Shaky Beginnings

We last left you in Athens- a rocky start and it still took 4 days to recover my lost bag! Starting out at the hostel with our Greece flags flying and with a nice big send off crew, I fall over on my bike, can't even pedal the damn thing it's so heavy!! "Great, how am I going to get through 2000 miles, let alone, down the block?!?? Tim, could we please not start off going on the super busy, super scary Athens thoughroughfare???" Okay, feeling more confident after some side-street practice, now off to the port of Pireaus!

Greek drivers are crazy. There are no rules. The lines on the road are only suggestions as are the traffic lights. But because of the popularity of motor scooters the drivers out here are constantly on the lookout for slow moving objects...like Tim and Piper!!

Once on the ferry to Santorini, we tucked our bikes next to a big truck, and set up camp on deck. We got some funny looks blowing up our sleeping pads and sliding them into the sleeves of our SUPER AWESOME BIG AGNES SLEEPING BAGS (shameless plug) but we slept like babies on the, otherwise, brutally uncomfy benches, AND awoke to sun rising over the island of Ios.

Rolling off the ferry on Santorini, we look straight up at the swithcback we must climb to get out of the port, at the calderas edge. **Santorini is a volcanic island- it erupted, supposedly burying the lost city of Atlantis- cool** The climb up was actually pretty easy, and we cruised down to a posh little beach town- Kamari... hung out on the charcoal-pebbled beach in sweet (free) loungers and napped..AH...the Mediterranean! Unfortunately, we found out that the camp ground there had been closed for years and had turned into a shady squatters camp, so we had to trudge up a hellish switchback to the nearest town with camping...oops. Our first ridiculously steep climb- 1.5 miles took us about an hour!! The locals were laughing at us, one guy even passed us twice on his moped to see if we were for real!!

But, Perissa (where we did eventually camp) was much more our style- cool backpacker haunt, cheap, lazy-beach atmosphere, surrounded by staggering peaks and turquoise water. That's when it happened.....