June 15

Meteora is a popular tourist destination in Central Greece. ”Tourist Destination” means there something interesting to see and you have to share it with other tourists. To get around that, it is best to start early but, at 8.30, I am already too late. Surrounded by flat country, the  Meteora rock formations rise to a great height. It reminded me of Olga’s mountain near Ayers Rock in Australia. On the domed peaks, monasteries have been constructed long ago and can now be visited. They used to have a connection with rope ladders, which could be withdrawn if circumstances asked for it.

After riding around for a couple of hours, I have seen it and decide to leave and head north for Ioannina and Vlore’s in Albania. But…

Twenty-five km down the road, I look at my GPS and understand that I have to make a right-hand turn.” How can that be?” I asked myself. All the signs point to Ioannina via a good road, and my right-hand turn would take me to a very narrow road instead.

I can’t stop to check my map as there is no space at the other side of the white line.

I ride on for another 6 km when I find a place to stop on the opposite side of the road.   It seems I am not the only one confused by the GPS information. The biker I had seen last night was having the same issues with the same type of GPS.  We checked the paper map and the GPS and decide to ride on only to find that the road ends up being a toll road which is straight and fast and finds is way north via bridges and tunnels.

We now understand what is happening, only when you zoom right in it becomes clear that two roads are projected over the top of each other.

Together we ride 8 km back and turn left where we should have made a right turn before.

From here on it took 6 hours to cover 240 km, enough said. It was hard work but a lot of fun.

We stop in a tiny village and make a hotel booking via booking.com, but the address is not precise. It tells us that the hotel is 5km away but 40km later we are still going. Perhaps they measure it “as the crow flies”. What we thought to be a 10 minutes ride turned into a 1-hour mountain track tour.

So now I am riding with the 45-year-old “Herman the German”, who has been on a trip on his one-year-old Honda Africa Twin to explore some places where he wants to go next year when he rides all the way to Australia.  Herman comes from Berlin and rode through Turkey to Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Next year he wants to follow the same route through all the “Stan’s” (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan etc.) ending up in Pakistan what most people do these days and continue to India and Australia.