kalambaka

ups and downs

i felt it was time to leave, i had lingered around for too long again. the one last thing i really wanted to see in greece was meteora, huge rock formations with a bunch of monasteries on top.

taking the bus there was already an adventure, but after about five hours i made it. i did, however, forget to charge my powerbanks, but oh well, why do i carry around a solar panel with me. it was already 9pm and dark and i wanted to sleep in my tent to offset some of the bus ticket costs. after a bit of searching, i managed to find a good area behind a freeway in construction, using a drainage tunnel to get there.

every household here has at least one dog, and they're not trained to be friendly. walking though the village, you always have dogs barking at you from at least 3 angles, so i was happy to find that very secluded spot next to the highway. the signs were even already there, so i climbed one of them and had a great view of the huge rock walls towering over the kalambaka. tomorrow, i'd surely wake up with a good view.

set up my tent, ate what was left of my rations. grocery stores are closed for 3 full days during christmas, so said rations included nothing but an apple and some water.

woke up for sunset, took some pictures, then went to get some groceries. on the way back to the town, i had to cross an area where there are just a couple farm houses and workshops with nothing much in between. except stray dogs, as i had to find out the hard way. all of a sudden, i found myself surrounded by a particularly unfriendly pack of five barking dogs trying to bite my legs. thankfully, it wasn't the last thing i expected, so i already had a stone in hand. thankfully, i kept my shit together pretty well and managed to get out of there. from that point on, i always had to take a 15 minute detour around the open area.

went for a hike the same day, and the landscapes in meteora absolutely blew me away. definitely top 3 of everything i've seen so far. it's like the saxonian alps, just way bigger, more culturally important and with snow-capped mountains in the background.

after walking the whole day, i got back to my tent extremely exhausted because of the intense sun exposure. it was so warm that i went shirtless for a couple hours. my powerbank had also charged very well in the sun. i looked into some connections back to thessaloniki and istanbul and realized that i could leave the same day and be in istanbul by noon the next day, so i started packing up. i had pretty much seen everything on my tour and to be honest, i did get a bit paranoid about the dogs, because i had noticed lots of tracks in some mud close to my tent and also some construction workers close to the highway. no need to get busted by the police so close to turkey, where it'll finally be completely legal. Czytaj więcej