Alpine Greece

I left the port city of Igoumenista 5 euro worse off after an orange juice and very average toastie for breakfast. The Hotel declined to take payment by card though the machine was there on the table and the VISA sign in the window. Greece is an expensive place, I am finding out…maybe I have been spoilt by the prices in the other countries I have visited so far. Anyhow, I set off for Ioannina on the recommendation of Pat Thynne and took the motorway to get some miles done.Dull, dull, dull. You see nothing on the motorway. Ioannian on the other hand has a nice fort and thousands of teenagers milling about. Maybe it is the school holidays? Lots of mooching and not much studying.

Feeling pepped up by a double espresso and probably a little over confident given I didn't have a paper map worth a damm, I allowed the GPS to navigate me to for the next section, the only proviso being that it was barred from taking motorways or toll roads. As the crow flies, the destination was 80km away and it predicted 2 hours to get there.




Climbing out the other side to 1100m, I nearly ran into two ponies who were licking moisture off the road. When I stopped to take picture, one of them for curious and came over to investigate, covered in a swarm of flies. He sniffed and then walked on, donating a portion of flies to me.

Later, the mountain seemed to be made of a grit like sand and the road was buggered. The whole side of the mountain seemed to be slipping slowly down so no wonder they had a hard time keeping a surface on it.



The next creature trying to block the road was this little tortoise. It was just sitting there sunning itself but I figured it wouldn't last very long so I moved it to the edge.







I blindly obeyed the GPS it it took me down a series of ever narrower roads some only the width of a single car and then into a gorge which had a huge cliff to the left and a huge drop to the right, and lots of sign saying watch out for falling rocks. I noticed this house built into the cliff face which has got to be one of the stranger addresses in the world.








By this time, there was thunder and lightning overhead and I thought it best to get away from the cliffs as the rain can cause rocks to tumble. I climbed up upwards and saw signs that the road was suffering from the regular landslips. By then, the rain had moved on and I could see the lightning show on the next mountain.



At the top, I should see what I though was a fantastic ribbon of switchbacks all the way to the valley floor but it was a mirage. The descent was loose gravel, they hadn't finished the road. I got my first dog chase on the way down too. The German guys I met last night told me to be careful of the dogs here as they can be quite aggressive. I thought they were winding me up but not so.

After 4 hours on the road  I arrived at Meteora. The Meteora is a complex of Greek Orthodox monasteries built on stone towers and date from mid 14th century. Originaly there some 20 but six survive today. Access to the monasteries was originally (and deliberately) difficult, requiring either long ladders lashed together or large nets used to haul up both goods and people. This required quite a leap of faith – the ropes were replaced, so the story goes, only "when the Lord let them break". These days, the monasteries are tourist attractions with fewer than 10 residents each.