After I parted ways with Kim, Jess, Ines and I took the bus to Ioannina, which involved crossing the arm of sea over which they are building a new gigantic bridge. Of course it is not finished yet, or else it would be ready too soon for the Olympics next summer! But someone said they are building the roadway at the rate of 60 cm a day, so the odds are good they can make it, as happens with the underground from the Airport where only the tracks are missing, but they are not so terribly important, are they?

In Ioannina we found out that the bus to the starting point of our trek would not be leaving until two days later (thanks Lonely Planet for saying it was a daily bus, even in your “updated” edition). So we spent a long boring day in the most dreary weather wandering around the town, until I went to the hotel we’d booked into and read a bit, but soon fell asleep. The dinner was however good and we felt excited at the following day’s adventure.

 The next day we got up at 5.30 am to catch the 6.15 am bus. On the bus I came across those two Americans we had seen at Sparta (“Chaos is a Greek word. They invented chaos!”). We had thought we’d get something to eat at the village of Monodendri, but everything was shut at that time. I’d luckily had some breakfast at the bus-station, but the girls hadn’t, so they decided they’d wait until the first café opened, while I’d set out then and there. In fact I wouldn’t be able to trek up to the upper village, Papingo, as they planned to do, because from there the bus would not leave until Friday and that meant spending a extra day and as likely as not missing either Meteora or Delphi. So I thought I’d go down the gorge, hike through it 4 or 5 hours and then rush back to the starting point so as to catch the bus to Ioannina at 5 pm. From there I’d immediately set sail to Meteora the same night.

So off I go enthousiastically down the steep path, catch up with the Americans and overtake them, until I realized that the noise of the stream waters grew louder and louder.

There I was: standing at water’s edge with nice path markings on this shore, and more nice little red dots on the opposite shore and freezing water flowing abundantly in between. I had passed a crossroads in the path, to be true, and chosen left, but thought: “If the Americans come this way too, I will know I was not wrong and we will wade across the river. Besides the marks are here!”. In fact the Americans reached me after 10 minutes, and soon we resigned to the unpleasant task of fording the stream. We took off our shoes and socks, rolled up our trousers. In the water we were watching the skin of our feet turn white-pink, then red and finally purple, while our feet groped for safe footing on the slippery slimey stones on the bottom. In the very middle the current was much stronger and the water deeper, but we made it across, with no great damage barring wet trousers.

We resumed hiking, but before long there we were again: the trail ended in briars and began on the other shore again. This time I took off my trousers downright and boldly crossed the river in my undies. I had already reached the shore when I saw the American lady in distress, clinging to a rock unable to move back or forth, nearly paralysed by an attack of fear. So I took of my trousers again, just when I was beginning to savour the cosiness of my feet back in the warmth of my trekking boots, and went to help her out.

Great was our surprise and despite when, back on the trail again, we soon came across the path that originally descended from the cliff and that all of us could have taken from the start, to avoid crossing the stream twice! I trekked until about 1 pm in the extremely deep gorge, with vertical cliffs on either side packing cyclopic fallen boulders in a strip of land at the bottom that also forms the river bed, amid a varied and verdant vegetation at its sides, and I felt as if I was strayed in a forgotten valley. It was hard to decide when to start coming back, but my legs helped me make the decision. I was feeling a bit weak from the strenous walk and the lack of food. So read a bit in the sun from my Arabic manual “How to become a perfect terrorist with no teacher”, then began the way back. I met the two Australians girls who obviously had NOT crossed the river even once, but were hiking very carefree with two English people they had met. I was dead certain I would meet them in the bus, because they wouldn’t dare cut through the current of the stream!

However the drizzle that had started, soon turned into rain and I was getting unpleasantly wet, so I decided to take shelter under a ledge that miraculously happened to be so handy. When the rain seemed to have lulled, I set out again, after having changed my drenched shirt for a dry sweater. But the rain had stopped only temporarily, and now the sky looked menacingly dark. A flash of lighting dashes through the clouds, followed by thunder. And of course rain, bloody rain and more rain, and no shelter this time. The trousers that I had saved from getting wet in the morning were now soaking my undies, and every step produced a strange splashing sound from inside my boots.

“Hurry up!, I must make it up the cliff back to the village, quicker, come on!” But the cliff was unending: a sign at the start of the path read: “Guinness book of records 1997. World’s deepest gorge. 900m deep and just 1.1km wide.” Now, what seemed silly exaggeration to me at first came back to my mind and let it be felt in my sore legs, while trudging up the steep path. I appreciated the reality of painful truth.
At the village I went into the pub, seeking asylum, but above all a fire. None of that: the place was glacial and the water dripped from my clothes. I rubbed my trousers with the shirt, twisted the sleeves of the sweater and a trickle of water came out, but had a good meal with cheese pie and stuffed tomatoes.

I was about to ensconce myself in the chair to while away the next two hours until the bus came, when the owner came up to me and said “We close at 3.30 pm, but it’s no problem: we can wait until you finish your coffee.” Damn it! In no time I was out in the cold again in search for another place, but this time I had better luck. I found a nice restaurant with a lit fireplace. I ordered a coffee, and a piece of the sweetest and stodgiest baklava to justify a long stay in the place. Then I sat tactically close to the fireplace, regardless of the embarassment I was causing to the only couple of maybe clandestine lovers whispering tender words in one other's ears. But my cause was of life and death, not of love, so let it have the upper hand. In Ioannina I changed into dry clothes at last and caught the 7 pm bus to Meteora. 

The stupid driver, though, forgot to tell me to get off at Kalambaka, and dumped me at Trikala, the next town, at 10.30 pm. I waited for a bus in the opposite direction for 40 minutes then decided to get myself a room in town. The cheapest place the guidebook recommended was in fact more than a hotel: a woman barely covered in black veils was waiting in the hall (thanks again Lonely Planet: you got it right once more!). Besides, the paltry room was € 21, no good price for a rathole like that, so went away without much hesitation and finally rested my tired limbs in the confortable bed of the Panellenic, to put an end to such an adventurous day.

• < Prev