Have passport. Will Travel.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt

Our time in Athens was up. It was time to wave goodbye to the gorgeous Athenian men with the surgically attached Ray-Bans (don't worry boys, the girls were addicted to them too) and hop into our little hire car and brave the chaos that is Greek Driving.

I don't know how I survived it without hyperventilating and passing out. To make matters worse, Dad was driving a left-hand drive car AND a manual. It weren't pretty y'all.

Still we managed to get out of Athens without dying and me having hysterics and on to the open road.

First stop, Corinth!

Corinth Canal

Saturday, 27th May, 2006.

The picture doesn't really do it justice. That thing was deeeeeeeep. It's apparently over 6 kilometres long, 23 metres wide and is 90 metres high. I didn't manage to catch a photo of the ship going through it but the ship looked like a tiny bath tug from the bridge.

There were a lot of people gripping the hand-rail every step of the way.

After that, we spent a lot of time hooning along the different roads and passing through the various toll ways including this suspension bridge. It seemed like every few k's we were scrabbling for change to hand off to the toll booths.

While driving, I noticed that there were a lot of altars by the side of the road. Basically a solid box made of wood and metal, a cross on top, glass front and with what seemed to be icons and booze inside. There didn't seem to be rhyme nor reason to them. Every now and then there'd be one and ocassionally more than that.

Apparently sometimes they are just that - altars to a particular saint. The ones I was seeing were in fact the equivalent of our white crosses and fake flowers next to the roadside - yup, road fatalities.

On the major windy mountain road out of Athens there were heaps. We'd come up to a corner, there'd be a new stretch of reinforcement concrete before the sheer edge and....

"Dead person."

Next corner. New concrete.

"Dead person."

Another corner. New concrete.

"Wow, two dead people."

Many corners, much new concrete, many dead people later.

"OH MY GOD SIX DEAD PEOPLE!"

After that, Dad got slightly hysterical himself and asked me to "shut up with the dead people already."

Many hours later, we arrived at Paleros, ancient home of one side of Dad's family. (The motto for both sets of parents' family should be "Have genes. Will travel." I'm aiming to bring American Indian into the gene pool or American Japanese. A girl's gotta have goals)

This is a view out of the apartment we were staying at and down the main street. That's the family supermarket.

I'll post more photos next time.

posted by Tari @ 5:27 pm