Where's Janell?

Seated snuggly in the backseat of a RAV 4, we race through the hills of Mykonos and down the treacherously dark and windy streets that only a true Grecian can navigate. Having driven with Turks and Greeks, by now we're used to speeding down impossibly narrow streets, at incredibly high speeds, toward oncoming traffic, at the peril of all pedestrians nearby. So we don't worry too much as we barrel through Mykonos with our new Greek friends, Constantinos and George, even as they engage in a heated argument from the front seat. The five of us are on a mission, and right now it's the only thing on our minds.

"We find your friend," Constantinos and George promise.

That's right, only twelve hours into our Greek adventure and we've already lost someone.

To catch up: Elissa and I met two girls, Janell and Sing Yi, at our hostel in Istanbul. They decided to come with us to Greece and the four of us have been traveling together since we left Istanbul on Friday.

Our stay in Mykonos started off easily enough. We landed on the island on Sunday night via ferries from Kusadasi and Samos. We hadn't pre-arranged accomodations, so we were happy when we got off the ferry to be greeted by dozens Mykonians with rooms to rent. We struck a deal with a woman whose house had a stunning view of the harbor, crammed ourselves and our gigantic backpacks into her Smart car, and headed out.

As soon as we got to our room we headed out to town center to celebrate Janell's 31st birthday. (For those of you who are wondering if Mykonos is as crazy a party island as everything says it is- the answer is yes! Even during the off season...)

A bad experience with a Turkish "hamburger" the night before, coupled with the day long trip from Kusadasi had left me exhausted and slightly ill, so after a few hours of dancing and drinking at Scandanavian Bar I decided to pack it in early (2:30am). I couldn't find the others before I left, but I knew they wouldn't have trouble making it back. It's a small island after all. What's the worst that can happen?

When I woke up the next morning to do some yoga on our ocean view terrace (possibly one of the most amazing yoga experiences of my life) I was quick to learn that not everyone had made it back. Janell's bed was empty and all of her things were exactly where they had been the night before.

Dammit.

After a quick debrief with Elissa and Sing Yi it was determined that Janell was last seen with a guy she had met at one of the clubs. He had promised to bring her home later that morning.

"Okay, okay. It's only 10:30am, that's still morning, right? She'll show up soon," we assured ourselves.

Here's where things start to get a little tricky. The woman whose home we were staying in arrived to tell us that we had to check out by noon unless we wanted to pay for another night, and since we had already decided to camp at Peraga Beach we started to pack up our stuff. When Janell still hadn't returned an hour later we started to pack up her stuff too.

When the clock struck twelve with still no sign of Janell we asked the question that would become the most repeated and agonized phrase of the day. "What do we do?"

You would think we could just call Janell, find out where she was, and figure out a place to meet, right? That's what we thought too, until we realized that she didn't have her phone.

Additional challenges for getting in touch with Janell were as follows:
1) We had run out of minutes on our Estonian cell phone and could not for the life of us figure out how to add more time.
2) We had borrowed a cell phone to call and leave a message with the guy she took off with (Constan/Kostas/Cristos..tinos?) and then promptly lost his phone number.
3) Janell's phone (which we were hoping she would call us on) was dying and we had no way to recharge it.
4) We had just checked out of the only place where she knew to find us.

We decided that the next best way to contact her would be to send a facebook message, but when we finally found a computer and internet we were told that black outs the night before had knocked out internet across the island.

Great.

At this point our best options for finding Janell seemed to be:
1) Send up smoke signals.
2) Shoot off flares.

Fortunately, Mykonos is a small island and a little luck was about to come our way.

In between "how do we find Janell" strategy sessions I decided to take a nap by the pool, while Elissa and Sing Yi headed down to the beach (you can't spend all of your time worrying...right?). When I returned I was not at all surprised to find that the two of them had met some local boys who they had enlisted to aid our cause (I say "not surprised" because the girls I'm traveling with have this amazing talent of meeting men everywhere we go...it's kind of crazy).

"Don't worry, we find her," they reassured us. "But first, we take you to dinner."

So after dinner at a great taverna, complete with all kinds of fresh seafood and local wine, the five of us headed to town center, the site of Janell's disappearance.

The only piece of information that we had on this guy was that he worked at one of the restaurants on the waterfront.

"Ok, who is 'dis guy?" the boys asked. "We go talk to him."

"There he is!" Sing Yi shouted.

"Him? Gus?"

"Gus?? You mean Constant/Kostas/Cristos...tinos?"

So it turns out that Constant/Kostas/Cristos...tinos is actually named Gus, and that he's great friends with our new friends. In minutes we found out that Janell was fine. Great, actually. She'd spent all day touring the beaches with her new island crush and was now at an internet cafe around the corner.

"She's fine?! You mean, she hasn't spent all day looking for us? Searching the sky for smoke signals and flares? Frantically dashing to and from internet cafes hoping to have received a message from us?"

When we finally met up with Janell she couldn't have been happier.

"Oh yeah, I thought about getting in touch with you guys, but I kept forgetting. It's a small island, I figured I'd run into you eventually..."