Albanian Mountain Dogs and Greek Taverns

Well, we've made it to Greece, country 14! Had a couple of close calls en route though.

First off was an interesting night in the Albanian mountains in the south. For lunch, we met a local who 'imported' cars (very likely), and lived in Welwyn Garden City.

Happy Albanian: "The Albanians are extremely friendly and you should try to find helpful people if you get in trouble. But, at all costs, always stay in the middle of cities! Always. The people are extremely friendly, but NEVER sleep outside big cities."

Hmm... that made us feel more worried than before we spoke to him! And, true to the form of the trip, that night we pressed on into the middle of nowhere in the mountains in the south before Greece. It was getting dark and we needed to find somewhere to sleep. We slept rough in the mountains surrounded by very rural looking farmers and tiny huts. We thought we were hidden but some damned dog found us and barked away all night. Thankfully it was probably a stray, but I was extremely tempted to kill it. The locals were not friendly around here and we did NOT want to get spotted. Duncan's earplugs sorted us out. An old farmer found us in the morning but Duncan sweet-talked him round!

Albania saw our first breakages due to the awful roads. One spoke snapped on Duncan's rear wheel, and I got a hole in my inner tube on re-inflation after a particularly bad stretch of 'motorway'.

The next night we pressed on another 110km to the border, then 10k past it into some very Greek little village, Delvinaki. (pop. 754) Old stairs with weeds growing through them, lots of little shrines etc. Quite cool! We had only about 25 euros but there was a bank so we stayed at a tavern. The lady was very hospitable and even went to the shops to buy some pork chops for her to cook and us to eat. We stank so much, I honestly can't put it into words! In the morning we had to pay, but the bank was closed and they didn't take cards. The bill came to 40 euros. She was stressed from some meeting she was hosting, and nobody spoke english.

We found out that 25k down (very downhill) the road was another village, Kalpaki, which had a cash machine. A 50k morning ride was just the job to clear the cobwebs! However, the cash machine was broken so on Duncan's suggestion we bought a bottle of Glenfiddich.

The stressed lady was not too friendly when we couldn't pay, and we were returning almost empty-handed, but on the way back, Duncan had some interesting ideas for how to smooth over the situation.

"Hey, Geoff, how about I take a whipper and graze up my leg or arm or something?"
"Damn, duncs, I thought I was ruthless! That's an awesome idea."
"Well, I've been thinking of how to do it with the least amount of pain."
...

Luckily, the whisky went down an absolute charm and they loved us. They even gave us a free beer, said they were impressed with our fitness ("some greek meaning 'only 3 hrs?!?!'" We didn't tell them we did it in 2hrs15 and had a 45min breakfast), and then tried to give us our money back saying we'd need it for the days ahead. Awesome soft skills and we turned that situation round nicely!

434kms to Athens.