Berat or Barmash?

Reluctantly leaving beautiful Gjirokastra we continued along the Drinos valley, marvelling at its impressive number of gas stations and sigh inducing mountain backdrops. As drizzle turned to downpour we decided to escape the rain and satisfy our hunger. An ugly little restaurant with a TV full of Albanian music videos had hairy mutton ribs and homemade yogurt on offer. Somewhat disabled by our lack of Albanian language skills, we ended up with sizeable orders of each. We munched on greasy ribs and yogurt while waiting for the rain to pass.

Further down the road, just past the gushing spring of Tepelene, we were long at last off the gas station lined freeway and into the more humble Albania we expected. Cars dropped away to a mere trickle. The number of shepherds doubled and road quality, while still generally good, varied considerably. The mountainscapes closed in around us as we cycled into the Kelcyre gorge.

In the town of Kelcyre we stopped to inquire about the road to Berat which appeared on our map as well as on a road sign in the centre. We were met with confused looks and through a mixture of Albanian, Greek, Italian, French, and traveller's charades we were told that the road was impassable. I pointed to a nearby dirt side street asking if it was like that – yo, non, no, oxi. Big boulders lay in our way (described with a pantomime of a man clumsily picking up and carrying a very large boulder on his belly and hips), so we either had to go back to the main road or find a different destination. Later reading of the Lonely Cyclist's blog of cycling adventures in Albania, we learned that it has been done by cyclists, and it was indeed very difficult going, In the end, we opted for a turn that took us to Korce and over the highly talked of spectacular Barmash Pass.

Alongside the fields of hay we raced the rain that chased us into nearby Permet.

Bonkers for bunkers

A shepherd overlooking a flock of sheep and bunkers is an entirely common Albanian sight. These indestructible cement domes are a communist legacy left over from Albania's reaction to the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Abandoning the Warsaw pact, Albania developed their own defensive strategy and today an enduring reminder of this lay scattered in fields, city squares, and remote mountain sides all across Albania. Built to withstand full on tank attacks, they say 700,000 of these were installed, but a more conservative estimate is more like 60,000 – which still makes quite an impression on Albania's landscape.

Mercedes a National Obsession

There are many things that overwhelm a pair of fresh eyes in Albania. The first thing is definitely the incredible geography, but the second thing has to be the national obsession with the Mercedes Benz. It seems that, as soon as communism crumbled, the whole country chose the Mercedes as the luxury item to reach for and today everyone seems to have one be it old, new, stolen or fake. It's the number one car of choice for Albania.

Gjirokastra

“It was a strange city, and seemed to have been cast up in a valley one winter's night like some prehistoric creature that was now clawing its way up the mountainside. Everything in the city was old and made of stone, from the streets and fountains to the the roofs of the sprawling age-old houses, covered with grey slates like gigantic scales.” This is how award winning author Ismail Kadare describes Gjirokastra in his 1971 novel called Chronicle in Stone. It is amazing to meander through the chaotic cobbled streets of this solid reminder of a time when building materials came from just down the road and were so much more permanent than they are today.

Standing in the town's handicraft shop in Gjirokastra we fingered through an impressive collection of Kadare's translated novels. Unfortunately Chronicle in Stone was only available in hardcover, and I, trying to cut back on my travelling library, already had 5 other books, so I opted for the lighter and less expensive but still fascinating Three Arched Bridge. Kadare's writing is so exquisite that, during a rainy afternoon nestled inside the heavy stone walls of Kotoni B&B, I devoured his tale of the role of the building of a bridge in Albania's transition from the the Venetian to the Ottoman empire.


So, with it's own three arched bridge, Gjirokastra stands today, a testimony to the uniqueness of Turkish tower architecture and home to the largest castle in the Balkans. In 2005 it was made a UNESCO world heritage site and today the city struggles with the expense of the restoration of its maintenance starved old town. For us it is like a step back in time to a Europe of old that today is simply non-existent in such a genuine, inexpensive, and relatively tourist-free form.

Entering Albania

Uncertain of how things would be in Albania, we bought some rice and lentils and canned foods to carry in our panniers in case we found ourselves stranded for food. We also stocked up on water because we heard the water was unfit for drinking and we had no idea how often we would be able to buy water. There was also the question of money. We read that money changers in the street are perfectly legal, but given that we were all returning to Greece nobody wanted to change their euros especially since the towns on the borders aren't big enough for ATMs. So, we needed a bank machine to pull out some leke - on we rode into the Albanian Drinos valley...


...and a more beautiful highway than anything we had seen yet in Greece. Beautifully paved, big shoulder, with a downward grade just gentle enough that you still have to do a little work to move ahead, but you are left feeling like you are powerful enough to ride clear across Albania in a single day. Of course that feeling may have also come from the giant view we were moving through. A beautiful wide valley lined on either side with a mixture of fierce stony mountains and their accompanying stone villages clinging to the folds leaping away from both sides of the river valley. Down the Drinos valley we slid into a much more modern Albania than we expected.


When we stopped to fill our wallets with Albanian leke from an ATM at one of the very modern and overabundant roadside gas stations, we were invited to an espresso by the manager. In Albania, the Greek affection for Nescafe frappe has yet to beat out the influence of the Italian tradition of the espresso. I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but the Greek frappe is a phenomenon that has me entirely bewildered. The insta-frappe is simply criminal in a culture with such a long history of coffee appreciation.

With espresso, a tailwind, and a lovely downward slope we were in Gjirokastra negotiating the cobbled gravity defying climes of the city's Ottoman quarter in no time. Naturally, between the violent rush of Mercedes' and the slippery cobbles, the hotel we were directed to proved difficult to find. We were all too focused on staying upright to notice the Kotoni B&B sign until the third pass.

Green, Green Epirus

Epirus is green, mountainous, and underpopulated. Distances between taps are longer than in the Pelponnese and opportunities for buying food are longer still. The people are also a good deal more amused to see us show up in their town. Many roads though this region follow river valleys which means grades are generally mild although one of the smaller roads between Agios Pandes and Kefalohori, had a mentionable and unexpected stretch of rough dirt road.

An unsettling sight for us was the overwhelming presence of police trucks and vans out rounding up Albanians entering the country illegally through the mountains. The police seem to think we should feel safer with their presence, but I can't help but feel uncomfortable about the mentality of a person who would choose such a line of work. I certainly fear them more than an Albanian looking to improve their future. I will however say that in conversation with the police, they didn't discourage us from cycling in Albania. So, after a long day, we settled into our sleeping bags above the town of Ktismata and we dreamt about what lay ahead of us in Albania. From our campsite's view the transition was surprising. Along the border we could see the mountains changing from thick with green to bare naked right where Albania began.

Other ways to travel in Greece

People are often very surprised that we are travelling by bicycle around Greece. With the quantity of mountains it is physically daunting to most, but we too have seen some other modes of transport that truly baffle us. The first is a sailboat completely covered in mirror mosaic tile, the last two are German “end of the world” vehicles. They are the German version of an RV. I'm not sure what they expect to find in Greece, but their approach seems a little over the top. Maybe they're driving to Africa for a safari? I dunno.

How to Get RICH in Greece

While Greek tavern meals are great they can run up the cost of our trip pretty fast, so one of our favourite ways to eat is to have a little picnic somewhere along the road, preferably with some delicious shade and/or a fantastic view. With such excellent bread, cheese, olives, nuts, fruit, veg, honey, tahini, and yogurt available everywhere it is an easy way to makeup for the shocking cost of the 43 Euro fish we shared at the tavern before our trip to the entrance to Hades. And, with that, I'd like to note that we have uncovered one of the craziest food scams in Greece.

Our 43 euro fish (that's euros, right?) had us reeling, but considering the number of fish we see when we snorkel in the seas around here ,we reasoned, well, perhaps fish are so expensive because there aren't any. They should be expensive, right?

Yeah, right.

Some days before the "Hades Tavern 43 euro fish highway robbery escapade", we ordered ourselves grilled octopus with one of our meals. I've since learned that in Greece, an order like this is routinely one tentacle and costs at least 10 euros. It is quite standard. A few days after the 10 euro tentacle, I was standing by the harbour in one of the many towns we've passed through and I decided to do a little math (brace yourself for this is truly rare) I counted the number of octopi artfully hanging on the line across the street from a nearby tavern – sinisterly whetting the appetites of passersby. I counted 13 octopi with 8 legs each, that's 1040 euros, 1040 EUROS! artfully hanging out in the street unsupervised! Fishy? I was furious and determined to get to the bottom of this standardized greek thievery, so the next time we were in a market I took a closer look at the octopi. How much?
12 Euros for the whole critter.

Now, that is some mark up if you ask me. Wanna get rich quick? Open a seafood restaurant in Greece.

Life after the Peloponnese

Getting itchy to explore Epirus and Thessaly in the northwest of Greece. We made a beeline from Dhimitsana to the north of the Peloponnese. Passing through Klitoria and Kastria we arrive at Kalyvrita where, in 1943, the German army massacred every male above the age of 15 in retaliation for the resistance movement that was bubbling there. Today the town is a popular weekend ski getaway for wealthy Athenians and the end point for the Vouraikos Gorge which cleaves an impressive rift in the Peloponnese from Diakopto in the north to Kalyvrita at its southern point. Climbing 15km up the side of the gorge to be greeted by the view out over the Gulf of Corinth and beyond to Sterea Ellada is a very rewarding finish to so much time in the Peloponnese.



Reenergized about getting into a Greece unknown to us. I couldn't wait to hit the North to learn why it is that the folks from the Mani feel such kinship with the people from Epirus, but the whole of Sterea Ellada lay between us and it. So we found a pretty little church tucked well off the road with an excellent view over the gulf and on to Delphi and Sterea Ellada and we began to set up camp.


...I love those decision making moments that take you completely off your original intended course...

In passing, after we had finished our laundry and while Paul was preparing a delicious pasta dish for dinner, Basil mentioned that we could always take a ferry to the north of Greece. I had been reading for days and plotting a route through Sterea Ellada to Ioannina, Zagorohoria, and Meteora. We had also been entertaining the thought of popping in for a 'peek' at Albania. It was a favourite amongst Greeks for bad-mouthing, and Abner, a good friend of Basil's, had us intrigued about his family's home country for years. A ferry! Que va! I hadn't even considered such a short cut. A ferry would make Albania a sure thing and allow us a good amount of free time off the bike as well. I mulled this over all night and then the whole way down the gorge the next morning and I continued mulling ight into the early afternoon on the Egio ferry that carried us to Agios Nicholaos on the other side of the Gulf of Corinth. Finally the maps came out and court was held.

While undoubtedly the riding north through Sterea Ellada would have been phenomenal, we went for the ferry ride short cut, making misrepresented Albania a definite option. Fortunately for us, there was an overnight ferry out of Patra to Igoumenitsa the next night. Between now and then, lay an unexpected stay at untalked about city of Nafpaktos a lively little former Venetian holding across the gulf from Patra, and a ride back to the Peloponnese over Greek engineering point of pride the Rio-Andirio suspension bridge. And so that is how we came to land so quickly in the north of Greece. Whoo hoo! Happily back in Bougatsalandia.

Dhimitsana

The mountain towns of Arcadia Andritsena, Karitena, Stemnitsa, and Dhimitsana are spectacularly set little gemstones that hang above the southern half of the Peloponnese peninsula and ar home to quiet mountain getaways filled with tightly packed cobbled streets and lazy street side cafes. Whiling away a few days in Dhimitsana, I can't help but wonder what it is that the locals do for money. Surely they aren't all shepherds and bee keepers. It would be easy to think they are given the amount of honey being sold and the quantity of distant goat bells heard when cycling this route. Lined with yellow broom blossoms, the road from Karitena to Dhimitsana is easily the most civilized uphill grade in all the Peloponnese.

Set It Free!

Greece is littered with countless archaeological sites. On the roadsides we constantly see signs telling us of archaeological points of interests just off the road. There are so many of them that mostly we just ignore them for fear of getting nowhere. However, there are a few things one must stop for and the Temple of Apollo Epikourios on the beautiful meandering road between coastal Tholo and mountainous Karitena is described as one of them.

Built by Iktinos the architect of the Parthenon and the beautifully preserved Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, this temple had the promise of a remote mountain-top location to add to the impact. Being the second best preserved temple in Greece and coupled with an arduous mountain climb it sounded like a cycling must see.

The ride was terrific, the road from Tholos runs a gentle uphill course along the edge of the burn of the forest fires that devastated the region around Olympia 2 years ago. It gradually pulls away from this zone and sharply heads upward through intensely shepherded mountains to a stark mountain top where for several kilometers you watch a white circus tent growing as you approach your destination. The visual reward for all your hard work is disappointing. The temple, which has survived in terrific condition due to it's distance from any sizable population has been shrink wrapped to protect it from the elements. The effect is absurd and impossible to appreciate.

The brief write up at the sight extolling the usefulness of the protective tent points out that the impact is only aesthetic, which, to me, seems pretty damn important given that aesthetics was one of the main reasons for choosing an architect like Iktinos to design and build such an impressive temple in such a visually incredible place. In it's current state it is impossible to get any kind of feel for the feat that was accomplished here. I'm sad to say that the Greeks have really blundered on this one. Please free the Temple of Vasses!