Fig capital eats deraillers

"Who are you? I don't know your face." A man on a mule leans in to examine Basil's face where we are setting up camp. The only people that visit these parts are the people who are from here. A quick conversation about Basil's ancestry and we are assured that it is safe to camp where we are already camping.

Our new unplanned route found us in territory so remote that the milk truck doesn't deliver to the villages in this forgotten zone. The demand simply isn't big enough. And so we made our way to Kymi to ride a piece of the northern coast before the ferry arrived a few days later to take us to Alonnisos. I was quite excited to be visiting Kymi as it is legendary for its thin-skinned figs. I would have to settle for dried ones as figs haven't quite kicked off their season yet, but I would get to see and feel and breathe what some consider to be the fig capital and what a delightful surprise the village turned out to be. Like most towns founded in medieval times, pretty Kymi is perched 250 m above her harbour up a 4 km long exquisitely serpentine road. There is an understated dignity to towns that support themselves by means other than the mass tourism that pours into Greece every summer and we were surprised to find this in Kymi. As we cycled through we found ourselves wishing we could spend more time exploring the town. As fate would have it we did just that.

Somewhat tired from a bad night of sleep and still recovering from our exhausting day fighting the winds that greeted us at our landing on Evia, my ceramic pulley imploded while making our way up a particularly steep grade. We found ourselves limping back to Kymi to search for parts and then on to Halkidi 2 hours by bus away to pick the parts up. On our return to Kymi that same evening, the ticket collector confirmed several times that we were actually wanting to go to there. He seemed convinced that we really must have made an error and actually meant to get off in Eretria with all the other resort loving tourists. In Kymi, while looking for a place to eat another man assaults Basil with the question, "Who's are you!?" Really, the only reason you'd be in Kymi is because you or your parents are from there, so, the inquiries into our ancestry continue...

The Road Less Travelled

We came to realize that the wind farm had indeed blown us into the Greek equivalent of Oz. After much deliberation as to the future of our trip, we decided to throw all caution to that damn wind and entirely abandon our original plan to cycle through the mainland checking off many "must see" tourist destinations. We decided to favour areas not so talked about in guide books and to visit roads that barely appeared on our maps. Giddy with delight at having freed ourselves from the burden of a plan, we turned, not west to the archaeological sight of Eretria, but north to Trahili. What was in Trahili? We had no idea! But we had 5 days until the next ferry and so we pedalled north.

Stopping for water in Partheni, I heard the familiar lamenting bray of a donkey. Common to my life in Mexico, it was a first for me here in Greece. As I pedalled on - real unsanitized Greece flooded my soundtrack. The donkey gave way to chickens and roosters clucking up their scandals and, in the midst of all this, the voices of the village filled the valley. We had fallen into a rift that had missed the anti-septic hand of progress. As we continued we saw more donkeys, even people riding them, more people in humble homes living with their chickens and their sheep, and, best of all, whiskered ladies in black. Wise women with backs bent from decades of hard work. Women who didn't flinch at the thought of the physicality involved when we told them we were cycling through Greece. We made the right choice in dropping our plans and opening our itineraries to lesser visited Greece.

Along with lesser visited Greece came even steeper grades. Climbs have easily averaged 10% and on our first day on the road less travelled Basil reported seeing 18% on his computer. My muscles ache just thinking about it.

Evia to OZ

I'm concentrating with every muscle in my body to hold myself and my bicycle in forward moving line on a road which has betrayed me by switching from asphalt to gravel at a particularly steep moment in a particularly strong wind. Cars pass and honk giving us the all approving thumbs up. We can barely see as the wind whips our faces and bodies and bicycles with the most portable and sharp gravel it can pick up. I grumble as a car passes too fast and covers us with even more dust and gravel. I want to shoot him the finger, but I'm afraid to take even one finger off my bicycle. The next curve delivers a terrifying blow that sends an entirely powerless and startled me straight across the entire road to teeter on the edge of a cliff that plunges a few hundered meters down a bramble filled ravine and over many rocks to a most violent sea. I laugh with a combination of hysterical disbelief and disbelieving relief. Basil screams at me to get back to the other side. I fight slowly to push myself and my bike back to the other side of the road. As the wind picks up whipping us with more gravel, I brace myself against my bike and, with my face tucked deep into my shoulder, I have an epiphany: never cycle through a wind farm. Yes, kids: never cycle through a wind farm.