Greece. Thessaloniki and return to Bulgaria. Day 66

Day 66: 

Alejandro!

Our day started at 11.30, with an interesting hangover crushing us. We all were fucked –in general-, but Adri was worse. Sergeant Téllez was an authentic zombie. We left the hotel and went to the streets looking for some repairing meal. Feta cheese again. Cheap & tasty. On Monday morning, the city is full of activity. People and cars everywhere. And 4 phantoms roaming. Of course, we wanted to do some sightseeing, so we took the car and went to the seafront. I parked in a forbidden place, but Adri (absolutely knocked) stood in the car while we were walking around there. 

The White Tower

Thessaloniki is the second Greek city after Athens, and has a long (more than 2.000 years) and complex history. Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans… all them ruled the city along the time. The first big thing we saw was the White Tower (a prison during the Ottoman period), just beside the sea. We walked for almost an hour along the seafront, and took some photos around Alexander The Great and his statue. 

Josemi in Thessaloniki's seafront

Sgt. Téllez protecting the car with bravery

The day was really grey, and our heads absolutely black. Strange fruits in a nearby park captured our attention more than the historic remains of the city. Those fruits –fuck! What were they??- were really intriguing for 3 dummies like us. They were green and with strange smell and touch. We finally decided to use them to play baseball, and was quite funny. Once back in the reality, we remembered that a dying Sergeant Téllez was alone in the car, and he had no way to phone us if necessary. Shit! We went back and fortunately the car was there with a body inside, and there wasn’t a paper on the windscreen. But what would have happened if the police had come? Nobody knows, but I’m sure that Sgt. Téllez would have done it right. He is a soldier, used to be in the frontline! Later, we tried to visit other parts of the city, going there by car. The traffic was horrible and we were stucked most of the time. We only could see some old churches, interesting, but  completely surrounded by new and ugly buildings! Driving around there was stressing and we couldn’t even find a place to park! Result: Way Back to Bulgaria around 2 PM. Highway direction North. We only stopped to have a coffee –beer for Ronnie- in a Greek village, the rest of the trip was calm. 

Yes! We're spanish! But don't worry, we are not dangerous!

 Once in Bulgarian lands, 10 km past Dupnitsa the car engine suddenly stopped. What the fuck? I parked in the verge as I could. What happened?? I was afraid of it… No petrol!! Well, at least it wasn’t a breakdown. The car hasn’t pilot light for this matter, and I forgot to check the meter… 

-“Ok, ok… let’s go to do something before darkness. I’ll try to do hitchhiking and go back to Dupnitsa for some petrol”, said Ronnie. He tried it for a while and nobody stopped. The isolated place where we were didn’t help him. Just in case, I started to walk the way back to the village. 20 minutes and a few kilometers after, a car stopped for me. There were Ronnie and two gypsies in a very old car. They spoke some spanish because had been working in Spain, in the country. Once in the petrol-station, Ronnie said me that things like these proof that, in the end, poor people usually are the most humane. Nobody stopped except them. 

Not again!! :)

We bought a bottle of water and filled it with petrol. A rich couple in the other side of the road was “assaulted” by us, and they -of course- had to accept us in their car. Way back to the Golf and Adri-Josemi. 1,5 litres of petrol and another return to the petrol-station in Dupnitsa to fill up the tank. We arrived Sofia around 8 PM, really tired, but happy after all! The Greek experience had been good, varied and intense! Unforgettable trip! 

Greece. Meteora and Thessaloniki. Day 65

 Day 65:

We woke up at 9:30 in that guest house in Kastraki (a village beside Kalampaka), and the first thing we did was look for a place where we could eat something. Hard job on a Sunday morning. Having had a Greek breakfast (Feta cheese), we were ready to drive through Meteora huge rocks. 

The Great Meteoron

2 climbers here...

The day was cloudy, but that didn’t prevent us to enjoy the place. We drove up and down following the serpentine road that pass near every monastery. We visited two of them, going upstairs for a while (altough our legs didn’t like the idea). Monastery of the Holy Trinity was the first one, and we finished with The Great Meteoron, which is the biggest. It has 2 or 3 small museums, a dark church, an old kitchen, a cellar... and of course, impressive views, because it’s erected in one of the highest points. There were people climbing one of the enormous walls in front of us.

Kalampaka is -literally- under the rocks

Meteora monasteries were built around 12th-15th centuries, and some of them are situated more than 500 m. above the plain, on ancient rocks. This place is unique in the world. It’s hard to believe that there are a few monks still living here, but it’s true... 

The day was getting better and the sun appeared for a while -maybe a gift from the Gods, whom wanted to reward us for our effort the previous day-. We climbed a prominent rock, from where we could take some nice photos. We stayed there for almost an hour enjoying the relaxing silence, only disturbed from time to time by some car horn from Kalampaka, just below us. 

Views from a petrol-station in Kalampaka. Holy Monastery of St. Stephen on the right side.

H.Monastery of Varlaam

Back in the village, we ate something and started our returning trip to Thessaloniki (250 km), where we arrived around 21:00. The city is quite lively and busy. Hundreds of people are walking in the streets and filling up the pubs. Unlike northern countries' lifestyle (Bulgaria is an example), here we had something similar to Spanish culture. We rented a room for four in Alexandria Hotel (cheap, around 14 € per person). 

Marcos & Josemi

Once showered, we went out to look for some party. Ronnie cheered on the group with some street-beers. We walked through the city centre, beer in hand. We stopped in a club called Rocanrollar (similar name to Sophia’s one), and they tried to rip off us with a crazy price for 3 beers and a whisky. After showing our deep disagreement, the club’s owner came and he “negotiated” until we were happy. So crafty. After that, we decided to do something weird like walk to the upper side of a building under construction. Nice views over the city from there, and crazy conversation about Christmas and Cosmos! And we tought “Ok, we are in bastard-spanish mode now… let’s go until the end: botellón!”. We did something similar just beside a Rock-pub, with nice music like Rage Against The Machine and Pearl Jam. 

The team. Exploring Thessaloniki!

Latin Lovers

A dog came with us the rest of the night, he wanted friends and we were receptive. But after a long walk, we found ourselves in the industrial harbour of the city, and (surprisingly) there was a noisy night-club in the middle of tens of warehouses. “Fuck, what is this??”, Ronnie was excited. The club was absolutely full of people, dancing and partying hard. Very nice. We didn’t expect that around 3 AM on Sunday to Monday. Beers cost 7 € each one. Not so nice, but we paid several, anyway. Sergeant Téllez (Adri) showed a good sample of Spanish talent in the disco, but unfortunately greek females were on guard that night. Back in the hotel around 6 AM, with the army slightly injured. Our intention hadn’t been that! Thessaloniki has more party than we had expected. And Ronnie is a very encouraging comrade!! Fucking horse!!

Greece. Mount Olympus. Day 63

Una vez más, y para descontento de algunos de los que suelen leerme, vuelvo al inglés en esta entrada. Una buena forma de practicar, aunque agradecería que alguien me corrigiese los errores (y así aprendo...). Allá va...

 Day 63:

The greek frontier is 180 km from Sofia. Too short distance to avoid the temptation… Ok, Athens and all the famous islands are in the south, far away from us (around 1.000 km), but the north of Greece also has interesting things… The main attraction for me was the Mount Olympus, the sacred mountain. All began when Ludi told me things about this region, and how beautiful is. He joked about how greek mountaineers try to exceed Musala's height, the highest Balkan mountain, putting stones one above another in the top of the Olympus. Of course it’s only a joke (I hope…), but it’s true that the Bulgarian peak is only 8 meters higher… so maybe, if they put enough stones...

On the road to Greece. South Bulgaria landscape.

So, finally I decided to look for some people interested in a trip to Mount Olympus (since Pacas and Monroy were not). I put a message in the Sofia couchsurfing forum, and one Bulgarian boy was very interested: Ronnie. I met with him in Flocafe (just in the center of Sofia) on Wednesday, and we talked about the plan. Everything was hasty; but we didn’t have so much time before extreme winter temperatures, so we decided to try it as soon as possible: this weekend!! And we added to the trip two main destinations: Meteora and Thessaloniki! I explained everything to Adri and Josemi (our new spanish friends), and they were crazy about the idea! On Thursday, the four of us visited a huge market in the outskirts of Sofia, in which we found some necessary (and cheap!) things as gloves, winter pants, etc. Ready to rock!!

Views over Litohoro and Aegean Sea. Cloudy day.

Near Litohoro... where is Olympus?

We arranged to meet on Friday (22th of October) at 8 AM, but we started with some problems: Ronnie overslept and we got muddled with our new meeting point… Result: we said good bye to Sofia around one hour later. Bad thing, considering we were very short on time (as we will see later). The journey to the frontier is easy and has great mountain landscapes, we could enjoy them with a sunny weather. We stopped to have a quick meal in our way, and we arrived to the frontier 3 hours after exiting Sofia. A greek policewoman asked Ronnie where did he meet us (3 spanish), and why were we entering Greece. She was very impolite in her manners… we joked long time about that situation. Since here, we started to drive on highway, and everything went easier: 100 km after the frontier is Thessaloniki, and another 100 more km and we were on Litohoro, a village used as a “base camp” for the excursions to Mount Olympus. The day was very ugly, cloudy and foggy in the mountains. We bought some food in the last minute, and we ate something before drove to the end of the port (Prionia, 1.060 meters high, 17 km from Litohoro) in which starts the path to Zolotas hut (or “A” hut). This hut is 2.060 meters high, so that day we had 1.000 meters of height difference, not bad!.

One more time... german motor!

Here we go...

At that moment, it was 5 PM and very cloudy. Not so much light around us. It’s 2 hours and a half walking to the hut, so we had to be very hurry, or we would be covered by the darkness. The path was very beautiful, all the time walking across a fall forest. But, at the same time, it was darker and darker. And we didn’t know the area, we didn’t see other people doing trekking around there… I had a map, but I think it's not useful in the night... These things happen when you start walking at 5 PM… botch!!

I was trying to rush the guys when I noticed that Ronnie’s bag was the biggest and heaviest, and, naturally, he was the slowest. I asked him:

–“Ronnie, what are you carrying there??”. 
–“Ahh… nothing special, only the clothes, some food, some beer…”. 
–“I see…beer... and how much beer are you talking about?” 
–“Err… around 2 liters, I think… Ah! And one bottle of Rakia!”.  
 –“Fuck!, ok Ronnie, we have to hurry up or we will get in troubles with the darkness… come on, empty that bottles and we may walk faster”. 
–“No, no, no! No way! The beer goes with me! No way! We have to drink it in the top of the peak!”. 

One of the last photos of the day... before darkness

Ok, ok… at that moment I understood that Ronnie would not throw anything of his bag, and much less the beer!. But since then, we took great pains to go faster. When the last rays of light were disappearing, we reached two exhausted Greek girls. Twenty minutes later, the absolute darkness covered us. The fog was blocking the moonlight, and everything went black, black, black. We continued walking with the help of some small lanterns, but the girls were very tired and they wanted to stop to have a rest (and they didn't have any lantern). I didn’t like the idea, because the hut was supposed to be close from our position, so we did the last effort carrying their bags until the end. We were lucky and we could follow the track and arrive to Zolotas Hut, but getting lost in that conditions would have been quite risky. 

The amazing path to the Olympus

Once inside, we received a nice reward in its warm dining room: spaghetti and some beer!! We had dinner with the girls and we all talked about our experience together, it was a perfect ending to a very long (and funny) day. After that, we went to our bunks and covered ourselves with 3 blankets each one… and they weren’t enough!! Viva la revolución, Ronnie!!!