The highway (Coast to Coast and signed at every crossroads in red letters on white metal boards with red arrows pointing to the far skyline) shies away from the railroad at Patmos so that perspiring travelers look wistfully across two hundred yards or so of lava rock and sand and wish that they might lie under those three trees and cool off.

They couldn't, you know.

It is no cooler under the trees than elsewhere.

It merely looks cooler.
Even the water tank is a disappointment to the uninitiated.

You cannot drink the water which the pump draws wheezingly up from some deep reservoir of bad flavors.