April 8th – 91 kms, Stravos
April 9th – 38 kms, Orfani
April 10th – 50 kms, Nea Irkalista
April 11th – 24 kms, Kavala
April 12th – 54 kms, Xanthi
April 13th – 42 kms, Porpi
April 14th – 56 kms, Mesti

We can now say it is a shitty weather. Non stop raining. Never mind, we have the confirmation from a nice couple that we could stay for one night at their place. It is at 91 kms from the place we are and more than 1200 D+, but we decided to go there – we haven’t met that much Greek people so far and we never say no to an invitation. We finally arrived at their place quite soaked and tired, but what a welcome! Danis and Athanasia are so kind we could barely hope for better : traditional Greek diner, Uzo, Greek wine – good food, good company and good discussion. Plus the must for all biking travelers: a nice and warm shower. And a nice dry bed. What else? Laundry service! Thank you so much Danis & Athanasia for your hospitality, kindness, advices and smiles – you really recharged our battery on many dfferent levels 🙂

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Awaking up the morning : really shitty weather, it is getting worse. We spent easily two hours during our lunch break at a bus stop, drinking some tea and waiting for the rain to calm down – it never happened. Now on all main roads there are big puddles of water/mud. But the funnier part is on the small roads, that we use to take to avoid cars and trucks traffic (BTW, driving with lights on when it is rainy seems to be dependent on Greek people’s mood) : here it is getting really muddy as no asphalt. Larissa got the first flat tire of our journey. Obviously under the rain and on a muddy road. We found luckilly a kind of abandoned farmer house with a roof in an olive grove to fix it on a relatively dry manner. Later, we followed the instruction of our kind host Danis to reach a nice village. The shortcut he advices us was unfortunately simply not passable as completely flooded, so we had to take an other way. Too bad: our bicycles got completely stuck in the mud. Really sticky mud actually, so much that it broke Pierre’s front fender.
Nightfall was coming and we were soaked covered with mud. We had to stop to remove the biggest part of this damn mud and fix the fender. Hopefully a nice lady from the neighbourhood saw us and offered a hosepipe to clean the bikes! So lucky! Pierre managed to fix the fender somehow – it is now crooked but will do the job. Night is there. Let’s move to reach the village. We crashed at a hotel, soaked, tired but at least with relatively clean bikes. And, one more time, we were lucky : the hotel was very nice, with a heatting system to dry our stuff (and ourselves). We had a shower, a good dinner and went to bed for a great relaxing night.

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Still raining the morning, so we stay in our hotel to dry all our gears and rest. Rest a lot, read and relax.
Once weather calms down, we cycle to Loutra, an abondonned thermal station where it seems some hippies are living there. Once arrived , there are indeed some hippies welcoming us. The place is interesting, but kinf of shabby though. But well, it was so nice, a beautiful place and for free. At the end, we enjoyed the thermal source, had a lunch and left right afterwards. Interesting place though!

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Luckily, the sun was back for a couple hours, the road was beautiful following the cost, and we found a nice spot to camp with a wonderful view on the see.

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After a relaxing and wet night, few kilometers pedalled and we arrived in the nice city of Kavala. The sun is back today and it changes completely people’s mood, our mood. Everyone is happy, specially us.
We are amazed to see huge amount of pollen getting out all the conifers along the road. We thought about all the poor allergic people, this might not been an easy period for them.
As we visit Kavala, we found a nice coffe offering a wonderful view on the city, where we stop to work on the blog and to deal with some administrative stuffs. Kavala is a nice little city full of history, with an aqueduc, a fortress and marks the end of Macedonia region.
Hitting back the road, we passed by the old harbour, and crossed very typicall taverna. It looked like such a nice place… Shall we keep on going, enjoy the good wether to make some km? Or just take our time and rest after those difficult rainy days? Under the charm of the place, we decide to have a traditional Greek dinner on the harbor, and to stay one night in the city. And it was sooooo goooooddddd!!!!

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Next morning, our beloved friend the rain is back. Aaah we missed it so much. We stop on more time under a bus stop, waiting the weather to improve. But well we get used to it, it never gets better. We finally hit the road as we will be hosted tonight by Georgia in the city center and we are very happy about that. And what a nice meeting! Georgia is a very intelligent, nice, funny and cool person. She hosted us (and our dirty bikes), gave us a shower, a good dinner, some beers and a great company. It was a lovely evening. The only problem with this kind of meetings is that it’s always hard to say goodbye…
Xanthi marks the first city of Thrace region, that we will cross until Istanbul. From what we have seen, Thrace is rather flat with some hills on the sides, many industrial zones and definitely a marble quarry area.
Funny fact: Xanthi is wellknown for their famous chocolates named « Karioka ». It is a dark chocolate suffed with praline and nuts. What is interesting is that a « Carioca » is as well the name of the people from Rio de Janeiro and surroundings area in Brazil. The ethymology roots of Carioca would come from the indigenous Tupi dialect meaning something like « karai » (= white) and « oka » (= house). This word means roughly « house of the white poeple », due to the fact that Rio’s bay was one of the first place colonized by Europeans, French people among others…
This meaning and the black chocolate speciality brings us to nice discussions. Like the stereotype of Brazilians, that would have a chocolate colour and the expression like : « Oh, but you don’t look like a Brazilian person! »

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One more morning under the rain. We start to love it. Hum, not really that much. After a long breakfest with Georgia and further nice discussion around Greece, we left this wonderful host.
Just leaving the city, we met Gert. What a character! Gert is Dutch and could easily be named « the Pedalling Dutchman ». First, he is rather aged, travelled with his bicycle his ass off, he’s incredibly positive and generous, funny, musician as well, with the heart on his hands. We have never seen such a laden bicycle. You can find everything on Gert’s biycle: a cast iron pan, spare tires, a grill for bbq, and the must : an accordeon ! It is tue, we are never too much loaded on a bicycle, Gert’s understood this very well. Gert is doing a tour of Europpe from Nederlands until Istanbul, then travelling back to his home country. Sometimes he’s playing music to people and earn some coins. Very interesting guy.
We shared a lunch, a dinner and a bivouac spot together, having very good food cooked on his iron cast pan, and friendly conversations and music. What a night!

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Last night of the week, raining almost non stop. Our tent get flooded one more time.
Breakfest with Gert and then hitting the road toward Alexandroupoli. Now we have no more rain but heavy head wind. We are moving as slugs, it is discouraging. It’s difficult, but we’re getting stonger, more organised and our asses do not hurt anymore.
As we are following our GPS to avoid main roads, we are stopped by a road completely overflooded by the recent heavy rains. No way to cross this, we have to go back. Pierre’s fender is suffering one more time and showing some weaknesses, not sure how long it will last.
After an invigorating coffee welcomed by such a gentle lady offering us some delicious home made food and water, we continue pedalling until one of Gert’s spoke broke on the rear wheel – this poor wheel might be overloaded with the accordeon and extra stuffs 😉 Poor Gert! But staying positive, he has spare spokes and will fix this quickly. We say good bye to each other though as we have to move further – we are getting late on our schedule.
As we thought we will reach Alexandroupoli today, we stop in Mestli village to ask for some water. We are actually welcomed by Constantin – Dino, who invited us to his place for a dinner and a dry place to sleep : his garage! Very kind, Dino and Eleni are both retired Greek people having spent +30 years of their lives in Germany. So we disscussed tonight in German! We never thought our German knowledge would help us during this journey, but it actually does quite a lot. Thank you Dino and Eleni for your hospitality and kindness!

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