The Virgin Traveler: Shiny, happy people.

She was a large woman. Maybe 260 or 270 pounds. Tattoos of flowers adorned her ankles and a red flowery bikini top held up her chest with industrial strength. Rolls of fat flopped here and there, over her blue bikini bottoms, which covered just what was necessary. Her long dangly earrings called attention to her short, reddish curly hair and her permanent, toothy smile. She was treading water in the clear crisp sea water while waiting for her boyfriend to climb in.

"It looks nice," I said to my sister standing beside me, not wanting to jump in the water quite yet. The woman was watching us. "It is quite nice!" she said, her Scottish accent like music interrupting our conversation, her smile never leaving her face.


Her boyfriend, a 40-ish Norwegian, plump, bald and grinning in his red speedo, climbed down the ladder on the side of the boat. He was nervous. He gingerly put one foot into the intertube attached to the boat, and then the other foot. "Love, you don't have to climb in it!" the woman yelled as they both started giggling. The Norwegian said something and laughed and paddled about three feet before the rope held him back. He floated back to the ladder and climbed up.

The woman put on her snorkel mask and dove down with her underwater camera. A few minutes later, she surfaced and came back aboard. "Look at my pictures!" she said as she approached us with unrestrained enthusiasm. "It's my new camera. He bought it for me just before we came on holiday."


"Your first time on Crete?" We nodded. "I came here last year for four weeks and stayed for ten months. Then I met him and now we live in Norway. We had a big party yesterday when I came back into town. It involved lots of kissing and hugging and singing and drinking." We laughed. She told us how it's not so hard to learn Norwegian. She told all of her friends in Norway to only speak Norwegian and not English.

At the next stop on our tour boat, they snorkeled again, this time, with him wearing a life jacket. She took close up pictures of him underwater and then showed me, while he was standing there, looking over her shoulders, giggling and both of them saying things about the fishies they saw. They got dressed, and continued smiling while enjoying the sun and some beer.