And it was 116 degrees outside. And the well dried up...

The next day after our family field trip to the beach we had two choices in terms of de-sanding and de-salting. Choice one: bathe in the stream at the bottom of the mountain. Choice two: don't. So it was unanimous. All sixteen of us got out out of the cars and walked over to the banks of one of the most crystal clear streams I've ever seen, towels and shampoo in hand.

My uncles found a piece of PVC pipe, remnants from the flood that had ripped through the village months earlier. They stuck it into a high point in between two rocks in the stream and created a make-shift shower head for everyone to sit under. My hair has never been as shiny as it was then. So there we were, eight kids, eight adults, all in bathing suits, sitting in the stream with our heads tilted back under the PVC fountain, rinsing out the shampoo and getting the sand off our Mediterranean sun-tanned skin.

For villagers passing by, it was a sight to see.

For us, it was an experience we'll never forget.

My Uncle John decided to pretend he had a genie that he was able to communicate with that would grant wishes and sometimes do chores for him. This communication had been going on all week, but now he was ready for the prank to end all others. With his thick Greek accent, the summoning of the genie sounded like, "My zenie, my zenie, my zenie, come wash my shoes!"

But that day in the stream, with no shoes in sight, my uncle had other plans in mind. The next thing we knew, after we'd all finished "showering," we looked down the stream to see him sitting on what seemed like a rock. Then the usual, "my zenie, my zenie, my zenie," (in Greek there's no "j" sound) came out of his mouth, followed by, "watermelon, watermelon," and he started chanting something we couldn't understand.

The next thing we knew he was falling backwards in the stream and a gigantic watermelon popped out of the water from under his feet. And at the time, we were too young and too dumbfounded to even think about how it got there and whether the "zenie" was real or not.

So there we sat, bodies cleaned in the bubbling stream, hair glistening in the setting sunlight, and juice from the zenie's watermelon dripping down our chins. We didn't care how it got there, but we were certainly happy it did.

Picture of Elafonisi, the beach we were returning from: http://paleohora-holidays.gr