Eastern Peloponnese, Greece - Writing

The third Peninsula was the most authentic section of the Peloponnese. Our first town along the eastern coast was Momenvasia. A midevil, walled town on the side of cliff, on an island, attached to the mainland by a narrow causeway. No cars. No bicycles. The town can only be viewed by foot. Taking a short visit while a woman watched our bikes, we walked the entire town in 45 minutes. This was the last of the tourists. We stopped by the market on our way out and continued riding looking for a great place to camp. To our luck, just at sunset, we came across an olive grove that looking out to the ocean. A meal of rice, veggies, sausage and feta, a staple these days, we slept well and were up bright and early to begin riding again.

When we sleep on people's property, we like to set up camp just at dusk and pack up just at sunrise. Since we do not speak the language, we are always a bit nervous for be seen and have someone start asking questions. Fortunately enough, we did not run into any problems our entire time in Europe. Our next day of riding was one of longest, 12 solid hours on the bike, with constant up and down. We figure we climbed at least 6,000 feet this day, making us extremely exhausted toward the end. The only downfall of stealth camping is not finding a place to set up camp, especially when you are on busier roads and the land around you does not have many trees. This night we actually had to ride with headlamps for a bit before finding a flat, semi-covered space. But as usual, we found our "home" for the night, cooked basic pasta with sauce out of a can, a few glasses of wine and were asleep in no time.

Riding for such long days up to this point, we thought a day off to explore the ancient city of mycenae. Mycenae dates back to 5000 BC, where Jason and the Argonauts left from. Such history at our fingertips. Planning to make our visit in the afternoon, a few storm clouds rolled in. When we arrived at the campsite, we asked the guy, "Where should we put our tent in case it rains? We don't want our stuff to get wet and would like to be a the highest point possible." His response, "Your tent should be fine anywhere. It isn't going to rain anyway." Famous last words I guess. Even though we scouted the entire campground to find the highest point, we got completely soaked. Within a few minutes of the rain starting, we were basically sitting in a small swamp. Not only that, but Ryan went to grab something in the vestibul and one of our tent poles snapped. And there were loads of mosquitos! Poor Ryan sat with the screen to our tent zipped tightly around his arm to keep the mosquitos out, holding the broken pole together so the sharp edges wouldn't rip our tent. In these situations, with water coming in and bubbling up underneath us, we take all of our stuff and fit it on our sleeping pads to try and keep everything as dry as possible. With this amoung of rain and our tent being extremely lightweight, it's impossible to not have some water seep through the bottom of the tent. Needless to say, we spent the rest of the day and the following morning drying all our possessions out and not even getting an opportunity to visit Mycenae.

Planning to meet up with Cinthia and Christian again in Athens, we thought meeting at the campground would be easiest. The way to get in touch with them is with email, which we can only do when we have internet and take the time to get our computer out. They happened to be a few towns over and actually watched the storm roll in a hit us, they have a beautiful picture actually. Anyway, they were planning on taking the ferries into Athens and we were riding. Two days later, the day we were planning to meet in Athens, we stopped in a small town for a gyro. Always trying to find a bench by the water for lunch, we walked our bikes and lunch a few blocks. We saw two loaded bikes from the distance, and who was sitting there having their lunch as well? Cinthia and Christian:-) What a small small world. This is something that has actually been surprising. People we meet on bikes, we often see again in a completely different areas. It was so great to run into them and we then rode the rest of the way to Athens together.

Athens....wow! Camping on the busline, we took the bus and the train into the city. We walked the neighborhoods, found the best gyro place yet, visited the Acropolis, walked over glass flooring of archeological sites so we could see in, listened to street performers and played zonk with our Swiss friends. The views from the Acropolis were stunning. White houses filled the crowded city and was surrouned by rolling hills and the ocean, no urban sprawl.