Taki Taki

High Life | 19 July 2008

Island Bliss

The sea surface is smooth and mirror-like, and from the deck of Bushido I scan the coastline for the mother and baby porpoises who live inside a blue-green grotto off Assos, the tiny village which clings to a small isthmus between the island and a huge, forested pine hill crowned by a ruined 15th-century fort. It is a bad time of day to meet mother and baby, the sun is straight up and blistering, the air still except for the noise of an occasional motor pest disturbing both the porpoises as well as yours truly. I first made their acquaintance at sunset the day before. My friend Nicola Anouilh, son of the great playwright Jean Anouilh, and a Cephalonian by choice, knows every nook and grotto of this, the most dramatic of the Ionian islands. He took me on his rubber boat inside the grotto, turned off the motor, and we both slid silently into the clear, cool water. Then we saw mama porpoise emerge, blinking her yellow-green eyes, or so they looked to us. Then came baby, more animated then mama, curious to see what these strange creatures who were visiting them were up to. We silently climbed back up on the rubber dinghy and slowly reversed out of the cave leaving them be. The old boy, the male, had left them long ago and Nicola tells me he only comes back when he needs a you-know-what rather badly. It was the most tender of scenes, one I shall not soon forget.

The normal peasant response to nature in general and porpoises in particular is to kill or drive wildlife away. There are only about 300 porpoises left around these waters, or so Nicola tells me; the rest have been slaughtered by fishermen.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in