The website of the goat caroling pisses me off. They advocate goats in climates too dry to grow crops. Totally glossing over that goats almost certainly helped destroy the original ecology of Greece.
The Greeks inherited a land covered by rich stands of oaks, pines, and other trees with thick, drought-resistant leaves . . . Soil erosion on the slopes of the rugged Greek hills helped prevent reforestation . . . as did grazing and browsing animals, which killed the seedlings before they could establish themselves. Especially prominent in the latter role were goats . . . the "horned locusts" that have destroyed so much of the vegetation of the Mediterranean region and other areas where they've been introduced. (In fact it's not unfair, today, to describe much of that territory as a "goatscape.")[link] The effing goats are part of the problem, not the solution. There are other ungulates that don't do as much damage!
Good luck to your brother, Consuela.
I'm enjoying your travelogue, shrift, as I do all travel stories, but also -- I remember when you were working in a basement with some idiot coworkers and writing some of the funniest posts *ever* but yay for you for how far from that this is!