Greece

May 20, 2008

The first stretch of road on Saturday out of Şarköy was dirt right along the sea. It was a bit bumpy but fun. The next few stretches of road were pavement, but they didn’t help progress. They were rough, and the wind was in our faces. Then the climbing began. The longest of the climbs was 5.2km. It was plenty steep with no shoulders. At one point Sophia pulled off the road for water and a break. Little did she know, she’d picked up thorns in both front and rear tires. A few minutes later both tires were flat. I was ahead and didn’t realize, so she had to push quite a bit of the climb. When she caught up, we got her tubes swapped. Needless to say, when we arrived in Kesan that night, we were quite ready to just put the bikes away for a bit, even if we had only covered 70km. A hot shower and a good meal had us thinking about getting on the bikes again. The next day was our crossing into Greece!

We were up early and ready to head for the border on Sunday. About 2km out, we started passing trucks lined up for customs. We just kept passing them, hoping that we’d be able to slide through a different line. When we finally got to the front, it was quite a process. We went through 4 stations on the Turkish side, pre-inspection, immigration, customs and then post-inspection. Then we started rolling for the actual border. It was a bridge. On the far side, we got a final salute from the Turkish soldiers and a wave hello from the Greek ones. Then we started passing trucks again… When we got to the front of the line, the first station on the Greek side was a huge car wash! There was no way around. We had to ride through and get sprayed down. I guess that Greek customs didn’t want us bringing any Turkish dust across the border. Immigration and customs were relatively painless, aside from the looks that we got for being soaked! We finished our 87km for the day with a brutal headwind all the way in to Alexandroupolis. We found a nice campground, I took a dip in the Aegean, and then we headed to dinner. We had the most amazing mixed seafood platter: squid, octopus, shrimp and fish. Of course, it was accompanied by a wonderful Greek salad topped with the largest piece of Feta that I’ve ever seen.

Monday we had planned for a rest day, but… I saw the Cave of the Cyclops (from the Odyssey) marked on the map, and I had to go. It was a good bit out of town, and the bus system wasn’t getting us there, so we hopped on the bikes. It was a treat to ride them without the panniers. They felt almost light! The Cyclops’s Cave turned out to be closed, so it was probably more of a tourist trap than anything, but we did stumble on the site of an ancient Greek city called Zone. It was one of the earliest Greek settlements this far east in what is now modern Greece. There was actually an archaeological team there excavating. It was cool! Our rest day turned out to be 51km on the bikes. It was probably the right thing to keep our legs loose.

We had to back track a bit this morning before we turned north. We ended up on a stretch of road that was every roadies dream. The surface wasn’t perfect, but it was good. There was a good bit of climbing, ripping descents and too many turns to count. For 50km we saw 3 cars, 1 herd of goats and 3 herds of cows. That’s it. We finished out with 84km for the day, and we’re in a little town called Soufli now.

The plan for tomorrow is to keep heading north.

Cheers,
James