25 May 2012: Despite Stella being somewhat discombobulated, we navigated our way out of Pireaus Port and through the crazy Athens traffic onto the right road out of the mayhem. Only 90 minutes later we found ourselves in mountain country that became more dramatic by the minute. We climbed forever upwards and were presented with more and more evidence of being in the mountains, Davey Croquet hats and Uni-mogs being but 2 examples. Cue Uni-mog:

We arrived at our Delfi campsite and were welcomed by the clanging bells and bleating of a huge herd of goats complete with goatherd just the other side of the fence from the van. We visited the campsite restaurant which had a stunning view of the mountains right down to the sea, the Gulf of Itea. What a day, starting in Naxos, an island in the blue Aegean, and ending up in mountains after an 8 hour exciting journey. Our campsite neighbours were a Singaporean couple who keep a T5 in Basel and were on a 2 month journey through Romania and Bulgaria to Greece and back before returning home to Singapore.

26 May 2012: Happy Birthday Peter Farley! We are off to the nearby town of Arachova which we passed through yesterday before arriving in Delfi, but did not stop. It just so happened that the ‘Classic Trophy Club’ (a classic motorbike club based in Athens) were on a rally and 50+ members were gathering in town causing some excitement with the locals and playing havoc with the tour buses on their way to Delfi along the narrow main street.

Next stop the sanctuary of Delfi which the ancient Greeks believed to be the centre (or navel) of the Earth. Looking about, we could quite understand this as the enormous mountains rising up all around us and the deep gorge below us in their dramatic splendour were totally impossible to capture on camera though we tried.

The ancient site was set on terraces beneath the 2400 metre high Mount Parnassos. Legend has it that Apollo came along and after slaying the Python guarding the oracle of Ge (the Earth), installed himself there. They even held Pythian games every 4 years in honour of Apollo to commemorate his victory over the Python. There’s more detail to this legend of course but I won’t go into it here!

We retired back to the campsite’s super swimming pool for a cool down swim and to plan the next day’s journey to the unusual site of Meteora.