Wednesday 20.09.2000 - Grapes

	Route: Sidari - Pagi - Paleokastritsa Distance: 46,9 km Total: 290,5 km	ROUTE

Getting up after another mosquito attack is hard.
Gert bumps into the door twice, for a change. Good morning!
We are still to early according to the Greek standards and we have breakfast all alone. The parrot that is sitting in its cage a bit further on, apparently has enough of its imprisonment. It swiftly opens the door of its cage, trips gently to our table and climbs onto the chair next to us. So we do have company after all!

It is flat for a while and we pass Canal d'amour. But soon we have to start climbing again and we feel our tired legs. The tiredness gets grip on the mood for a while, we hardly talk.
After a short break we have a vitamin shot: fanta, grapes and for Gert a lemon, yuk!

Vitamines

In the village Arkadades, just before Troumbetas pass (340 m), a winegrower still crushes his grapes manually. We stop for a picture and are rewarded for this with several kilos of grapes. Do we look that bad then? We eat from the grapes for about half an hour but you can hardly see the bunch shrinking. We take the rest with us.

Grapes ŕ volonté

Climbing the Troumbetas pass is not as hard as we thought. During the glorious 10 kilometre descend we see more and more buses, scooters and wine/olive oil stalls. Quite touristy here.
A farmer tries to sell us some wine and olive oil, but we try to explain him it is rather risky to transport that on a bike. But he appears to be in a good mood and he insists on tasting the wine anyway. Lovely!
The road to Paleokastritsa is quite steep, very touristy and buses pass by regularly. But it is worth to stop here: it is a real paradise.

Paleokastritsa

The last part is a descend with short bends. We try a new technique on that, but it definitely needs more practice: bikes loaded with 15 kg of luggage happen to turn more slowly and oncoming traffic has to be taken into account...

As usual, we have no trouble finding a place to stay. This time we get a room with a view to the sea, pool and breakfast are included for the small amount of 10.000 GDR.
Through a pebble beach we get to some isolated rock were we have a rest after a refreshing swim.