ATHENS

Our plans in Peloponnese changed completely for this big natural disaster that Greece has suffered. Esparta, Korinthos, Micenas... they have to wait for another occasion.
We decided to stay in Krestena during the days of the fires to helped our friend Kostas, in case the fire arrived; the fire that is seen in the previous blog entry, it was extinguished, but another one arrived, and stopped just 300 meters from the house, we thought that it would arrive, even we prepared the house for the fire while airplanes and helicopters flew over Krestena throwing water... helicopters evacuating people... firemen, policemen, military, the press!... Krestena was a chaos for a day, the sky was red, yellow, and was raining ash continually. This was the aspect of the sky, in the afternoon in a day without clouds, just smoke...


Finally the fire didn’t arrive to Kostas’ house, but thousands and thousands of hectares were destroyed, and Olympia, two days after to have been there, it was devastated by the fire...

We went directly to Athens; here it was waiting for us a couple of "work" days, we chose Athens to do the preparative of our next phase, Middle East. What more time had taken us, was the Syrian visa, up to three times we had to go, they asked us for a recommendation letter of our embassy; but at the end, there were no problem, we have a month of stay, and it cost 23 € each. Due to our life style (never stop), we spent the time in Athens with a lot of calmness. We went up to the Likavitos hill, with nice views of all the immense city; we also saw the guard of the government with its ridiculous shoes with pompom...


And of course the temple of Zeus, and the Acropolis; it was sad to see the Parthenon in works, but from some years ago it is in repair, because it is in very bad state.

For the people who want to visit Greece, is very important to carry the student card (ISIC), we keep saying it because we have not paid anything, even in the Acropolis.

The exit of Athens was very disappointing, it keeps being impossible to travel by our way in this country. We chose the best place for hitchhike, the Athens exit toll of the highway; probably a 10.000 cars pass in front of us in the 4 hours that we stood there, and no one stop for us. We decided to finish our days in Greece traveling by train, which is not expensive.
In Thessaloniki, we met a great couple, Alexis and Catherina; he has a big dream, which is to travel like us; with them we went around the city seeing many Roman remains; and even we gave our first round by boat of the journey.

GREECE

It was difficult to get out of Macedonia… besides we didn’t know how it works the hitchhike in Greece. The first guy who picks us up was very nice bringing us to Kozani, even when he was going in opposite direction.

The day after we were very lucky, the first car stopped; but only was that, LUCK… because if somebody with tattoos and long hair is thinking to travel all over Greece by hitchhiking... must be crazy... People told us to be careful with the immigrants, but thanks to them we are moving in the country, especially with Albanians. That morning we were totally lost, the roads that we went through, didn’t appear in our map, and we were more and more far of our destination, Meteora.
Another man approach us a little more, in 50 km he smoked half packet of tobacco. And, in our last move to reach Meteora, while María continuo hitchhiking I went to ask something in a shop; in this moment a car stopped, so I run to the car very happy; when the man saw me, he run away very fast!!! Incredible...

Finally we arrived to this wonderful place; Meteora are plenty of very curious stony formations, and with several monasteries in the summits, we pass the night at the top of one of the rocks, with an incredible views, and with the company of strange insects that fed on us during the whole night...

As we didn’t have house to stay for the following night, we decided to travel towards south all that we could, and try to arrive up to Delphi, but... is very complicated to hitchhike here. It was a catastrophic day, hours and hours on road, and in the end, we end up sleeping hidden between a plantations of olive trees and cotton, in a town lost in the map.

We manage to reach Delphi, but it was another long day of hours in road, it was exhausting, so in Delphi we made the decision of take the bus up to Antirrion, something that we didn’t do since we were in Austria. We had a little of everything until we arrived Delphi; the man of the first car said that Jesus had told him to stop for us, because I was not a bad person that would have a gun and could kill him... A Belgium couple brought us to a good place to continuo. And for the following car I sat for a while; it is a good trick, like this the people thought that only Maria is hitchhiking; the man who stopped and brought us call me all the time David of Al-Qaeda… and he looked at me very scary…
We did the obligatory stop in Delphi, a very interesting place full of history, settled on a slope of the Parnassus Mounts.

In Antirrion we spent amazing days with Ioannis, his family and friends. Some days of rest on the beach too, in a place as we like… we were the only foreigners in the small village.
Antirrion is in the end of the bridge that joins the continental land with the Peloponnese. This huge bridge of 3 km it was completed in 2004 when the Olympiad, and although it is very nice, if you are traveling by car it is better to cross with the ferry, because to cross the bridge it cost almost 11 €.

We did a short visit to Nafpaktos, more known as Lepanto; it was here the battle where Cervantes lost an arm.

Ioannis didn’t let us to hitchhike and he brought us by car to Olympia with his cousin Dimitri, during the travel they were telling us things about the Peloponnese, the big island in the south of Greece. On the way we saw fire, we knew that there were some fires in Peloponnese, but we didn’t give it importance at this moment...
Olympia, another very important historical place, the cradle of the Olympic Games. In the area only remains the ruins of what there were gymnasiums, stadiums... and of course the temples of Hera and Zeus. In the museum we found the best preserve remains; the earthquakes had a lot of fault of everything being destroyed. It has to be said that the Greeks care a lot with the students, those that have the ISIC card, free entrance!

In our last stretch up to Krestena where we met up with Kosta, Olympia and their friends; we saw important fires in front of ourselves, and although from his house they are seen about 3 km far, we kept thinking that it would stop soon. That afternoon we went to the beach, and we saw the fires near, the smoke covered the sun leaving a spectacular red sky, but... it is a big tragedy. At the end of the beach we saw the flames how they arrived practically up to the sea, and we decided to run away as all the people who were there. When we arrived home we saw the same beach burning on TV, in the news.

From that moment we followed very near the news and the fire from the balcony. Krestena is in a valley, and that night the summits of the last mountains started to burn; the following day the situation was worse, the fire was at about 2 km far from the house and the people started to be frightened. In the afternoon we returned to the beach of the last days, already burned down; it was very sad to see it, the flames on the side of the road, fallen trees in it, destroyed houses, and of course everything burned, very sad...
Going back home we were really scary, the fire has lowered the mountain, and it is only at 1 km; in front of the flames we saw a small town that was going to be devoured by the fire. In the TV only speak about this; then, almost all the Peloponnese is burning, but also Athens and other places in Greece... We took this photo from the balcony of the house.