Category: Travel

• Weather: Cloudy then thunderstorms
• Departure: 10h00
• Arrival: 22h00
• Date: 06/08/15
• Distance: 376 km

I woke still tired up but excited as this was the very last day of this adventure. Riding around is immense fun, but it’s exhausting and to be honest, I had been abusing the concept a bit and was at this point starting to get fed up with it. Having not had time to visit at least one of the monasteries, I made this my first goal of day. After breakfast, I joined bussloads of foreigners and toured around one. It was, as I expected, not that interesting : a church, a small museum of religions artifacts and very limited access to anything else.

Back on the road, quickly I rejoined with the eastern coast of Greece, passing around Mount Olympus in the process, Greece’s highest peak (2919m) and a special place in their old mythology. Having arrived there earlier than expected and noticing that there was a road going up, I figured I should explore and see how far it would get me. Not at the top it turns out and only a third of the way. The rest is done on foot and takes about three hours. Too bad. Had I know it was possible to hike to the top, I would have arranged things differently and done it. Another thing I’ll have to leave to my next trip to Greece. I did have a bowl of tradiţional bean soup up there and it was delicious and a very welcome departure from the gyros I’ve been eating every day.

Once more at sea level, I screwed around for hours trying to figure out a way that would get me to Thessaloniki through the small roads, which landed me late in the day facing an oncoming storm. This time, I decided not to ride through it as I was on a regional road with heavy truck trafic and too exposed to the winds. I found sheleter in a long-abandonned garage and waited for the bad weather to improve while enjoying the show of sound and light. It took about an hour an half before I decided to leave again, the rain had dimished to a drizzle but it was dark. With the headlights that I had, the road to my destination was a stressful one. There are not too many potholes in Greece, but there are some and I could not see them. My best chances of not getting one was to drive slow and in the middle of my lane.

Several hours late at the hostel, they had sent me an e-mail still wondering if I would make due on my reservation. I parked the bike, got a bottle of wine and sat in silence for a while, mentally drained from today’s driving.

Road tripping Greece, done!

• Weather: Scattered clouds
• Departure: 10h00
• Arrival: 19h00
• Date: 05/08/15
• Distance: 314 km

Kalabaka, the town of Meteors, those famous Orthodox monasteries perched atop rocky peaks. A must see in Greece, so I had to drop by. With that objective in mind, I started my day earlier than the previous as I suspected the road to be long and wanted to be sure to arrive at my destination with sunlight to spare. Thankfully, it was not raining.

I planned a detour instead of the most direct route because on my map, the roads cutting straight through the mountains were marked as being unpaved. Not that I lack skills on loose surfaces (a bit actually, but I’m willing to learn) but entering this territory on the motorcycle that I had was a gamble I was not ready to take. My tires are cracked from sitting under the sun and even if I had a spare, the wheels are tubeless so there is no changing them without specialized tools. However, once at the crossroads between my desired route and the shortcut, I noticed that a brand new road had been paved using funds from the European Union. In all probability, this would have allowed a safe crossing, but what was far from certain was whether the road had been finished all the way or not, which given Greece’s economic woes, is unlikely. Having to be back in Thessaloniki tomorrow, now was not the time to get stranded in the middle of nowhere.

So I kept going. At a steady pace kilometers passed and early in the evening I arrived in Kalabaka and skipped the town to go and have a look at the Meteors. Spectacular, maybe I’ll visit a monastery tomorrow.

• Weather: Cloudy then rain and fog
• Departure: 11h30
• Arrival: 19h30
• Date: 04/08/15
• Distance: 180 km

Quickly I was out a Patras. Near the bridge to cross into the continent, I grabbed coffee, a sandwich and managed to get my brake pedal bent back into place at no charge thanks to the friendly owner of the bike shop nearby.

It’s a good thing I got that pedal fixed as it saw intensive use during what will probably be the most technical day of riding on this trip. I made due on my promise to explore the tertiary roads. For the whole day I was riding in steep mountains, negotiating hairpin turns after hairpin turns, avoiding rocks, working the brakes on extremely steep grades, swerving away from goats and riding on the gravel and earth where asphalt had been washed away, all in extraordinary scenery. Greece is not flat, it is rugged high peaks and deep valleys; sparsely populated save for some small villages hanging on mountain sides. Progress was slow. You cross a pass and enter a valley. One hour later, you’re on the other side at no more than 5 kilometers in birds flight.

I had the road to myself but the absence of traffic did not mean I could be careless. There was no room for mistakes, entering a turn at the wrong speed or misjudging the surface would have propelled me into a long free fall. Surprisingly, not once did I get lost. Not all the villages were on my map, but those that I could spot, the name was written in both Greek and Roman alphabet, which was extremely useful in finding my way in this labyrinth. On major roads, there will usually be a Greek direction sign soon followed by a Romanized translation but outside them, it’s just math symbols.

Around the middle of the afternoon, I could sense the weather was taking a turn for the worst. A storm was brewing and I had to find shelter. Luckily, on the next pass was a pretty café where I stopped five minutes short of the deluge. While enjoying a Greek coffee and a baklava (Greece has excellent honey and produces heaps of it), I watched the rain pour on the mountains and the winds picking up, culminating into into hail the size of marbles. I have ridden into heavy rains, it sucks and it’s dangerous but hail, no thanks. While I was waiting for the storm to go over, I had an intermittent conversation with the family that ran the place, where the youngest girl kept me fed with candy while attempting to communicate and show me things in her language. The Greeks have a surprisingly good level of English, that coupled with them being generally well intentioned and helpful makes them very enjoyable and useful hosts.

Eventually, I saw a break in the clouds and jumped on the bike again. Soon after though, the rain restarted. First a drizzle and then proper pouring with thunder. By that time, I was too far to come back to the café, it was getting late and I had to push on. Unless you have proper equipment, there is no stopping the water from getting everywhere while on a motorcycle. I had had a taste of how wet and cold I could be on another trip in Lithuania and this time it was no different. Soaked, freezing and loosing sensibility in all my extremities, I had to pay extra attention no to slip on the road and make a bad situation even worse.

I had no objective that day but it soon became clear I would have to stop in Karpenissi as I was no longer in condition to drive. Once downtown, I parked at café to get some shelter from the elements and ordered a hot beverage while shivering and trying to remove my equipment with no dexterity left in my fingers. The lady at the counter kindly directed me to an affordable hotel and in little time I was naked under a hot shower, feeling the tingling in my fingers as they were gaining their sensitivity back.

After a quick walk around pretty Karpenissi, I went back to my room and started working through the backlog of things I had to write, taking a look at the overcast sky once in while, hoping it would clear up for tomorrow.

 

• Weather: Blistering hot sun
• Departure: 11h00
• Arrival: 19h30
• Date: 03/08/15
• Distance: 340km

I woke up late, having gone to sleep late trying to work through the backlog of things I had to write. No issues, today was an easy day of riding along the coast. Igoumenitsa being a port city, loads of Italians where disembarking from the ferries to go on they vacations here in Greece so the roads were packed and being at sea level, hot. Not that great. I was passing resort towns after resort towns and growing steadily uncomfortable from the sweating under my coat and the rash between my legs.

Eventually, I got away from the craze and entered a nice stretch of coastal tarmac with barely any vehicle in sight. I had passed several rocky beaches before it dawned on me that I should really stop for a swim. Not even 50 Kms north of me were forests of umbrellas and folding beach chairs and there I could have my own private slice of the coast. So I did, and for an hour I was alone basking in the water. A generous soul even had installed straw umbrellas and a garbage can, which I took 5 minutes to fill with all the thrash that had washed up on this nice little section of the Greek coastline. Its odd that no one seem to knew about this place but nevermind. While I was changing myself back in my riding equipment, a Greek truck driver showed up to refresh himself just like I had done. So he was in on the secret…  We exchanged a couple of words and I left.

The journey to Patra was uneventful: nothing worth mentioning. There was only one hostel in the city, which took me a while to find. My fears of it being full were completely unfounded, it was as vacant as a Greek business. Located in a villa that had served in the second world war as a German headquarters, the place had charm, but looked like it had not been renovated since so much so that I think it has earned the title of the most disgusting hostel I have ever slept in. At that price though, I could not complain. On my way out for a gyros, I met two French that were heading in opposite direction. Fearful that they were looking for that place and that they would end up in my down (in which all my stuff was spread), I tracked back to clean up a bit. Turns out the guy was just helping his friend get to the hostel. She had suffered from an overexposure to the sun while on the ferry from Italy and wanted a bed for the night. Afterwards, he was to rejoin with his group of friends to get drunk and then nap somewhere before catching an early train to Athens. He kindly offered me to meet up with them for drinks after my quest for food, which I did. We had very interesting conversations and I stayed longer than I originally wanted to and had to sacrifice some sleep.

• Weather: Sunny and then rain
• Departure: 11h00
• Arrival: 22h00
• Date: 02/08/15
• Distance: 381km

Me and Alban had planned to have coffee the next day but I waited for a while in the lobby of the hotel for he was nowhere to be seen. I went out and grabbed my caffeine fix and something to eat and when I came back, there he was. The night before, he had pitched the idea of him riding with me to Patra as a passenger  and again he did that morning. Not that I did not want to have him with me. Circumstances permitting, it would have been a thrill but given the road ahead and the state of my bike (crooked steering, sketchy brakes, underpowered) and the limited room, it was not possible so we parted ways there.

It took me an hour to find gas but otherwise, everything about this day was perfect. The roads (save some unrepaired stretches), the amount of trafic, the views. Canyons, peaks and no cars to be seen. So I drove along at a steady pace enjoying my time very much in wild northern Greece all the way until Konitsa, where I stopped for some much needed food.

Konitsa was entirely build on a mountain side, with pretty alleyways and charming ambience. It had an old arch bridge of the likes I had never seen and was gateway to the national park of the Aoös gorge. The setting was beautiful and for minutes I was torn between making a stop there or continuing to my planned destination.

I picked the latter. In Ioannina, a large regional town, I stopped for a picturesque break near the old city walls on the side of the lake, still pondering if I should stop or not. Again, I kept going. At a gas station, I asked for direction to Igoumenitsa (a city on the western coast and my objective for the day) and was correctly directed towards the shortest route, a highway, which I took thinking I was somewhere else on the map. Not wanting to skip on the nicer roads nearby, I promptly exited the highway and proceeded on a local road.

Once I hit the first village, the rain started and given the state of the road, I took the decision to stop. I was in Polygyros, a townlet of about 60 inhabitants perched high up in the mountains, It had a pretty church and town square with trees where I had found shelter under. On seeing me there, a couple sitting under their porch waved at me to come and sit with them so I approached.

They offered me coffee and a chat in very rudimentary English with the man (who was a retired sailor) until their teenage son showed up. He was more proficient that his parents which enabled us to have a more complex conversation about me, them, Greece, Canada and what I had to do with all of this. Having finished my coffee I stood up to leave; they had offered me food several times, which I had had to decline. It was getting late (19h00) and I wanted to make it to Igoumenitsa before nightfall. Then the son told me that his mother wanted very much to cook me something and that it would be rude not to accept. I yielded, sat back down and moments later, had an omelette, a salad and some bread in front of me, all coming (except the bread) from the garden and chicken coop they had in the back. Delicious.

The remainder of the road took time as it was a succession of hairpin turns with patches of gravel here and there. I passed many timeless Greek villages, cows, goats, old women sitting by the side of the road. Beautiful.Once I had reached the principal road I was aiming for, I told myself that this little excursion in the back country was worth it and that I’ll have to try it again. Late on time, part of the way to Igoumenitsa was done in the dark, with shitty headlights and a dirty helmet visor. Dangerous. After a bit of searching, I managed to negotiate myself a room at a decent price and stayed there to write and to rest. Igoumenitsa, a port town, did no seem to have a lot to offer.