Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Meteora Friday 9th March
Fully expecting to be awake half the night, with fear of police, thieves or general trouble makers, we slept like babes and woke in time to see the sun rise up above the hills. We set off early for our trip to Meteora, in central Greece, home to some unique sandstone rock formations (sometimes referred to as suspended rocks) caused by a sea that used to cover these parts 30 million years ago. Looking at the map we estimated a 3 or 4 hours journey. I’m not sure what we were expecting of Greece but driving up and down mountains on windy roads, trailing behind Arctics whilst in the snowy peaks with signs of “beware Icy roads” was not it. The journey was nearer to 6 hours but passed quite quickly due to the beautiful scenery and the concentration required not to send the caravan tumbling down the exposed mountainside.
After our recent campsite experiences we were pleased to find the one we had chosen was indeed open. The campsite is based at the foot of these strange rocks and so we are afforded an up front and personal view of them.
We spent a couple of days meandering around these unique rocks and marvelled at the few homes built into the rock faces and the engineering that must have gone into building the numerous Monasteries on top of these rocks. We ventured into one and had we spoke Spanish one of the Monks would have given us a guided tour, never mind they brought us some Turkish delights and we had a look around. They still had the original winch and net that was used to winch people and supplies up and down the sheer rock face, the boys enjoyed imagining being pulled up in a net.
We spent a pleasant sunny day strolling around the local town of Kalambaka. A shopkeeper, alarmed at the fact that Cadan just had a long sleeved top on and no jumper, came out of her shop and started to pull down his rolled up sleeves and then to confirm our neglectful nature lifted his top and was astounded to find there was no vest. It didn’t help that the other two had jumpers on, but Cadan had insisted he wasn’t cold and didn’t want one. I tried to tell the jumper and coat clad shopkeeper that this weather was warm for us, but she continued to shake her head and point at Cadan. We made a hasty retreat.
