Adriatic trip

We crossed the Adriatic Sea on the Blue Horizon ferry. Igumenitsa is a city which lives on transit travelers. We slept on the deck and arriving in the morning. Italy was hot and crazy but again the best food on Earth.

Greece, the Total Peaceful Chaos

Greece. The Chaos and the Peace. We took a ferry, Lissos was the name, at night from Chios to Pireus. The trip was about 10 hours. It was also the perfect performance of what one thinks a Greek ferry trip has to be. Crowed, chaotic, noisy and beautiful. Everyone there was like a portrait of one human character. Sailors, backpackers, mature couples and bikers. All of us were in our right place in life. We were among that incredible theatre like astonished spectators and at the same time we were playing our roles as good actors. At night the boat looked like a battlefield camp or a hospital for natural disaster survivors. All the people were lying on the deck, on the corridors, all over the saloons covered with blankets or sleeping bags. No cabins enough for so many passengers. Does it matter when the weather is warm, the Aegean Sea is your bed and millions of stars are lighting the ceiling?

Athens at 7 am was like any other Mediterranean city, but the Akropolis is there and that changes everything, even with the herds walking around. In front of the Partenon any one of us is herd. They are the oldest and most important roots of what we are now. And looking that perfection and then looking at what we are now, one feels something had been lacked in the way. We should be Athenians but we are primitive barbarians. Ok, ok, I know what you think. You are right, we are barbarians but we can also make BMWs. Thanks, God, for have given us the ability of building motorbikes.

We took the route nobody recommended us to ride. From Athens we went to Elefsina and then to Thiva by a narrow and mountain road. Then Livadeia or Livadia and then Delphi (or Delfos, where was the Oracle). The ruins of Delphi were great on the hill and with beautiful sight all over the valley. Then the road goes down to the Korintias Gulf and you can see the Peloponesus shore in the other side all over the way. Galaxidi, Nafpaktos, then crossing the bridge of Etoliko and arriving late at evening to the secret port of Astakos, where the life is quiet and the fishermen are fixing their nets along the bay.

Mediterranean Sea: Real Home

How to say? I feel here at home. I was born at the Mediterranean Sea in a family who was born from ages and generations beside the same sea and in the same region. Now, seated in front of the hills of Kios, hearing the sweet waves and under the most blue sky, I realised that origin is like a heritage deep in the blood. I am a nomad, I can sleep on a dirty couch and eat whatever shit in Kazakhstan, but this is my home. The whole shore from Spain to Turkey, from Israel to Syria is my real birthplace.

Thanks, God, for all you have given to me and bring me safe to home.

Kios, Hios, Chios

Hi, all. We got Kios from Cesme. So we are now in Greece. Kios (or Hios or Chios) is a Greek Island in the Egean Sea. Just 8 km away from Turkey but another world. A beautiful one also. Life is quiet here and landscapes so great, specially on a motorcycle. But its History is so bloody. Apart of earthquaques, Turks killed 25.000 inhabitants in 1821 when Greeks rebelled against ottomans rule. Since then, Greeks and Turks face angrily each other over the fence in Cyprus or the Egean Sea. But they eat and drink almost the same. Greek Ouzo and Turkish Raki are same spirit, pretty similar to our Anis or French Pastis, and they drink same kind of tea and coffee, but they called it “Turkish” or “Greek” depending on which side is drunk. Not surprisingly, the same sort of coffee is named “Arab” in Jordan or Syria.


Anyway, we arrived in a small ferry which does the trip in an hour. Before we visited Ephesus, the Roman Capital of Minor Asia but it was occupied by herds of barbarians wearing shorts and carrying Nikon cameras. The Turkish sell to the tourist all kind of fakes (lacostes, rolex or coins) and make a sad show in the great and ancient ruins representing a gladiator fight. World sometimes stinks. Or you smile facing what we are doing with our heritage or you die from shame. Visiting ruins and old sites give you the chance to see the greatest human creations and the worst human crap. In Olimpo, a Lician City, there are herds of people walking across the sacred tombs just to arrive the white beach and lye on the sand till getting red enough to be a living traffic light.

Antalya, Marmaris, paradise

The road from Antalya to Marmaris and from there to Ephesus is a real paradise of bends, hidden beaches and mountains dying on the water. The main difference between biker and tourist is we love hills and they prefer flat land to lye on the beach. I love this country, its food and its people, even its police; as you can see, they do not wear helmet but riding BMWs. I told you: Turkey is a paradise.

The ruins, the bend and the love

Dear friends.

Perhaps think you know what is love. I gonna tell you what it is. Love is like riding a bike on Turkish secondary roads with wrong tyres. Since left Central Asia I thought off road riding was behind and changed rough tyres wearing asphalt ones, but here, in Tuerkey, the map shows you attractive white lines beside the sea, you go there and sometimes the surface is pretty smooth, the wind is fresh and the scenery is the most beautiful one has ever seen. Discovering new 80 worlds in just one day. Like love is, isn´t it? But other times, the asphalt breaks, the stones come from the hill and the way is like climbing without the right grip on your wheels feeling you are going to fell down and breaking some bones. Suddenly the partner you believed known perfectly appears hard to drive and rebelling every time you try to handle. Again like love. Again like life. Riding Little Fat is not always funny and sometime I blame her frame. But like in love, a real couple always fight together to arrive safe at home after the most difficult hardness and the easiest softness. So here we are, in one shore of the nest of Civilization trying to arrive the other one.

Keep well and fighting hard.

Termessos, Perge

Near Antalya are few ruins, some Greeks, like the Licios City Termessos, on the top of a high hill, with very well conserved theather, or Romans, like Perge, with its stadium. Hot everywhere and better trying secoundary roads.

Turkey, from Tasucu to Antalya

The boat was called “Calypso”, but there was not any Captain Cousteau on board. Only a Turkish crew who lasted two hours more than officially departure time to put all the trucks and lorries into the ferry. They tried to leave no free space at all (space is money) and they repeated the manoeuvres the times needed to pack all the heavy viacles (it means, huge trucks going out and in two ore three times each) even when the desolated passengers were waiting in the sun visibly angry. Finally Little Fat was the last to go into the ship. Good. I was going to be the first to leave. I thought the arrival should not be so late because Kyrenia is just 65 km away from the Turkish Coast. Ok, petrol is expensive in Turkey, so the trip took 8 hours. We leave at 2 pm and arrived Tusucu at night. The customs were a mess with dozens of dirty guys handling their cars documents and trying to go into the bulk of people to get the right window desk. Fortunately we were the first to leave so all the paperwork only took us one hour going from desk to desk.

Tusucu is a small village in the South Coast of Turkey. The village is nice and full of cheap hotels even being on the sea side. Antalya it is about 370 km going west. The first 230 km were so great till Alanya. I thought the best sea road even ridden was Highway 1 in California, but this Turkish way is much better. Wild, pure, beautiful, lonely, with asphalt broken in some parts and very few people going and coming. Delicious. The blue sea shined at the bottom of the cliffs and the pines give me fresh air. Very small beaches were there and narrow unsealed paths take to them going down the hills. It was like riding under drugs effects. Happy one I was there. It remembered me our Mediterranean Seashore, but 30 years before the concrete tsunami. But from Alanya to Antalya, the land becomes flat and the huge turistic resorts are fucking spread all the way. Cars, buses, traffic lights, three busy lanes and noisy people who like to be stuck in hotels and lye on the beach the whole day. Turkey is also the tour operator´s paradise.

Cyprus

Cyprus is strange Island. Is the real border between two worlds. Geographically that boundary line is supposed to be in Istanbul, but in the small piece of land I arrived from Israel the politics differences between Islam and Christianism are notorious. Greek ortodoxus and Turkish Muslims faced each other over the fence. And they do not smile. Since the Turkish Invasion in 1974, as answer of the Military Hit of the Colonels which tried to annex the Island to Greece, Cyprus is divided into three parts: South Cyprus, the country everybody recognises in the International Sphere and part of the UE, the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, only recognized by Turkey and few others Muslim Countries, and the 5% of the territory which still is under British Soveragnity. The Brits left the Island in 1960 and some still blame them for the political mess and the following war.

The island is beautiful, good beaches, nice mountains, churches, castles, monasteries, little towns everywhere with old men having their coffee, emerging in turism but still pure, but at the same time, soldiers and barbed wire. You can move freely but the military stuff is there. In the South are a lot of statues glorifiying the soldiers died in the war meanwhile in the North are a lot of cartels claiming for peace. It is obvious who wants to maintain the status quo. The Turkish are happy but not the Greeks who had to left their properties in the North to be occupied by strangers. The property issue is always one of the problems hardest to solve in every conflict.

I crossed the border in Nicosia after a very good mountain ride with Antoni Vassilous and a friend oh him. Antoni is a long distance traveller I met on a website for adventure bikers. He rode from New York to Argentina and wanted to meet me when in Cyprus. They took me to the border and then I noticed the meaning of “Independent Republic”. Basically means you are under the Turks law for the bad but not for the good. Example: they use Turkish Lira as currency and they have on the land the Turkish Army, but there doesn´t work the Turkish insurance so you have to buy new insurance if you want to drive into the ghost republic.

LEMASUS

I got a cargo ship from Haifa to Lemasus. The ship was called Notos and its flag was Greek. Greek officials but Hindi crew. Nice journey, freedom for passangers to move around the boat. We were one English guy, one French girl, one German guy and his Austrian friend, and three couples, one from Poland and the other two from Swiss. I shared cabin with James, the English, who was riding a bicycle and had been to Central Asia as well. Soon he realised a cross was hanging from my wrist. He was also a deep Christian and we got on well. When the boat left at night we were on the deck and could heard the commands and instructions from the Capitan. Nice night. I had bought two bottles of Israeli wine and took out my bottle of Turkish Raki. We drunk together and had a quiet night talking about trips and travellers. Easy life on a calm sea.

At the following morning, the Cyprus people ripped me off with their expensive fees. James and I split and I took Chloe, the French girl for a ride to Lamarca, where she was going to meet her sister coming from France. She is mathematics teacher in the University of Jerusalem. Good ride in the sun. New friends in a new trip. Life is going on as usual.