Montenegro
At the border we had to buy a ecology transfer for the windscreen at €30, this lasts for 12 months and is necessary for any visitors crossing the border into Montenegro. Fortunately or lasts until we travels through Montenegro on our way home so that is not quite so bad as having to pay it every time.
I read in one of the blogs on the Internet of a traveller going through this country being extremely careful with his road speed because of the volume of police on the road, and we have noticed quite a large number of police looking for speedsters, we asume.
Montenegro is gearing up extensively to take advantage of the European tourists coming to a lower cost country and we see lots of adverts for accommodation as we travel south.
We carried on through Budva, and then had the option of catching a ferry across Tivatski Bay but we decided to go the long way round and this was fine until we got to about Orahovac when the beautiful two-lane highway turned into 1 1/4 lanes which proved to be rather interesting at times but we accomplished the trouble with no problems and breathes a sigh of relief when we got to the other side of the lake that was the ferry destination and the road returned to 2 lanes.
At about Becici we stopped at a large hyper market and did some basic shopping and were greeted with the pleasant news that the currency was Euro selectmen we did not have to venture into another currency.
We carried on to Petrovac where we started climbing up over the mountain to about 600 m and we carried on until we found a deserted restaurant with a large car park at about 400 m above sea level near the city of Bukovik.
We have formed the opinion that there must be a large contingent of Russians in this country has lot of the road signs are in Russian advertising apartments and hotels and restaurants. In fact at one of the roadworks roadblocks we found we are behind and then pulling a boat with Russian numberplates from Moscow. Now that is 2000 km in a straight line from Moscow to where we saw him so certainly hope he did not try to do all of that in one day.
Albania
Saturday 8th of May
There was a very peaceful night in the parking lot of the closed down restaurant, looking at the building and the site and the very large parking area that looks like a marvellous opportunity for someone, I can't think of why it failed, unless the local mafia didn't get paid so the owners got some concrete boots.
So we headed on down the mountain towards Podgorica and just before we got to the edge of the city we reprogram the GPS for Tuzi and once near Tuzi I asked the GPS to find the border and it took us there was no trouble. When I say no trouble I must admit the last 15 km to the border was pretty rough road reasonably narrow and the roads surface not always the way it should be, nevertheless we arrived at the border safely and leaving Montenegro was no trouble and going into Albania even less trouble.
There previously was a tax on people entering Albania, so either they believed we looked pretty good, or more likely the tax has been done away with. The border guard warned us that the first 35 km towards Shkodër the road was pretty bad and whilst I agree it was not up to motorway standard we certainly have been on much worse on our travels, it just means driving at a reasonably moderate speed which of course is what you want to do if you're viewing the countryside so it has no major problems.
The first thing we did once we got over the border. At the first petrol station and bought an Albanian map which are quite hard to find outside Albania so at least we know where it is possible to go and perhaps how to get there.
Albania has 3 1/2 million people in a country that has .11 the size of New Zealand with 123 people per square kilometre. We are told it is mostly Muslim but so far on the first bit of our travels into this country have seen three Christian churches and one Mosque.
We did find a campground near Shkodër in an area called Barbullush, were made aware of this campground from a blog on the Internet, but when I fed the GPS cornets into the tom-tom would not accept them, then I discovered it only had the main city with the road from the border to it, so whilst when I checked the tom-tom in New Zealand I found Albania I should have an actual fact checked on how many cities were listed instead of getting a little bit of a shock when I arrived in the country.
Under Communist rule private people were not allowed to own a motorcar so all the cars on the road now have arrived in the last 20 years and there is obviously a maximum driving experience for most people. The most common car on the road is the Mercedes, not always in pristine condition, with many of them dating back to the 1960s or 70s. They are driven at a recently high-speed and are seen to pass and all sorts of interesting places and once again it is obvious that the road rules are solely for the tourist.
As we wandered through Eastern Europe we had formed the opinion that the poorest countries in greater Europe, the most common vehicle would be the Lada, and so far this guideline has worked until we arrived in Albania and find that their Lada is a Mercedes!
However we have seen police on the side of the road stopping cars they want to check but speed does not seem to be a reason for them stopping cars so it is again another interesting country to drive in. It is not only the drivers that make life interesting but the pedestrians must feel that God on their side as is not uncommon to see three people, walking 3 abreast, on your side of the road, and are not interested in moving to let you past. Bicycles also seem to be protected by a higher being and of course parking is where ever you can find a space so was very interesting driving through a town and see cars parked on each side of the road, leaving room for two cars to pass, until of course you have some the double parking and a bus coming towards you, and Mercedes behind you tooting, yes! it is interesting!
I'm totally surprised at the number of petrol stations one finds on the side of the road, and it's not uncommon to see older petrol stations totally abandoned and a new one just down the road.
Often when one goes into the country like Albania, one sees some very old houses, but through this particular border, with found no old houses, and when I say old house I mean over 50 years of age, but tremendous number of new houses that had just been built. However the general countryside does not look prosperous and one sees singular cows in different locations and there seems to be a maximum of about 12 sheep in any flock.
Driving into Shkodër just on the outskirts we saw a sheep being butchered on the side of the road in amongst all of the dust and traffic passing, and I guess will have no detrimental effect on the people who are having mutton for their evening meal.
A national business appears to be what they call a Lavazh or what we would call a car wash, this is usually a concrete pad on which the car sits and water blaster to blast the dirt, and perhaps the paint of this not firmly fixed from their clients vehicle. There are so many of these everywhere down the road that there is no excuse to drive a dirty vehicle in Albania.
Sunday 9th May
The campground we stayed out overnight as far as I can gather is the only one in Albania that is accessible, I was told of another one which a narrow panel van can just manage to get to so I can hardly count that.
I've often remarked that there is a certain point in greater Europe where you stop seeing the GB number plates but on this trip we have met at least two, one of them in this particular campground, there was also a motorhome in Switzerland and of course Holland. The Dutch one was rather interesting and so much as it was a American AirStream 250, the shortest model they made at 8 m and was discontinued in 1991 the vintage of this particular machine.
Well today we are operating with out our GPS, and were having to revert to that paper thing called a map so we headed south passing through Lezhë, Fushë-Krujë, Durrës on the coast and we intended to drive on down the coast through Lushnjë and at Fier turned towards the coast and go through Vlorë and carry on down the scenic coast way to the Greek border.
Let me tell you this, it is much easier driving with a GPS because if you make a wrong turn the GPS sorts it out whereas today we were on our own and had to ask directions. Let me make it clear that I did not ask for directions, but sent Luda out to ask, because you know men do not ask for directions.
We kept on passing the car washes everywhere, and very quickly discovered that there is a better business associated with the car industry and it is a wreckers yard, we couldn't go 5 km with out seeing at least one wreckers yard, often with cars piled high, and it was not only reserved for cars but they were bus wreckers yards and trucks and again there was a wonderful assortment of potential spare parts. I think we've seen so many wrecked cars today that they must almost be one wrecked car for every car on the road! Now remember before 1991 there are only 600 cars in the country and they were reserved for party officials.
So in 20 years Albanians have learned to drive, purchased a second-hand car from Europe, and the car of choice of course is Mercedes, and it probably managed to write off in 20 years 50% of the cars that are entered Albania.
Driving today, and taking note of the Mercedes cars, is not uncommon for cars passing going the opposite direction for six in a row to be Mercedes, I would venture to guess that the Mercedes ownership per head of population is at least twice as high as Germany.
Again today we found people overtaking in impossible situations, we stopped at a roadworks and four cars positioned themselves on our outside and started driving with us through the roadworks and of course there were two abreast coming towards us, and all of this is on a two-lane road, so there is some nimble footwork for everybody to get by without despatching another car to the wreckers yard.
Going through a town, one drive slowly through these towns, a late model Mercedes started backing towards me on my side of the road, so all I could do was to put the brakes on and see what he was going to do, he was trying to get into a car park which was just in front of me and has nothing was coming towards me I just passed him and let him carry on his struggle, parking.
If they want to stop, anywhere, they will just stop and block their lane and do whatever they wish to do and let the traffic sort themselves out.
We see plenty of police on the road, but all they are doing is standing in groups of 3 to 5 and stopping potential cars that they don't like the look of, a Mercedes often pass us and speeds by these police, who just give them a wave.
We were expecting the worst roads in the world when we came to Albania, and we have been delightfully pleased at how good the roads are, of course when you strike roadworks in any country the road surface will be hellish, and that's what was a couple of times today, of course was made more interesting with `antics of the cars coming towards us, so certainly stops you falling asleep.
We seen quite a lot of numberplates on cars from other countries and I am making a little bit of a guess that these are Albanians returning home to see their family.
Everywhere we drive we see extremely large Vodafone signs, and when I say large that will be at least 7 x 3 m in size, we do see an advert for another mobile phone but they are not as large or as frequent, so I guess the guy with the big bucks is first past the sales post.
So far we have not seen any McDonald's fast food restaurants anywhere, nor have we seen the large international supermarket chains we have seen another country's, but I guess its only time!
There are still very much of a peasant structure in this country as we see very many people doing manual work in the fields, work that is done by machines and other countries, and of course there are quite a large number of horse and carts, but nothing like as many as in Romania, it seems the locals here prefer Mercedes!
However we were driving down towards Vlorë and that's part of the coastline is getting the nickname of the Albanian Riviera, there's an incredible number of high rises on the sea coast facing the sea, so many that from the road you are unable to see the sea, and when one gets to the city of Vlorë the whole city seems to be of high rises and the coastline is absolutely delightful, and I guess at this stage, affordable.
So we drove past and incredibly beautiful beach, with lots of people on the beach, we didn't notice anybody swimming but driving past it is quite possible that they were, there are a lot of large buses parked by the beach, and later we saw a bus with the Albanian Riviera label on it so I guess a lot of people are bussed in to enjoy the beach, but we just kept on driving south!
That is until we came to a tunnel through solid rock, it looks like the hole had been hammered out 50 years ago and nothing much done to it, there were jagged bits coming from the roof and the sides and it was a sign telling us it was limited to vehicles 3.2 m high and 2.3 m wide, another point that I was unsure of was did they measure from the outside edge of the jagged rock or was that measurement an average!
So we turned around not wishing to test their measurements and drove back towards the city of Fier some 35 km back the way we came, and will drive down the centre of the country towards the Greek border.
We decided to find somewhere to stop for the night and we found old petrol station with petrol pumps still in location but totally abandoned and hopefully the road noise will die down later this evening.
Monday 10th of May
All the old petrol station location was good for the night if not a bit noisy to start but the traffic died down as it always does after 10:30 PM.
We carried on back on the road to Fier and drove carefully through the city with all of the non-observance of traffic rules, in all forms and eventually found a signpost pointing towards Ballsh and became very obvious that Highway No 4 whilst being the main highway running north to south through the country was not as important as the road taking the potential tourists to the Albanian Riviera.
There is massive road construction right through the whole country and I believe each year it is getting substantially better because they seem to be progressing at a great rate.
Nevertheless today we drove 101 km in four hours, you do the maths! It was quite exhausting so little bit after Tepelenë at a large petrol station, where I filled up with diesel, I was told to get Euro diesel and looking at the prices out the front at the moment I see there is a more expensive diesel so hopefully the Euro diesel will not gum up anything in the fuel system.
It was just more of the same driving today, still all of the idiotic passing, and many near misses, and the condition of the road does not seem to make one little bit of difference, I seem to be in the 20s and 30s Km a lot today and many of the Mercedes must be passing me at 60+.
It's interesting what people do to meet their immediate needs, we saw ahead of us a four door panel van had also had a rear door, they had a refrigerator on the back seat but that was just a fraction too long to be up close the rear passenger door, so they were driving down the main road with the rear passenger door open, but we didn't stick around to see whether they made it home! I wonder what consideration they had given to folding down the rear seat and placing in the refrigerator in from the rear leaving the rear door open if necessary, but perhaps that is the coward's way out!
I discovered that the tom-tom GPS does have the main road from each of the border crossings to the capital city so as long as you're going from border to border or from border to the capital you got no problems with the GPS, once you off Highway 4 you might as well be in another country.
Often when we go to one of the, what I roughly defined as the old Soviets, we see some very old houses often over 100 years old still being lived in, and quite often abandoned. In Albania we have seen none of this, the oldest housing we have seen have been some of the old Soviet style apartment blocks, and I have looked in bad condition, but everywhere else we are observing new houses being built, often three or four stories high, quite often only one floor complete, often it is the top floor with the other floors being empty and just the columns holding the ceilings up. It's obvious from what we have seen they do not suffer from earthquakes in this country because the top-heavy buildings we have seen would be just shaken to pieces.
They're being quite a lot of ancient ruins, signposted on the road as we've been driving through, but the fear is once you're off the main road you can often be on what can be loosely called a donkey track! I guess all of these donkey tracks to the ancient ruins will be all sorted out once they have the main roads finished.
We were passing through, after about three hours driving, the oil producing part of Albania and we see lots of wells in production and many more without the pumps which would suggest those wells have run dry. They seem to leave the drilling superstructure in place above the well where is often in the West you see is the pump working above the well that has been drilled and they have taken the superstructure away to be used again.
In one location that had a depression that normally would be a small lake was filled with oil, I guess that is either an overflow, a tank that has burst or a well that has overflowed. Around the oil wells there are very large storage tanks that are in quite a rusty condition so one or two of these could have been the cause of the lake.
The road today travelled through the hills of Albania and was quite winding and we have ahead of us a pleasant view of some very high mountains covered with snow.
We are passing through quite an agricultural section of the country, but only see what I would call household cows, but occasionally see flocks of sheep and goats totalling about 50 in numbers.
Butchers shops are very common along the road, often with freshly killed meat hang out the front, one shop actually had it covered, and another shop had the meat still on the hoof waiting for a client to come along. We occasionally see cages of chooks are available for sale, and in one location they were busy being turned into fresh poultry ready for cooking.
You read of Albania being covered in pillboxes for use by the army has evidently the dictator was obsessed that somebody may invade Albania and had them built everywhere. This is what we have been told, and I quite frankly have been disappointed in seeing very few of these but perhaps I'm on the wrong roads as we get closer to the Greek border there may be more.
I believe Albania is about 350 km long and most people I have read of that have travelled here seem to go through the country in 24 to 48 hours, or considering that most of the cities are gridlocked for parking, and the capital city is the worst of the lot with apparently a population of 900,000, and the Albanian Riviera being gridlocked with high-rise apartment blocks and hotels, there is a little to see in any notable feature that I've noticed so far of Albania is different to anywhere else is the huge number, and I mean huge, of Mercedes motor cars, it is quite frankly I'm believable, it is really the National car of Albania!
Tuesday 11th of May
We left our overnight camping at the petrol station and carry on south towards the Greek border, the road to the border was almost perfect, however the drivers were still much the same. We were to pass through Gjirokastër but fortunately the road took us around the city.
We saw two or three glass fish tanks full of fish swimming around, on the side of the road, I guess you could stop and collect your evenings meal on the spot.
As we start getting close to the Greek border so we started seeing the bunkers or pillboxes, not just one or two, but rows of seven or eight, followed by another row followed by another row. And this was on both sides of the road so they were really serious about not letting anybody come into Albania, or perhaps I have got it wrong and the bunkers were there to stop people getting out!
Just before we got to the Greek border we saw about 20 motorhomes parked on the opposite side of the road, they looked like they were from Italy, they all had numbers on their motorhomes so is obviously a tour, perhaps they feel safety in numbers travelling through this country, but that is not going to protect them from the thousands of Mercedes overtaking in the worst imaginable location.
We made it to the Greek border, near the city of Ktísmata had to pay the Albanians €2 for something to do with the vehicle, and entering into Greece was basically a nonevent.
Summary on Albania
We had no problems crossing Albania, the roads we were led to believe were going to be ghastly and in some places they were, but on the whole we really had no problems with the roads and with careful driving no problems with the Albanians and their Mercedes.
We stopped in the only motor camp we saw and the rest of the time were quite happy camping on the side of the road or whatever.
Any purchases we made me made in euros and so we did not have to change currency.
We had contact with very few Albanians and the ones we did meet with living overseas, but everywhere we went we did receive a friendly wave, and whilst most of the population religion is supposed to be Muslim we saw no woman wearing a veil and I think we saw more Christian churches than we did mosques.
Greece
I brought up the Greece maps on the tom-tom and programmed in Párga and requested that we did not use the motorway. Almost immediately it sent us up under the hills and we kept on climbing to about 600 m winding in and out around the edge of each hill, passing through villages where everybody stopped to look at us, and at one location it was a mystery as to where to go in at the end I selected the road straight ahead which was heading on up the hill with a single lane and fortunately that widened out to the normal one and a half lanes wide, but the good part of it, was that there was absolutely no traffic.
It was wonderful photographs with villages on the other side of the valley and in front of us with this switch back road leading up to the village. One point we passed through a village called Vrosína at about this time I reprogram the GPS to choose a motorway, but in actual fact it made absolutely no difference.
We found a lot of spots on the route we travelled that would be suitable. In overnight or longer and perhaps we should have chosen one of those because once we got down on the flat we started going through village after village, and eventually we found a flat piece at the Y junction of two roads, the road does not appear to be very busy so we selected the spot, sort of waited for traffic officer to come and ask us to move along!
The roads in Greece that we have travelled on today have been almost perfect, beautiful smooth surface all through the hills with no traffic, but they are neglecting the sides of the road because Blackberry is starting to creep into the driving path and a lot of trees need to be trimmed back for the same reason. There's been almost perfect driving today, as will have basically no traffic on the road, travelling through the first part of the hills when he saw one police car going the opposite way that a long time later a taxi and again a long time a small private car and that was about it for ages.
I thought we may have been okay for the road signs with the Greek alphabet being in the Cyrillic somewhat similar to Russian, but all the road signs just looked like Greek roadsigns to Luda so we'll just have to struggle on waiting till we get into the tourist area when there will also be signs in English, not that that will be much help as I won't be would pronounce them and we may see something on the map that looks similar.
Travelling through the mountains, almost on every blend there was a small rusty metal box with a glass front, some flowers, a candle and what we assumed was a bottle of holy water, sometimes on a bad bend there were three of them, if during the course of our visit to Greece we manage to work out what they are for we'll let you know, and in the meantime you can use your own imagination as to their purpose.
Wednesday 12th of May
This evening we are camped on the edge of the beach overlooking the Ionian Sea watching the sun slowly sink into the sea and Luda is hoping for a wonderful sunset photo, and with the pollution in the sky she might just get some interesting colours.
We had a reasonably interesting day driving south first to a small town called Párga, we made the mistake of trying to drive into the town and it took us about 15 minutes to get the motorhome turned round and go back out the way we came. It's a town of about 2000 population perched on the side of a cliff and Luda got some interesting photos and then we started heading south again, except I started driving north and only when Ludas said the sea is on the wrong side that I reprogram the GPS and told me to make a U-turn, just like Luda did.
It's become very obvious began actually quite careful about driving into some of these villages because I think even a Smart car may be a little big for some of the locations.
It must be quite interesting keeping some of these roads open as we see a lot with rocks sitting on the side of the road that have fallen down from the cliffs, and today, the rain had washed some gluey clay and covered one half of the road and that pushed back a little to keep the roads open.
With the problems that having in Greece with their finances I suspect the maintenance on the roads will be one of the first casualties of their cutbacks, which will be a shame because so far the roads have been wonderful.
We started heading towards Préveza driving on very good roads with very little traffic and we drove past the villages of Mesopótamo, Loútsa, where I filled up with diesel and bought a book of maps of Greece which may make it easier for us to decide where we are going, and about at Rizá we headed down to the beach, checked in with a couple of motor camp's and they were pretty run down, WiFi in one small location, and we seen this spot that another Carthago was parked at so we headed to that, found a level spot, said hi to the people from Munich in their Carthago, they come twice a year to Greece and were heading to see friends and just stopped to have a swim in the Ionian Sea but with the temperature at 18° in the water Luda was not inclined to join them.
Yet the sunset was interesting! We are camped on the beach at N39.08458 E20.34720
Thursday, 13 May
Is being a very hot day to day with temperatures up in the early Thirties so when it came to stop for the night we decided again to head for a beach and we are currently sitting 20 m away from the water at Chalkia on the Patraïkós Gulf with a beautiful cool breeze blowing through the front door which is facing the water.
We left the delightful spot at the beach and headed against South towards Kastrosikiá, passing through Pandokrátor and Préveza before we took the tunnel from the Province of Epirus to Western Greece. The toll on the tunnel was €5 for the motorhome.
Our destination was the city of Patras and we passed through Vónitsa, Paliámbela, Loutrákion, not intentionally but by following the GPS and I think this route was perhaps 5 m shorter but the road wasn't too bad so we carried on through Spárton, Rívion, Strátos and Angelókastron, and when we reached Aitolikón we decided we stopped by the beach so follow the road map which led us to this delightful location at N38.19525 E21.34046
Friday, 14 May
We left our peaceful beach setting and got back on the road towards Patras, we stuck to the local roads and every so often we would see a live snake making its way across the road, and of course we saw several didn't make it, quite a lot of green lizards dashing across the road and we have seen about three turtles making their way slowly along in the direction that we are going, I didn't fancy their chances of getting anywhere safely.
Every so often we hear this loud noise of somebody speaking, and we look around and sure enough there is a vegetable truck with a loudspeaker attached, urging the locals to come out and buy their vegetables.
We had been expecting very bad drivers and Greece from what the guidebooks suggest, and of course I guess it depends on what you define as a bad driver. If a bad driver does not observe any road laws then I guess a lot of the Greek and many other countries have a lot of bad drivers. Again we are a of the opinion that the road laws apply to be the tourists only and does not apply to the locals.
Eventually we arrived at the Tollgate for the impressive new bridge, well it looked new, that took us over to Western Greece, the toll was €12 for the motorhome, which was exactly the same as for normal cars. We carried on the motorway and eventually came to another Tollgate this time for the motorway this time it cost €7.3, which would not have been so bad, but they had massive reconstruction going on the motorway, and you had a very narrow lane to drive with a large concrete block divider on the right-hand side and plastic poles on the other had to separate you from the oncoming traffic.
This was extremely tiring driving and it was a pleasure to eventually get off the motorway and back on the local roads to the city village of Diakopto where we hoped to catch a train up the mountain to the village of Kalavryta, the parking was basically non-existent but we found a spot which was probably illegal so I sent Luda to the ticket office was I sat in the motorhome and she came back with the information that the woman could speak very little English and had no idea as to what train Luda wanted.
We decided to risk leaving the motorhome in its location and I walked back to the station with Luda, were all ready to go up the mountain and we got to the ticket office and it was empty, and eventually a plump lady arrives on the other side of the glass partition, the sort of person you find in railway stations right round the world, and I asked her could she speak English, she said yes, I said we would like the tourist train up the mountain, there was no hesitation as to which train or what train, she knew exactly what I wanted, and she was just being a bitch to Luda, it's interesting how women feel they have to be a bitch to other women, but the moment a man appears on the scene, it's as if sugar would not melt in their mouth.
She says she would love to send us up the mountain, but she could not get us back, as the trains were only going one way, I could not work that out as I've always been told what goes up must come down, but evidently they work on different rules here!
We decided to go to the motor camp for the day, get a taxi to the station tomorrow, and then carry on our way so we found a motor camp on the Gulf of Corinth near a village called Akráta, we were lucky they had WiFi so we were able to download our e-mails and get this newsletter published.
Saturday, 15 May
We caught a taxi back to the village of Diakopto where we hoped to catch a train up the mountain to the village of Kalavryta, yesterday when we spoke to the railway woman she told us that there were no trains yesterday. We told we'd come back tomorrow and she just smiled at us. All we paid €20 for a taxi back to the station, saw crowds of people there, went back to the ticket office, and she smiled at us again, and said all the tickets are sold, and they are sold for every train today.
Yes the people that work for the railway are a special breed in every country, of course yesterday I should've asked are tickets are available for today, but you sort of rely a little bit on the staff of the organisation you are dealing with, in future I must try and remember, that railways are different.
So we caught another taxi back to the motor camp, the driver glanced at the card of the motor camp, and took off on a road we did not recognise, and then he got to a town and said we are here, I gave him the card again, and said we are not, he looked at the card, got out of the car and went away and eventually came back, drove in the direction of the motor camp, asked somebody else on the way, and eventually I showed him the bridge we had to go across, show him where we had to turn, and of course he didn't want to turn their want to keep going straight, so I shouted and pointed at the road we are busy going past, he stopped and backed up, and eventually we got back to the motor camp, the meter read €23, but I paid €20, so that was our excitement for the day.
So we set off a motorhome driving towards Corinth where we want to look at the canal that made the area famous, unfortunately we missed it as we have had to carry on the road towards Athens to cross over the canal, so we may try to do that on the way back and we may have another attempt at the railway, so we drove towards Isthmía on the way towards Palaiá Epídhavros where was the large magnificent theatre, we got sidetracked there by going towards the small theatre, and there was a signpost pointing towards the beach so we thought we would wander down to that to see what it was like, and the roads are getting narrower, and then there was the ditch that they were digging on the side which we could just get past, and start looking doubtful going round the corner, so Luda got out and explored the road towards the beach, and came back reporting there was room for one car on the beach and really no room to turn around.
So we had to back up past all of these roadworks, but fortunately we found a driveway we could drive into, and then drive out on opposite lock and drive back the way we came, a fraction wiser.
We carried on towards the small theatre and after driving down some more very narrow roads we eventually found it, it of course was closed for reconstruction so after a few more photographs we decided to head off towards our next destination of Návplion but we just left the city we found another signpost pointing us towards the large theatre, 13 km away, so follow the signposts and ended up in a very large car park, I stayed and look after the motorhome whilst Luda went in to do the photographs.
After about 10 minutes there was a major drama about three cars along a man and woman came back with their three small daughters, and then the woman came running over to me, asked me if I'd seen anybody at their car, evidently they had forced the lock, stolen their suitcases, all three little girls were busy crying, I was of no help to them as we pulled in beside another motorhome, and I did not see the cars until it pulled away a few moments earlier. However I'm sure whoever did the stealing watched the French group depart from their Greek rental and new they had at least 30 minutes to do their break in and by the time the French group came back they of course would be well and truly gone.
There's nothing like this to make you aware that this sort of thing can happen and it's made me decide to be a little bit more careful with our security.
Luda came back after doing the photographs, I brought up to date with the drama in the car park, and then we headed off on the route again towards the city port of Návplion which was about 25 km away. The light was getting very good as we're heading towards the sea and we stopped several times for what hopefully will be wonderful photographs.
Arriving at our destination the light was just right on the magnificent castle and the walls that overlook the city so that was a special case for photographs, then we saw a lot of motorhomes parked on the waterfront so after three false starts we ended up parked right beside the water, in behind a motorhome with GB number plates, this year were finding very many English have travelled well beyond what I have normally defined as the boundary where you see the GB number plates.
Check with them about the parking, no problems you can stay overnight, and they are flying into Christchurch in December, so we had some drinks and a long chat and made arrangements to see each other in Christchurch, NZ.
Sunday 16th of May
We were woken up this morning by the sound of the cruise liner pulling into the harbour close to where we parked for the night, all of the tour buses were ready to take the passengers out to see the sights for the day, and to get them safely back to their home on the water. The ones that stayed on board would be comfortable because the ships motors were still running which met all of the air conditioning were still working.
This city of Nafplio was in prominent news in the 13th century during the struggles between Venice and Turkey for the ports of this area, the housing shows influence from both of these countries and some of it still looks the same as it did three centuries ago. There's a fortified island of Bourtzi in the north of the harbour which was extremely pretty during sunset and then the Palamidi fortress looking down over the town, there are evidently over 800 steps up to this formidable structure so I allowed Luda to go and make sure the number of steps were correct, she came back telling me that was a beautiful large car park up there so we could have driven up and I could've seen the sights of the city from this high advantage point, so that is something to do on another day. Luda came back and told me there was exactly 853 steps and I was grateful for that piece of information.
There are about 30 motorhomes camped on the Pier parking area and this dwindled down to about five when we were ready to leave. There were some gypsies about 100 meters away and they kept on walking past the motorhome having a good look at it, so after yesterday's experience with the French people being robbed I did not venture very far away, and then we were ready to leave so .......
We drove on down the coast of the Peloponnese heading towards Neapoli which was about 170 km down the coast winding in and out around the hillside, passing through all the delightful little villages, and their narrow roadways down to the beach which after yesterday we learned not to tackle.
We passed through the villages of Ástros and Péra Mélana and then we stopped on a layby near Poúlithra on the edge of the sea with the sea about 10 m down below.
In one of the last newsletters we mentioned all these delightful little tin churches we kept on seeing at the corners with flowers and what looked like some holy water and I suggested you draw your own conclusions as to what they were for, or the answer of course is that they are memorials to people have been killed on the road, and there are a lot of memorials made from all sorts of materials! Of course when you see the guys riding their motorbikes, at full speed, around these winding roads, with their hair flowing in the breeze, you realise they fall into the category of temporary Greeks.
Monday 17th of May
There is just as well be stopped when we did last night because when we carried on the road this morning towards Monemvasía the road started going up into the hills at a steep angle with hairpin bends as was winding its way around the mountains, and it wasn't too long before work at over 700 m when it levelled out onto a plateau for awhile, and then it started going on up again, this time the tar seal finished and we were driving around these hairpin bends rapidly climbing at the same time till we reached over 900 m.
Now front wheel drives are not very good if they're moving uphill with loose metal on the road so the wheels can spin, and if you're motorhome is inclined to be heavy, like this one, then driving in these conditions is sort of asking for trouble. We immediately dumped the freshwater and any dirty water we had which reduced the payload by possibly 150 kg, I've no idea whether that helped, but we accomplished the travel on this bit of road and eventually ended back as tar seal.
As we came around the corner the road in front of us was covered by at least 100 goats, beautiful looking ones and some of the male ones had wonderful horns, we drove through these very slowly with Luda doing portraits of some of the interesting faces, and they were very reluctant to get up from where those sitting on the tar seal and move, I thought I was going to have to run over one to get past, a stubborn one sitting in front of my left hand front wheel, but about six blasts of the horn, he slowly got up and wandered off to the left.
We drove through the villages of Poúlithra, Peletá, Kremastí and then we joined up with the main road going through Metamórfosis, Sikéa, and finally reaching the sixth century walled town of Monemvasía, the old town on the upper slopes is now mainly in ruins except for the church and the lower town has been wonderfully restored and all this sits inside the massive wall that runs around the whole city.
The GPS took us right to the gate of the city, of course there was no parking, so Luda jumped out of the motorhome and went on inside whilst I drove down to the parking area 2 km away, filled up with diesel and water and then about an hour later Luda texted me that she had finished so I drove up again to the gate to collect her, she wonderful collection of photographs and had climbed up to the old city, fortunately it was not as many steps as the 800 yesterday it was still quite high which of course meant as a wonderful view of the town below.
Luda went up to the old church which is in the process of being restored, and one day it may look like it did several hundred years ago, but now it is just the outside you can photograph, the old paintings on the inside are still visible but certainly would look a lot better if they too were restored. There was quite a lot of snakes about this old town, I presume the ruins are wonderful cool resting spots for the snakes, most of them are small and quite harmless, but Luda found a green one blocking her path that was substantial in size, and the girl looking after the church confirmed that yes that was a poisonous one.
While the restoration work requires rocks and stones to be moved around and the stonemason that is working on some of the restoration and a couple of horses which were used for this purpose. However he still had to use a wheelbarrow as well.
It was then time to turn around again and we were on our way back the way we come for about 20 km and then we started heading towards Sparta and about 25 km out at that city we found some old roads that had been straightened, so these beautiful curves which curved away from the main road was still in wonderful condition so we drove on to one of these which places about 200 meters away from the main road and that hopefully will be peaceful for the night.
Tuesday 18th of May
Today we carried on the road to Sparta and drove into the middle of a busy city before we'd did a left turn and drove out to the old city of Mistrás founded by the Franks in the 13th century to replace mediaeval Sparta and so it carried on having a rich history well into the 16th century.
Before we got to the city the GPS took us down several lanes that lead nowhere, narrow one lane lanes, and these we had to back out of three times and in the end I decided that we go to Sparta and then program in Mistrás which took us into the city and then at the signpost pointing towards Mistrás the GPS decided to send us that direction. I'm beginning to think with these one lane roads, that for a motorhome one needs a special GPS, that are now available, often they are for trucks, but there are also models out there for motor homes where you put in your weight and your length, but that is for another day.
The GPS took us right to the castle gate, lots of buses parked their and we found an empty space, but was soon chased away by the bus drivers so Luda hopped out again and went on to brave the ruins while I drove back to the restaurant and parked in their parking space for a couple of hours, having not heard from Luda I thought should wander back to the castle gate, this time the bus drivers found me a parking spot, and an hour later Luda appeared and were on our way again this time north to Trípolis, this was the next waypoint for our next destination which was the Lousios Gorge some 70 km further on but at least it took us in the right direction, then we fed in another city that was much closer, and hopefully when we get really close, we may see some roadsigns.
On the road just passed Nestáni we saw a signpost pointing towards some caves to kilometres away, and we thought, where there is a tourist attraction there is parking, and that is were we are parked for the night.
Wednesday 19th of May
Well I will asume the caves are open to a business during the peak summer season because they were as dead as a dodo this morning, and of course no activity last night, but they did leave the lights on for us overnight which was kind of them.
So we carried on this morning towards Dhimitsána which was the starting point, as far as we could see, for the Lousios Gorge, the first we had to drive through the town, which was a narrow two-lane highway and of course halfway through the town somebody had parked on the opposite side of the road, which meant there was no room to us to pass, and the woman in the passenger seat was obviously beside herself wondering what to do, and after a few minutes she got out and went in to get the driver, who wandered out to the door, finished as long discussion at the doorway, and strolled onto the car, which he then moved, freeing the road up for myself and the five other cars behind me.
But No, the town was not finished with me yet, as I rounded the bend I was confronted with a one lane road, with five cars behind me, and a large blue truck in the distance coming towards me, flashing his lights, which I assumed was Greek for get out my way! I just stopped, let him come towards me, raised my hands palms upwards meaning what can I do! At this point he must have seen the cars behind me because he started backing up, and he found a passing spot, which would've been a lot simpler if he had done that instead of flashing his lights, but no, flashing his lights normally works.
So you may have gathered that this starting point for the Gorge was not a well laid out city with plenty of parking spaces and simple to drive around, so we just kept on driving and then found a parking spot in behind two buses, I pulled behind them, and Luda trudged back into the town to collect the photos she wanted.
Eventually the children came from the town, piled into the buses, and off they went down the hill towards another sightseeing spot, I checked out the sign which indicated it was towards some walking tracks, which appeared to be what we were looking for.
I said the end point for the Gorge into the GPS, and it told me I had to turn around and go back the way it came from the town, so when Luda arrived back, I ignored the GPS and for the signpost down the hill where the road quickly turned into a one lane highway as a wound in and out round the hills, eventually we got to a spot which indicated the tracks started from there but we drove on a little bit and found a very small concrete bridge across a river and the road started going up the hill on the other side, which at this point, with the GPS telling me all the time to turn round and go back, I decided to do just that, and we went back to the spot where the tracks started from, I parked the motorhome there, and Luda trotted off up the track about 30 minutes taken photos she wanted and then walked back for another 30 minutes.
At this point we decided that really this probably was not where we want to be, so we followed the road back out to find that the GPS, did not know which way we were heading when we started and it told us to turn around but in actual fact when we got back to the starting point if the indicated we should have driven straight on.
All morning we been driving round the edge of hills, perhaps some would call the mountains, at about 1000 to 1100 m elevation is really interesting seeing hundreds of beehives along the side of the road at this elevation, they did not appear to be much in the way of flowers but later on we saw lots of Broom in flower so I guess there must be plenty of pollen available for all of these bees.
Again we happened on a large flock of goats occupying the roadway and again our magnificent animals like we saw yesterday some with wonderful heads of horns.
We're starting to understand a little bit as to why people say that the Greek drivers are extremely bad drivers as we are seeing lots of the small models of churches on the side of the road which seems to indicate this is the spot that somebody lost their life, some corners have five or six of these model churches.
While we arrived back at the starting point of the Gorge, did a hard right turn and followed the GPS towards the exit point of the Gorge, the town of Stemmitsa. In retrospect I think we did the right thing taking the narrow low road because the high road which we are now taking had some good opportunities for vistas, but no opportunities, that we could tell to see all the monastery's that were supposedly along this road, yes there were plenty of signs, but they were all in Greek!
Eventually we got to the destination point, which again was another hillside town, with almost a one-way road running through the whole town, we only had to manoeuvre our way past a small car this time which was easier so once on the other side of the town we set the GPS for Pyrgos which was the closest city to Ancient Olympus, when we entered Olympus in to the GPS it want to send us 600Kms to the north, the GPS doesn't know the ancient names.
Again it was an interesting drive through the mountains without seeing a straight road at any point, yet today we got on a motorway and it was most uncanny travelling at 90 kph on a straight road as far as the eye could see, we had nothing like that today.
We see in a lot of dead snakes on the road and so when we saw another turtle on the road in front of us, we stopped, Luda got out and carried the turtle to the other side of the road where hopefully it got to carry on its journey, unless it gets disorientated and has to return to the spot where Luda picked him up.....
I've come to the conclusion it is a quiet way of life here in Greece, if you drive a car you can park your car just whenever you want to, and people drive around you, you don't have to worry about traffic police, they have the tourists to worry about!
Some of the roads we travel on round the mountains, looked like they just needed a little bit of an earthquake or a good rain and half of the road were just slide off down the mountain, there was quite a bump sometimes going on to this bit that was trying to make up its mind to stay part of the road or ago several hundred feet down into the valley and do its own thing.
Driving through these mountains at the high elevation that we are at it was not surprising to see a signpost pointing towards a ski resort some 12 km further into the mountains, where also been encountering several signposts indicating that chains were required when it was snowing, it would be quite an interesting road in the winter!
Looking down into the valley from our high vantage point we saw in the distance what we assumed were two atomic power stations with their massive cooling towers letting off plenty of steam.
It was quite a tiring day driving this swish back road, and when we saw, just off the road, an old building with lots of parking in front, we drove into it and found that it was a disused building so here we are far enough away from the road for it to be quiet and able to stop moving for a few hours.
Thursday 20th of May
We carried on this morning towards Pyrgos and that took us through lots of little villages with narrow roads, interesting parking, but we had a clean flow through every village without having to back up once. The roads themselves have been winding in and out of the hills, again all of the roads have been low speed, with many signs of roadworks trying to prevent the roads disappearing into the valleys.
The massive fires of last year had become very obvious as we drive through these valleys with all of the burnt trees, and piles of burnt logs ready for some sort of sawmill. It would not have been pleasant driving these roads last year.
We need a rescued another turtle, or totally confused the little blighter but we left him on the side of the road completely withdrawn into this house.
As we were getting close to Pyrgos we saw a road sign, in English, directing us towards Ancient Olympia, so that was quite easy, particularly when we tucked ourselves in behind a tourist bus and followed them all the way to the parking area, the parking area was like most in Greece, undefined so we parked where we thought was correct and Luda went off to look at the sites while I was getting ready to shift the motorhome if necessary.
After walking round the site and taking plenty of photographs, Luda return to the motorhome with the verdict that we saw much better ruins in Turkey last year and in much better condition.
With Ancient Olympia out of the way, we decided it was time to look for the nights resting spot so after about three visits to different beaches we found one totally deserted, Thines Beach and we are in a deserted car park 50 m from the sea and our nerves are being soothed by the sounds of the sea.
I had a look at the two buildings situated either side of the road that led to the beach, both had been abandoned possibly two or three years ago, we observed a few crash memorials as we drove to the beach, so assumed it was reasonably popular, popular enough for young ones to get boozed up and not make it home.
Friday 21st of May
We had very, very substantial rain on the night, and it carried right on through into this morning and we visualised spending another day at the beach and then at about 10:30 AM the sun came out and we had a blue sky so was no reason not to move on.
We carried on towards Killíni which was the location we thought had the largest castle in Greece, but it ended up as being a port from which we could catch a ferry to somewhere, so we turned around and headed towards the village of Kastro which had a large castle up on the hill, quite plain looking, again as far as castles are concerned it does not rank very high on the list of castles you must see.
We then decided to head back to Diakopto to see if we have any more luck catching a train up into the hills, and we had two routes one round by the coast, which was the shortest and probably fastest and the other into the centre of Western Greece which was the route we decided to take.
We very quickly got into the countryside, with the accompanying narrow roads and the growth from the sides of the road giving the driver's two choices, drive in the centre of the road or drive on your correct side of the road and have the overhang of the growth from the side of the road smashing against your vehicle, we saw very, very few vehicles until we got back onto the main road sometime later so the first choice was the easiest and with the volume of traffic quite safe.
Today's drive took us into the real countryside of Greece, way off the tourist path, winding in an out of villages and the recorded track of the GPS is just made up out of curves and switchbacks. The villages we went through were like the villagers did find in any old country and they all looked like they were all too small to be economical units.
We are passing quite a few trees that have a black sort of fruit, which drops onto the ground and stained it extremely badly, this was probably the original source of the black dye that is used on so many of the women's clothing to see in this country.
We stayed recently high elevation going around these hills and through the villages fluctuating between 600 and 900 m, naturally all the roads through the villages were extremely narrow but fortunately, as I commented, there was no traffic.
Saturday 22nd May
This morning we carried on driving along the inland route towards the sea and our destination for today, again we pass through real Greek countryside with villages clinging to the side of hills with our main road winding their way through these villages. Again the road was extremely winding ranging in elevation from 700 to 1200 m high, quite narrow most of the way perfectly through the villages where often an edge of a house defines the edge of a road, of course most of the way through the villages is one way, and if by some chance is a two-lane road you can count on one lane being blocked with parked cars.
We came across four herds of goats on the main road today, I guess there was somebody there looking after them but they were not in plain sight. It's interesting one group of goats decided to start running along the road and then one cut off up the cliff face and a whole lot of them basically ran up the cliff face so one gets the good illustration of "as nimble as a goat".
We passed through Aroanía and then Kalávrita which happened to be the destination of the train ride into the mountains we want to take in the next couple of days but driving from there often beside the railway line being able to stop to photograph the villages and the monastery's clinging to the cliff face made us realise that travelling by road was much better scenically and photographically.
We read turned to the campground at Akráta Beach where we were greeted like long lost friends of seven days ago!
Monday 25th of May
We stayed at the campsite a total of two days and we parked about 10 m from the edge of the sea.
This morning we headed off back towards the bridge, we decided to avoid the toll way after the bad experiences using it a week ago so we took the main road which took us through most of the villages on the way and then we passed through the town of Aíyion where we stopped to do some shopping and carried on to Aktaio where we got back on the motorway to crossover on the bridge and then we were heading towards Itéa on what I'd say was the motorway, and we saw a little bit of beach with a road going down to it near the village of Eratiní were parked 15 m from the sea under the shade of a eucalyptus tree.
I assume that as we are to move close to Athens we would see a lot more traffic but in reality the amount of traffic we have been seeing on the Greek roads up to date has been very low, now with Greece being smaller than the South Island of New Zealand, but has over 13 times the population density, I would have expected to see a lot more traffic but in reality we are seeing the low density we would normally see in the South Island.
Tuesday 25th of May
The country of Greece basically consists of beautiful beaches, beautiful villages clinging to the side of mountains and many, many mountains. To get around this country you are basically driving around the mountains at a height of between 400 and 1200 m. These mountains basically rise straight up out of the sea and it would appear as if goats are the main things that seem to survive in these hills and almost every day we see another herd of goats wandering across the road sometimes as many as 200+.
It was a delightful evening we camped so close to the sea, this seems to be so easy wandering around Greece, yet so hard at home in New Zealand!
Always headed back on our travels passing through Pánormos and then on to Itéa where we took the road towards the monastery of Osios Loukas turning off the main road at Dhístomon and then driving through a village of Steiri. We came to a road sign and as these tourist sites are not on the tom-tom for Greece we have to resort to road signs, so I signalled that we're pulling over to the right, to let the pickup behind me past, and they pulled up to the driver's window and both signalled that I should be going straight and not turning left, with all obviously there's only one tourist destination that we could be heading towards so straight we went, and after a little bit of winding round the normal hills we can do a car park at the 11th century monastery, parked there and joined the others from the buses wandering around the monastery.
When we finished that has backed the road we came through the village of Steiri and to the village of Dhístomon on the main road where we headed in the direction of Delfi but first we had to go through a village of Arachova which was recently substantial village with a long narrow road running through the centre of a village that was built for horse and carts rather than cars and trucks.
Our first challenge was a 10 ton truck coming towards us and we both voted yes we can get past, and get past we did with room to spare, the next challenge was a right-hand bend in the middle of the village and we met a full-size petrol tanker coming in the opposite way. We both stopped, and I guess the rule is the smaller one has to give way, the first thing that happened of course was that all of the roadside spectators indicated there was plenty of room for me to get past, and I thought at least it deserved a try, but hard right angle bend, you've got to be dreaming.
The next effort was to back up and there was a taxi behind me and he didn't want to go anywhere, but after a little while he backed up and eventually I had enough room to pull over to the right and the petrol tanker roared past me, I then made my way around the bend to be greeted by a 50 seater bus coming towards me, heck that was easy, and a large delivery refrigerated truck followed by lots of cars, whoever said it was difficult driving in Greece?
So we carried on our way down the hill, almost turning in circles following the road heading towards the city of Itéa that we passed through earlier today, and the GPS advised us to turn right, all there was were roadworks there and the road no longer went that direction was a good spot to stop for the night so I followed the GPSs instructions.
Wednesday 26th of May
Our next destination was the city of Tríkkala about 160 km away, so we headed off again into the mountains zigzagging up and down and around the mountains from 200 m up to 900 m passing through the city of Ámfissa, and on the other side as we rounded a mountain we saw in the distance a small village sitting up about 400 m and a road zigzagging up the mountain to the village. I guess the villages were established up high on the mountains as a matter of security in times gone by, otherwise one would have thought that down in the valleys access would be a lot simpler.
Just after we passed Lamía we stopped at a British Cemetery from the First World War of about 110 graves, most of British regiments, but there was one there from Malta and about eight Russians who died in October 1918 (one year after the revolution in Russia) and they were part of the "2nd Russian Lab Corp" whatever that was, and is rather interesting to try to work out how the Russians got to Greece, how they got to be fighting on the side of the British to be buried in the British Cemetery. I was looking for New Zealanders are there were none in this cemetery of 1918.
Eventually we came down out of the zigzag road around the mountains to a very large flat plateau and about 100 m elevation, I'm guessing it would be at least 150 m in length and here we are seeing a lot of agriculture, and of course all the things that go with agriculture, lots of tractors harvesters and other farm instruments. So it's interesting where ever we go to seed the strong hold that John Deere has on the harvesting section of the grain industry, even in Russia where I would have thought it would have been quite simple to pull a John Deer harvester to pieces and with their talented engineers, (they must have talented engineers look at some of their war machines), build one as good or better, but no, we see these green harvesters in every country.
We then went on and passed through the city of Kardhítsa and on the other side we found a very large parking area, with what looks like a restaurant or perhaps a nightclub, they were parked ourselves in the back right hand corner and will wait and see what happens. Currently at 3:30 PM the temperature is 31°C, almost time we are heading north!
Thursday 27th of May
Our camping spot last night at the nightclub was a washout at about 6 PM when we were asked to move on, we carried on driving north for a couple of kilometres and came across a Carrefour supermarket so we parked round the back of that out of the way and had about 9 PM the security guard asked us to move around the front, which we did and spent the night there. The supermarket opens at 8:30 AM so I wandered in and have a look around, found a map of Greece that have a scale of 1 to 250,000 which was better than what we had and I bought some car mats and that was about all I could find which was about €22. I paid for this and the girl at the cash register asked me to wait, somebody came they could speak better English and told me that I had won a check for €30, so I went back to see if Luda wanted anything, and then went back into the supermarket and wandered around and collected about €31 worth of odds and sods, paid the cashier, they told me I'd won another €30.
So I went and got Luda and she shopped and got some bits and pieces, we went to pay for it and I noticed that they had closed the cash register that was giving the €30 away, maybe they figure that was like a slot machine, and maybe they were worried it was running hot.
So where on the way again towards the city of Tríkkala passing through this to get to Meteora an area of 24 monastery's of which six can be visited, but word of warning, they each have different days they are closed, possibly the one that is the most famous with the basket that lowers down from the top, was closed today, things have changed a little bit since this was built, as they now have steps going up to the front door so you no longer have to whistle for the basket to be lowered to gain entrance.
We are able to drive around all of these monastery's, all had good parking, however the most popular one at the top of the hill had four buses there when we arrived, I let Luda out and then with luck one of the buses left which gave me an ideal parking spot, and whilst I was waiting for Luda, with the motor and air-conditioner going, outside it was about 34°C, another six buses arrived and let off all the tourists so that was 10 buses in all and the 45 minutes we were there, goodness knows what it'll be like in the peak season, I'm glad I'm not here for that.
The map of our travels, we have on the side of the motorhome, attracts a little bit of interest, and one woman that looked at it asked if we were really from New Zealand, she was from Dunedin doing Greece in the three weeks they had for school holidays with her two children, another couple that stopped were from Canada, they had spent 12 months in Dunedin, three years ago, loved the country.
Luda had over 270 photos of the monastery's, so we figured we had enough, and we said in our new destination which was about 150 km away so that GPS was very kind, it directed us past the monastery we decided not to visit and we were able to photograph that from good advantage point. It was then on up the hills to 1000 m zigzagging in and around, watching the temperature go down as we went up and go up as we went down.
We rescued a turtle going across the road again today, and twice at 900 m we saw roadsigns warning people that there were bears and deer in the vicinity.
We're still seeing, an incredible frequency, the little churches that are memorials for those that have crashed along the road, when I say little churches, most of them are but some are quite substantial, almost end up for something to go inside to kneel in prayer, where most of them are larger than a good-sized letterbox. I saw one today, beside a fresh water tap in the country, that had a date of 1977 on it and another had a date of 1948, so that obviously been putting these memorials up now for a long time.
Eventually we found we had enough driving so pulled off in a work area where hopefully will be quiet for the night.
Friday 28th of May
After a noisy night on the main road we carry on our travels north on the motorway with a top speed limit of 130kmh, it almost seemed unreal.
We got off the almost deserted motorway at Siátista and went into the normal gridlock village with the normal parking being where ever your car happens to stop.
The city was founded in the 15th century and became famous for its fur trade importing remnants of sable and other furs from Russia and then making up into garments. Obviously the city is still well known to the Russians as Luda was able to see many signs, in Russian, urging the people that could read these signs to visit these shops.
We got off to look at this town because of its reputed large mansions, but after driving right through the narrow streets were unable to find anything so programmed for GPS for next destination, and you guessed it took us back through the narrow streets.
Our main destination was Mount Olympus, which with investigation turned out to be the name of a mountain range, but we found a old city by the name of Dion fed this into the GPS, and found us an easy path right to the door, or so it seemed. He first took us through Kozáni then across the main bridge over the lake Aliakmonas and was leading us through a large village called Velvendós when it wanted us to do a right turn which was not permitted in reality. So we did a left turn and went down a path with cars parked on the side and just enough room for us to squeeze past them, driving very slowly. We then relied on the GPS to pick up our route which did very easily zigzagging us through the streets until on one of the streets we could go no further because there was a house built at the end, so we backed up, turned her nose up the hill, and the GPS found our route on to our destination.
Or so it seemed, because as we rounded a right angle bend, the tar seal turned into a dirt road, and I guess it may have led us to our destination, but we decided to turn back.
This of course took us back through the narrow streets in the town, until we got to the other side and the road carried on around the edge of the lake, hugging the edge of the cliff, which was very unstable, if one looked at the edge of the cliff that went up from the road it was easy to observe all the rocks that are ready to come down on the road given the right circumstances, it was a two-lane highway but has had very little maintenance, and the grass and bushes are encroaching the road so that in most places it becomes a one-way road particularly when some of the rocks decide they would be better on the road.
It is quite a scenic drive around these cliffs, and we were aware it would probably take us over the mountains at some point, and then we got to the turn off which was going to do this, surprise surprise, another shingle road, climbing almost straight up the hill, with the tar seal road going steeply down to the lake, so we turned around and went back the 30 km, back through the village we got lost in, but this time it found us the main road running straight through, and whilst the road was narrow, it presented no problems.
After this we decided to reprogram the GPS for a major city and we selected on Lárisa, we're doing fine until the GPS decided it could save 5 m by sending us off to the left along a goat track which we were having no part of. So we carried on straight, and then said no we saw a turn off to Lárisa 1 km back, so back we went, down the road with a sign post, and then we found we read the sign post wrong, so round again we went and back again we went with the GPS telling us we were going wrong, and then all of a sudden it decided this way will do!
So we carried on over the hills and then we found a little church off the main road, with a parking area outside it, just outside the village of Tsapourniá, so that our destination for the day.
Saturday 29 May
We resumed our journey to Lárisa travelling on a freeway a four Lane motorway again with a maximum speed of 120 km, when we arrived we found a very large Carrefour superstore with a Marks & Spencer attached, we stopped there and browsed through some of their products before we carried on North towards Platamonas where they were meant to be several campgrounds with WiFi. We arrived at the first one which was meant to have WiFi over 80% of the campground which translated from Greek into English to an area of 20 m around reception, so we carried on to the next one which was no better and so we went on up the coast, one promised us WiFi next time we came back as they would have installed then, so we'll keep that camp site in mind for next time, if there is a next time!
We turned off the motorway to view a large open-air theatre that was mentioned on the poster, what we found looked like a new one so I'm not sure where the old one was, we've noticed that the signposts tell you something is close, but they leave you to find it!
The town were going through in a magnificent castle on the hill overlooking it, we were able to get the view from several different angles so that another castle to add to the list.
We eventually ran out of roads that lead to the beach, so we got back on the motorway and off at the next exit, again no luck, most of the land at the edge of the sea was being taken up by redevelopment of townhouse type buildings. Eventually we came to an empty piece of land and saw a couple of cars parked there so we drove on to that towards the cliff that was about 20 m above the sea, found a level spot and hope there is not too many romantic couples heading towards this parking spot this evening.
On one part of the motorway that went through a gorge we saw two memorials to what I guess must have been to bus smashes about 3 km apart, and I'd guess at different times! One had a obelisk type stone with the names engraved upon the front surface, and the other a large oval stone with portraits of about 15 people around the edge.
You start to understand a little bit why there are so many memorials on the roads in this country particularly like today we were sitting at the red traffic lights with one lane and turning left, and as soon as the light turned green two cars that were sitting on my right accelerated to a high speed and whipped in front of me, yes this time they made it. A little bit later were travelling at about 80 K and a motorbike went past me and about 110 K, went past so fast I did not get look at him, I wondered if he had a crash helmet, as many the ride motorbikes in this country don't, and then I thought at the speed he was going perhaps it would have been better if he did not have a crash helmet as in that case if he had an accident he certainly wouldn't have to worry about spending the rest of his life in bed paralysed!
Sunday 30th of May
We headed back to the motorway and would only gone a couple of kilometres before we saw the sign post to Dion Museum, this is a collection of all of the archaeological finds that they have found on this ancient city, and now all laid out nicely for to be seen, however we both preferred the same archaeological finds in their natural surroundings that we saw in Turkey. Yes Turkey is the real destination if you want to look at the ancient Greek -- Roman world.
We were about ready to leave when we saw a signpost pointing further up the road to a gorge and a waterfall, it mentioned nothing about the road you have to take to get there, they presume you will find this out for yourself, so you zigzag up the hill and eventually come to a point where the tar seal turns into shingle which is an ideal place to turn the motorhome around to go back down again, however I did let Luda out so she could walk to the waterfall, about 120 m away when she took many photographs of this cute little waterfall and a little lake in fell into.
So it was a slow trip back down the mountain and we went the back roads to the city of Kateríni, we needed more LPG but there was no indication in any of the service stations we passed so we kept on driving to the second major city in Greece Thessaloniki is shown on the order route map as Salonica but the guidebook knows by the former name for all that is worth, the GPS took us through the middle of the city of about 1 million people, many of the roads more suitable for horse and cart.
Going south we passed through many acres of rice paddy fields, no picturesque scenes are available however like one would obtain in China but I guess the product would be similar.
We were unable to rescue a very small turtle today, we passed by him before we realised, hope he made it across the road!
Fortunately on the motorway we saw the Shell service station that sold auto gas, Shell's name for LPG so we are filled our cylinders and drove on until we wondered whether we gone too far and got off the motorway near Néa Kallikrátia, we found no we had not gone too far and then spent the next two hours trying to get back, motorway, you say what about the GPS? Well no matter what destination we put in they all wanted to go through this motorway junction which was incomplete which meant the road was closed at this point so after going around in very large circles for awhile I cheated and drove down a different road which after about 6 km took me back to the motorway we stayed on this into we got to Kalamariá and we went out on the Kassándra Peninsula which according to the guidebook is noted for its volume of road accidents and what impressed us about this Peninsula was all of the new developments that have sprung up and possibly the last two years and there is a lot of redevelopment still happening at the moment with a lot of dusty open areas which eventually will be nice..
What was once a beautiful motor camp, is now an extremely large development of townhouses or looking out to sea. On this Peninsula is useless trying to find somewhere to park overnight beside the sea, anything that is it that good already has a house sitting on it. We drove down as far as Foúrka were at that point we decided to get the seaside parking and let us go to a motor camp 28 km away supposedly by the sea.
Were heading back that way when we lucked upon this massive car park, room for 300 cars, with another equally sized car park 20 m away, both are being encroached on the edge by grass and bushes and the only thing that I can think of if these are of current use this is that it is parking for the beach some kilometres away with buses running to and from! However it suited us for the night.
Monday, 31 May
There's a beautiful quiet spot the parking lot, this morning Luda took the wheels of the motorhome and was surprised at how easy the big lumbering thing is to drive so next time the roads get too tough for me I will pass the wheel on to Luda.
So we went on to our next destination and so we drove back via Néa Moudhaniá and pass through Nikítas out onto to the Sithonia to what looked like a beautiful campground at the end of the Peninsula at Kalamítsion the purpose for this was still a had wireless wi-fi and not all campgrounds have gone on to this technology.
But driving 55 km to the campground over hill and dale around the edge of mountains past goat farms were arrived at this beautiful beach and no, they don't have WiFi, it was a mistake in the book! Well without WiFi the campground was just another campground so we drove back the 50+ kilometres and out on to the Mount Athos Peninsula to the town of Ouranópolis.
Our friendly GPS gave us an easy route to our next destination, but just to keep it interesting it including about 10 km of dirt road which led us out onto what was the main road from the last city, we did ask it for an alternative route, but told us the equivalent of trust me! you'll have no problems!
We eventually found the campsite which was on the beach and our motorhome was parked about 20 m from the sea, in a location that we cannot see the sea, but we know it is there. We're hopefully tomorrow we will be able to take a boat trip to look at about 20 monastery's from a distance, we note on our high scale map there is a road passed all of them, but after the road we went on today I think the boat may be in easier bet.
I've come to the conclusion that the ideal GPS would probably have an 8 inch screen and would show all of the roads around the direction that you were travelling in or be very easy to see when the GPS was sending your on a road that was saving 5 m on your travels, however when I get the truck software for the tom-tom this may eliminate some of the problems, but I still think 8 inch screen would be nice.
Tuesday 1st June
This morning we walked into the village to catch the tour boat that did the cruise past about 10 monastery's. There's about 20 monastery's still in use on this part of the Peninsula, a Peninsula that is patrolled by the police on land and sea and where it is forbidden for any woman to go anywhere near a monastery and men are only permitted through proper channels in small numbers. The closest the tour boats can get to the shore is 100 m so this means the closest woman can get to a monastery is at least 100 m so I guess the monks consider themselves safe from this form of temptation.
It was an overcast day, but the monastery's were still very impressive to look at, some were almost fortresses, which one considers the history of the Pirates raiding the monastery's in the very early centuries and then the Turkish problems when Turkey was in control one understands the fortifications.
From what I understand the most populated monastery and about 100 monks and there are several different types of monastery's including a Russian Orthodox one that had all the domes on the church that one normally associates with Russia.
There were four of us to start with on the boat and then 2 or 3 tour buses arrived which filled the boat up.
Wednesday 2nd June
After two nights in the same location this time to be on our way so we headed back up the Peninsula past Stavrós and then we drove along the beachfront and round the village of Karianí we just pulled onto the beach overlooking the Gulf of Strimonikós.
Thursday 3rd June
This morning we carried on our way towards the Turkish border passing through the cities of Kaválla onto Paralía Avdhíron where we saw the excavations of a ancient city, then through Xánthi where we saw the remains of a 16th century aqueduct built in the time that the Turks controlled this part of Greece.
Driving on to Komotiní we passed a large lake called Lake Vistonida where we stopped to photograph the older monastery of Agios Nikolaos and then just down the road we saw a flock of flamingos feeding in the marshy ground, the good thing about Greece is there is very little traffic so you can always stop on a main road without any problems, so stop we did and achieved a good series of photographs. Onto the city were we did our last shopping in Greece and bought a good supply of ham, cheese, and a bottle of vodka, none of these things are easily available in Turkey.
It was too late to wander across the border at two o'clock so we headed out towards Ímeros beach and founder of quiet camping spot on the edge of the Aegean Sea.
Friday, 4 June
We left our delightful camping spot by the sea and headed towards Turkey on an almost empty motorway have allowed us a top speed of 130 kph which is a massive change from the 30 kph that we've been doing most of the time around the winding roads of Greece.
