Major hiking day! 6/8
Up at 5 because we fell asleep at 8:30. It rained a bit and it was windy as hell but we were toasty warm. We ate some delish Greek yogurt (I guess they just call it yogurt here-hehe) with honey for breakfast. Packed up the stuff inside the tent so we'd be good to go when we got back from the summit. I felt good and was willing to give it a go.
We took off just before 7 with a couple other hikers on the trail. I felt awesome, it's amazing what a little puking will do for you. Andy on the other hand was feeling sick again. He's been sick for weeks. He discovered lots of black fungus on his water bottle yesterday and cleaned it off, hopefully that was the culprit. The beginning of the hike was a bunch of switchbacks but we were still in the tree line. After about an hour the trees stopped, it got windy and foggy, and we went straight uphill. Poor Andy was having a hard time breathing from his cold. We reached a sketchy point where we had to walk across some snow. Not a big deal but if you slip you are going to slide far down into rocks or over the cliff. It still only took us 2 hours to summit to Skala. We met 3 guys at the top and they were going to Myaka but it was so cold and foggy and he felt terrible we passed, not to mention there's are short part where you have to crawl to get across. F that (for now).
We quickly headed back down to the refuge, both of us feeling pretty good. We pass a caravan of about 50 people heading up, glad we left early. That's going to be a shit show at the top. We made it up and back in 3 hrs. Not shabby. We were starving so we had a sammy of tomato and feta with a banana and tea. It cost us nothing to enter the park, only €8 for camping and not much for food. We ate quickly and packed up, said goodbye to the dog who slept by our tent all night outside and headed back down the mountain. Holy shit that was hard. I think it took us 1.5 hrs to get back to our car. In one day we hiked just under 3k ft up to 9k altitude and down 6k ft on huge and small sharp rocks. We were exhausted. Our legs were shaking so badly. Carrying our backpacks down he mountain was tough, we envied those who had the donkeys carry them up but that would never happen.
We made it to the car around 1 and went to Litochoro for lunch. It's a very cute town with lots of restaurants ready for tourists. It's pretty nuts in Greece, lots of empty buildings (lots are clubs) around. I thought maybe it was because it's not peak season yet, but I think it has more to do with the economy. There weren't many people on the mountain, and this is freaking Mt Olympus, weird. We had a great lunch of Greek salad (yes that's what they call it) and giros (not gyros). The giros had pork and mustard and ketchup to go with the freaking French fries in them!! So damn good. I love a little bit of Pittsburgh sammies (Primanti Bros.) in Greece.
We left and headed for the beach, we needed to rinse the stink off. It started pouring rain so we left for our next destination, Kalabaka near Meteora. We finally got off the toll roads and drove through the country. Lots of corn, maybe for methanol because they aren't eating it. It was a quick drive. We found a campground and set up the tent before it rained in a small town outside Kalabaka. We immediate jumped in the pool although it was storming. We were pretty funky and not in a good way. Out and into the wonderful warm shower!! Day 4 and we had our first shower. That's pretty much how I figured it would be.
We went into town although Andy was failing fast. We had the souvlaki and zucchini cakes for dinner in Kalabaka, the only ones at the restaurant. We got back around 8:30 and passed out with the sun out and kids playing around us again. Maybe tomorrow is our late night? My legs feel pretty good so maybe we'll hike some more mountains.