Ah, human again,
A feeling one can forget
When lost on the road...
We had another giant thunderstorm last night, which we were fortunately protected from thanks to the olive trees we set our tent under. We actually made a vlog (with no video, only sound due to the darkness) during one of the lesser parts of the storm so that you can appreciate a little the sound of the rain on the tent... it didn't turn out very well, but whatevs.
We hopped backwards into town for coffee and water, since this stretch of coast seems to be fairly deserted as things go. It seemed interminable riding down towards Kyparissia... the road was just far enough from the ocean and behind hills and boringly flat... bleh.
We finally turned, though, up into the mountains, following the route of a train line. That little black-and-white dashed line on our map always gives us some hope for roads: if a train can follow the grade, it's probably reasonable. If we see a road that is twisty and neither major-ish nor accompanied by a train line, we suspect we're in for something fairly tough. This road was actually really pleasant to ride, though; there was fairly little traffic, and the sun was shining down enough to keep us warm while not overheating us to death. We finished up our rice stuff for lunch as we wound slowly through sheep and goat and fig and olive fields. The concentration of this last astonished us as we neared Kalamata.
We turned at the highest point of the mountains to take the road to Kalamata and away from Tripoli (which we'll be passing through in a few days on the way to Athens, anyway), and we had the most unsatisfying downhill of our entire trip. I guess we had climbed about three- or four hundred metres, but the downhill also seemed to go up. That portion of road was also excessively dangerous and scary for cyclists -- some construction work on a new road connecting Kalamata and Tripoli meant an extreme concentration of large trucks and heavy machinery and also dust thick in the air. It was altogether a rather unpleasant trip.
We finally arrived in Kalamata, though! It was fairly early, just about 14h or 15h, and we paused in a café to consider what to do. We had a phone number for Andriana, our host-to-be, but of course we still haven't found a way to get additional credit on our damnable French phone, so we were hoping to find a kindly Greek person who might lend us a phone for a short call. We were utterly unsuccessful in this endeavour, and we settled for buying a 4€ phone card usable in the pay phones. 4€ on one of these things is actually quite a lot of talk time; it's something like .07€/min or so.
We went to the most obvious location we could find: a large square with fancy cafés. Kalamata seems to be rather decentralised and strange as far as European cities go. Andriana explained later to us that this is due mainly to a large earthquake that hit some years ago and destroyed things enough that they could be almost entirely rebuilt in the block/square style of North American cities. It loses some of its charm this way... but anyway we placed a call from the pay phone and were forced to leave a message... we resolved to call back in a half hour or so after a short stint watching Robot Chicken.
Andriana answered this time and explained that she was in class and could we please meet her at 17:15 or so in front of Goody's, the Greek answer to McDonald's. We shuffled our feet around and chatted while we waited, watching various people go by and noting that around 17h a lot of school-aged children seemed to appear. We spent time trying to guess which one of the people was our host, and I knew immediately once I saw her. She was excited-looking and also seemed to be partially unsure of what she was doing, but she saw us at about the same time and suddenly got a lot happier.
After all the pleasantries of meeting, we hopped on our bikes to follow her home. Nana (the nickname she goes by) said in some previous e-mails that the house she and her family live in is sort of outside the main city and that it would be hard for us to find since it's on a street that they named themselves. Well. It was hard enough to get to by following her, what with all the turns and uphills and twists and goats, so we're happy we didn't try to find it ourselves. :)
We were relieved to stop. We stripped off our cycling clothes and took hot baths (not even just a shower! a BATH), and everything we had was taken from us for immediate laundering. The tent was set out on the terrace to dry (packing it after rain always leaves it wet... and we're starting to get problems with mould when we can't properly dry it). We were told that we were cordially invited to school tomorrow to talk to some of the kids there about our trip and to give an interview to a travel magazine owned by one of the students' parents. We were also fed. My goodness, were we fed.
After some time to relax and meet the family (Nana, Nikos, and their mom and dad) and family pets (two dogs, two cats, and two birds), Nana bundled us into the car and we headed out for a whirlwind tour of Kalamata. The waterfront at night is lovely, and it's sad that it's getting to be the cold time of year or I guess we'd be beaching it up here.
Our tour included a smattering of Kalamata food, too. Nana knows a lot about the restaurants in the area, or at least she knows several really fabulous ones. We had dinner at a tavern at a time too early for Greek people. We sat at a table on the side, and in fact she ordered us so much food that an additional side-table had to be brought to hold all of it for us. We were ashamed that we were unable, actually, to finish all of it. The three pieces we'd each eaten of what was essentially carbonara lasagna only hours before had sort of spoiled our appetites, but we consumed with alacrity everything that we could possibly fit into our bellies.
We agreed to talk to the children tomorrow, so we made an early night back to Nana's house after having some quick drinks at a cool bar near the old centre of Kalamata (which, fortunately, remained intact after the earthquake). Some good rest in a bed will do wonders for us... ahh... ^_^