[YEAR 7!] Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

[lightcycle]

Reaching the bottom. The Bay of Itea

Crossing the Rion-Antirion Bridge to the Peloponnese peninsula

The Peloponnese peninsula is separated from mainland Greece by the Gulf of Corinth. As we continue our ride on the other side of the long suspension bridge, I noticed a marked difference from the north. The buildings were a bit more run-down and the area was more unkempt. It reminded me a little bit of the difference between mainland Italy and Sicily. This region seemed to be poorer than mainland Greece.

I did a little research and was surprised to learn that Sicily was part of Greece at one point in history. But that was over a thousand years ago, and today's state of poverty is due more to a lack of jobs, with the young people moving to Athens and the mainland.

We continued south along the western coast of the Peloponnese peninsula, taking in all the sights around us. The sun is lingering in the sky longer and longer each day, allowing us to ride later (actually, it's allowing me to sleep in later). This is one of those times where we don't have a destination planned for the evening. So when it looked like we'd run out of daylight, we duck off the main road into a largish hill-side village called Zacharo to find a place to lay our heads for the night.

The cobblestone streets shake our bones as we ride smaller concentric circles around the village, looking for signs for a hotel. Everything is light-copper hued in the late evening sunlight.

We find a place at the top of the hill. Neda goes inside to negotiate a price for a room.
The locals watch me in amusement while I snap more pictures...

There's a very good reason why we're on the Peloponnese peninsula. It's all about Neda.

 

[lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/331.html

Neda's name isn't Croatian in origin. It's Persian. Translated, it means "Voice of God".

It's an unusual name, I have not met another Neda in my life. She pronounces it, "Neh-dah" and absolutely hates it when people call her "Nee-dah". She's okay with "Nay-dah" and sometimes gets "Nada" or "Anita", which is just bizarre.

I'm fascinated with her name. I have a million and one nicknames for her and from Google, I know that NEDA also stands for New England Dressage Association and National Eating Disorder Association. I also know that there are a couple of places in the world named Neda. One of them is just south of where we are, on the Peloponnese peninsula.

It's been on my To-Visit list for some time.

Neda doesn't really see what the big deal is and is just coming to indulge me.

The day starts off on a bad note

Neda has traded in cat pee on her seat to bird poop on her top case.

Off we go, out into the roads of Southern Greece!

 

[lightcycle]

15 minutes later on the main road south and we see our first sign:

Neda Tavern! We know we are on the right track!

The "D" in Neda is a delta sign in Greek. We turn inland at this point. We are at the mouth of the Neda River, which is the only river in Greece with a feminine name. We follow the Neda to her source on the road that runs alongside her. That was a weird thing to type out...

More signs point us in the right direction. I keep telling Neda to pose in front of the signs. She is pretending to be excited.

We quickly leave the asphalt onto a much smaller road. Red gravel crunches benath our wheels as we make our way through the semi-arid landscape of the interior. Where is this taking us?!

The gravel road descends down to the river

 

[lightcycle]

Hey, there's a Neda waterfall too. This just gets better and better!

Out in the wilderness

The downhill road ends in a cul-de-sac. We must journey on by foot, so we wrap up our belongings on our bikes under the covers

There's very little people around. I love this! We're out in the middle of nowhere in Southern Greece just because of a name on the map! We don't read Greek, but basically we follow any sign that has Neda's name on it. Can't go wrong with that!

 

[lightcycle]

The path leads along a gorge that was cut by the Neda River. The vegetation here is more lush than the road that we came in on, courtesy of the running waters.

Our hike is basically following the river upstream

In Greek mythology, the river is named after Neda, a nymph who saved the infant Zeus from being devoured by his father, Cronus. She delivered him to his guardians in the island of Crete.

It's a short 15-20 minute hike before we hear the sounds of a waterfall. The weather ever since we hit Southern Greece has been beautifully warm and the waters look so inviting!

AAAAHHHHH! Nooo!! The water is so cold! It must be single digits in here!

I dive into the frigid waters of Neda.

Edit: Upon reading this blog entry, Neda exclaims, "NOOOOO!! YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO WRITE THAT!"

Neda is cool, like ice. Her surface may look calm, but she is fed by the raging waters of a powerful waterfall...

We take turns jumping into the cold waters and then sunning on the rocks to warm up in the hot afternoon sun. It's like one of those Swedish saunas: Out into the ice waters, back into the sauna

Fah-REEEZING!

 

[lightcycle]

We see some people walking back from further on down the trail. There's more? They tell us that this isn't the real Neda waterfalls. there's an even bigger waterfall a little bit further. Okay! So we pack up our stuff and continue the hike.

The trail leads further into the thick, overgrown wilderness. Very cool!

Along the way, we run across what looks to be an abandoned church

Oh, maybe not that abandoned. The equal-armed cross on the left predates Christianity and is also called a Greek Cross. It can be found in the top-left corner of the Greek flag.

Okay, shut up now, Dan Brown. We continue on our hike to try to find the real Neda waterfalls.

 

[lightcycle]

Found it! It's beautiful here!

There's only one other couple here and they've brought along a baby German shepherd. Of course, we make instant friends with it!

Awwww.... Puppy!

German Shepherd puppies are so cute because their heads are so big in relation to their bodies. They look like baby bear cubs

We spent the whole afternoon chilling at the Neda waterfalls

We didn't know what we'd find here, just followed Neda's name on the map. It turned out to be such an awesome, relaxing time. Hot, sunny weather and a lots of splashing around beneath a beautiful waterfall. I love these random, little detours on our journey.

 

[lightcycle]

Although there are quite a few hours of daylight left, I calculated how much time it would take for us to hike back to our bikes, ride out of the wilderness and then head back onto the main roads. We want to make it to Athens by nightfall, and it's quite a distance away. So we reluctantly wave goodbye to Neda and head out.

Back on the road, we start to get hungry for dinner. We don't find much along our route, but in one village, we saw someone cooking up a succulent pig. Our hunger gets the better of us.

We don't learn our lesson and we end up paying a lot for a pork roast dinner. It was a lot of food, though!

We keep forgetting to stock up on groceries for the trip. It's unnecessarily costing us a lot of money eating out. We have to get smart and snap out of it. I estimate how many filo pastries I can keep in my topcase... A lot, I think...

We're doing a bit of a cannonball run eastwards out of the Peloponnese peninsula towards Athens, so we get on the toll highways. Speaking of expensive...

The road is smooth and fast and 200 kms fly by beneath our wheels in a blink of the eye

 

[Dave P.]

If you hang much more "stuff" on Neda's bike she's gonna need a pickup truck!
As a motocrosser ( old one ) I can't imagine how those things handle....
Great thread, I really enjoy it!
You hadn't posted in so long I was starting to
wonder if you got jobs or something equally terrible had happened.
Dave

 

[lightcycle]

Thanks!

Yeah, the weight distribution (and weight itself) on the bikes make for terrible handling.

Neda's motorcycle is not too bad, the weight is distributed pretty evenly, but my bike with the topcase high up and behind the rear axle makes the front wheel so light, the steering is compromised. Especially in dirt.

 

[lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/332.html

We arrived at our AirBnB in Athens late in the evening and our host was out of town. Her elderly Greek parents showed us to our room. They didn't speak any English at all, so we muddled about with sign language to get information on the essentials: wi-fi passcode, where to do laundry, where to buy groceries.

The father was really nice. He was worried about our bikes parked out on the street, so he pantomimed to me to park them outside his window so he could keep and eye (and ear) out on them during the night. Took a while for me to understand all of that. I thought he wanted me to take him on a midnight ride around the neighbourhood!

In the morning, Neda makes a new friend. We eventually pass the sniff test and are allowed into the house with minimal bark alerts

Even though our pace is slow, we've been hitting the road almost every single day ever since arriving back in Europe. We are starting to get a bit tired of touring and touristing. Brochures of the Acropolis and all the pretty neighbourhoods of Athens lie unread on the coffee table in our little apartment. We just want to relax and do nothing for awhile.

Well, I want to do nothing. Neda is back to her cross-stitching like a machine!

For the next couple of mornings, we'd get up and stare at the Acropolis brochure and then look at each other: "Maybe we'll go tomorrow..."

So tired and lazy. The scorching Athens afternoons do nothing to lift our lethargy. The mercury hits 39C one day. We escape into the air-conditioning of our apartments mid-morning when the heat becomes unbearable, only venturing outside again in the late evening.

 

[lightcycle]

Our AirBnB host is back from her vacation and we chatted with her for a while. She gave us some tips on places to go in the city and then sensing our ambivalence she joked that we needed a vacation. A vacation from our vacation! We were no strangers to that! We've been doing some research about the Greek islands, but couldn't decide between Santorini or Crete. Or maybe both? Our host nodded her head vigorously. "Definitely Santorini. No doubt about it!"

She was very familiar with the resort island and gave us a whole bunch of tips of things to see and do there. I think we've decided on our vacation spot.

The next day, we are riding to the docks to board the ferry that will take us to Santorini! Very exciting!

We had also received another helpful tip: the food on the islands are more expensive than the mainland (is that even possible?!?). So we stock up on groceries while we were in Athens. My topcase no longer has any room for spanakopita or any other filo pastries...

Our bikes are going on vacation too!

It cost a little bit more to have the bikes shipped to the Greek islands with us, but in our experience, we would probably end up saving money on taxis to and from the ferries as well as getting around on the island. Plus, this *is* still a motorcycle trip! Even if we are on a vacation from our vacation.

It's an eight hour ride to Santorini from Athens. We opt for the cheap seats and not a cabin, so we're fully stocked up on TV shows, movies and books on the Kindles to help pass the time.

After what seemed like an eternity out at sea, we finally catch a glimpse of land

White towns creep and cling to the tops of the cliffs like lichen. It's quite a sight after seeing nothing but blue sea for the past eight hours. At the bottom is the main port in Thira (which is the ancient and official Greek name for Santorini), where all the ferries dock at. And the town above is the capital, Fira - which itself is a derivation of the word Thira. It's on the western coast of the island and we've got to ride to the south to get to our hotel. It's not as far as it sounds, less than 10 kms.

 

[lightcycle]

It's a First-In-Last-Out (FILO, for the computer nerds. What a coincidence!) scenario and all the bikes have to wait for the cars to leave first

Which means being stuck behind a parade of 4 (and 18-wheelers) up the switchbacks leading to the main road at the top of the island

Still, it gives us plenty of opportunity to peer over the edge and appreciate the beauty of Santorini!

A little glimpse of what we saw on the way up. So glad we have our bikes with us!

I didn't think it could get any hotter than Athens, but it feels like it's topping 40C here. Unlike the mainland, at least there's a mild breeze here on the island that cools you down a little. Just a little though. 40C!

 

[lightcycle]

There may be no room in my topcase for filo, but there is in our stomachs!

FILO also stands for First-In-line, Last-Out-of-the-restaurant...

We have designated this our official filo place now. It's just a few kms from our hotel. Neda likes the spinach and cheese spanakopita. I'm more a fan of the sausages wrapped in the flaky filo dough. Or the mushroom and cheese pastries. It's not a real vacation unless you gain weight. True story.

We arrive at our hotel not knowing exactly what we're going to get. Being on a tight budget, we couldn't afford the swanky designer white rock igloos hanging off the cliffs of the island. Our place is just outside the town of Perissa, on the south-east corner of Santorini. While all the resorts in town are right on the beach, we're about a km away from shore. It's not really close to anything and the location is only convenient if you have your own vehicle. Which we do!!! We're splurging a bit, paying about €40/night which is double our budget for accommodations, but hey, this is our vacation!

You don't even want to know how much it costs to stay at the edge of the island with a sea view!

It's not a bad place. Neda has a balcony that she can do her cross-stitching. It's got AC and I can work on the blog in the dark (which I like to do)

And the best part! It's got a pool!!!! Great way to escape the heat! I'm going to stay in here forever! Or at least till nightfall...

I'm being serious. I am not leaving this pool.

 

[lightcycle]

The next morning, Neda drags me out of the pool and we go exploring the island

Santorini is shaped like a fetus. The whole island is about 25 kms tip to tip, but today, we're only going from the south-east corner to the south-west. Baby steps. We're on vacation, you know!

It's high season and the roads are packed with tourists who have rented ATVs to get around the island. There are only two types of ATV tourists: one is the tentative driver who probably has never ridden an ATV or motorcycle before. They clog up the road doing 35 km/h, forcing all traffic behind them to pass them dangerously and into oncoming traffic. Then there are the maniacs, who probably also have never ridden an ATV before as well. They swerve all over the road, unable to keep to their lanes. Fast on the straightaway then hard on the brakes in the corners. Like track newbies on liter bikes.

I hate being anywhere during high season. High prices and so many tourists...

This is our first destination: the Red Beach

The Red Beach is one of Santorini's most well-known tourist spots and the most popular beach because it's covered in red pebbles and surrounded by beautiful red striated cliffs behind it. There's a lot of red here.