AS the bus ground up the winding mountain road the fairy lights across the windscreen, rigged to flash when the driver hit the brakes, barely dimmed.
The religious icons, arranged on the dashboard with several gonks (the gonk is big in Greece; trolls are making a comeback too) gave me less hope than the postcards from previous passengers. They, presumably, made it home alive.
The scenery was spectacular, but I wasn't game to look. Besides, I'd risen at 6 am to catch this groaning refugee from a transport museum, so I wasn't in a scenery mood.
The point of such nerve-wrenching trips when 'relaxing' on holiday is that the destination will be worth it. Halted by a truck smashed into a taxi smashed into a pole just out of town I began to think no collection of mosaics in a mediaeval monastery was worth this, even one of Greece's finest. But it was.
Nea Moni, a Byzantine monastery built in 1046 on a hilltop on the northeast Aegean island of Hios, is breathtaking. Its beauty creeps up on you - partly because the octagonal chapel is gloomy until a priest flicks the light switch, revealing glittering golds, reds and blues, in intricate scenes of religious significance and enormous artistic merit.
It's all the more dazzling for the contrast with what precedes it: the small chapel at the monastery entrance contains remains of victims of an 1822 massacre when Turkish troops forced their way in and killed those sheltering there.