Cyclones and Electrical Storms on the Mediterranean

I heard a wailing in the distance as I switched off the patio lights for the night. The lights in the sky were off as well as cloud cover left the town in darkness. The sea was black and calm and there was an eerie stillness in the air, a sense that something was not right. The wailing was getting louder.

We are in Himara, a small Greek town on Albania’s Ionian coast, where we eat Gyros for lunch, swim in the clear sea and hike the rocky hillsides along with grazing goats and sheep. We rented a small house for the month where we have more outdoor space than indoor. The owners are an elderly couple who live upstairs; the old woman keeps an eye on us from the balcony above when we are in the garden to make sure we don’t pick the fruits from her walnut trees.

Every day that we’ve been here has been a warm, sunny one. The town gets quite crowded with tourists during the summer months, with people coming from Tirana, as well as landlocked Macedonia and Kosovo, to enjoy the sea and sand. In recent weeks, though, the crowds have disappeared and many of the restaurants and beach bars have closed. The weather has remained perfect though. That is until the cyclone hit.

In the next few minutes, the wailing grew louder as if a train were bearing down on us. The wind hit suddenly, like that of a bus passing close. Our laundry flew off the line and I ran out in the dark to collect it. All night long the wind howled and blew.

Life can be so much more enjoyable without the news. I have been reading, snorkeling, playing games with the kids and going for walks rather than wasting time seeing what’s going on in the world. There’s really not much happening that is useful to know about. Except maybe the imminent cyclone bearing down on our town.

Earlier that day I noticed people bringing their boats out of the water. The remaining restaurants removed their lounge chairs and umbrellas. I thought this was another sign of the season shutting things down, but rather it must have been preparations for the coming storm. Clueless as to what was on its way, we enjoyed a day at the beach and then went home and put our laundry out to dry.

The winds died down by morning, but the sky remained stormy and the seas were rough. The four of us went for a walk along the beach and rocky peninsula on the south side of town. I was thinking to myself that this would be the first day in town that I would skip having a swim when a rogue wave came up and swept away one of ND’s flip flops off his foot. Within seconds it was a hundred meters out to sea.

Tola and I both gave him a hard time about it. “You need to learn to take care of your stuff,” is something we tell him all too often when he breaks or loses something.

“Fine, I’ll pay for it,” he said. “Now let’s go back and play video games.”

“Not until we get your shoe,” I told him. I dived in and swam after it, but I quickly lost sight of it in the swell. I looked back to shore and Tola, ND and NG were all yelling and pointing to my left. After a couple minutes swimming in that direction without a glimpse of the shoe I looked back to shore again. This time they were pointing in the other direction. They seemed so excited that I thought maybe they saw a shark rather than the shoe. I quickly swam back in and sent ND home for our inflatable raft.

A wave quickly flipped the raft before we could get in, but after a few tries Tola and I both got in and began paddling.

“I’m going home, ok?” ND yelled from shore as we struggled past the waves.

This was no longer about the flip flop or the money or even the principle. It was retrieving something that needed to be retrieved. “Not until we get the shoe,” I yelled back. I could hear his sigh over the crashing of waves.

It was virtually impossible to see the blue shoe from water level, but quite easy with the meager elevation the raft provided. It was almost disappointing how easily we found it.

The winds were over, but the extreme weather was not. More clouds rolled in that night and the electrical storms began. Rather than wind, it was lightning and thunder that kept us awake. A continuous rolling and flashing made it impossible to tell which thunder sound was from which lightning strike. The next day was again calm, but the electrical storm returned in the evening with a heavy downpour that lasted all night. At midnight a fiery blaze in the sky turned off all our lights in one sudden deafening explosion. It didn’t get dark though as the lightning continued throughout the night, lighting our room like a disco hall with only brief seconds of darkness between flashes.

The next day began without power. I spent the morning trying to find a coffee. Albania is a country where even the gas stations have espresso machines, so it’s usually not too hard to find a decent coffee. Without power, though, shop after shop turned me away.

We live electronic lives without ever realizing it until the power is gone. Our electric stove couldn’t cook us breakfast that morning. The kids fretted about how they would get on the internet. My phone battery was almost dead. And there was no coffee.

We lived in Cambodia for years without electricity and I remembered how there always seemed to be more hours in the day without the distraction of electronics.

“I have an idea,” I announced to the family. “Today we’ll take a break from staring at screens and we’ll spend the entire day outdoors.”

The storm clouds had departed, leaving a calm sea to reflect the bright blue sky. It was the perfect day for a long hike, or “death march,” as the kids call them. We would follow this with some snorkeling and cliff diving and then end the day watching the sunset at the beach.

We all sat down in the hallway to lace up our hiking shoes when our house filled with the beeping sounds of phones, iPads and kindles coming to life. Every power outlet in the house was connected to one of our electronics and they all awoke as the power once again surged through the lines.

The kids took their shoes back off and flopped into bed, eager to reconnect. It was fair enough as they did have homework to do. I kept my shoes on, though, and hiked to a nearby coffee shop where I ordered a makiato and sat for a while in the sun.