Day 104 & 105...Brindisi to Mykonos oh my gawd! 8th & 9th October

Up early and drove to Brindisi’s shitty rural airport to drop our rental car off at Europcar. Heaved another sigh of relief and did a big high five! 3 cars and no crashes, tickets or anything! (Well, Nathan did get busted for speeding in Champagne, but as we didn’t know French they got frustrated and let us go. Yee ha!)

We caught the bus back, but it only dropped us at the main bus stop. So we had to hike it with all our stuff on our back (thank god for these back packs let me tell you!) to the port. We couldn’t find out where we were supposed to go, and ended up going into the Marriott who where kind enough to help us. Turns out there is a newer port further away, and you can catch a free shuttle there. So we did that, and on the way met a nice young Aussie couple called Olwen and Charlie. And a Brazilian guy called Harry (Ehike). We boarded the ferry with them and ended up spending the duration of the trip with them, all the way to Corinth. Olwen grew up on a massive farm in WA, when the drought occurred they switched from sheep to goats. They round them up with helicopter. She was radio schooled until high school then went to boarding school in Perth. She’s just finished her marketing degree and is very well groomed and articulate. Charlie was from Perth doing a commerce degree, and seemed very much like the Aussie surfie – but he didn’t surf! Harry was lovely and was a big traveler. He’d just been living in Ireland for the past 6 months and had a bit of Irish mixed with his Brazilian accent.

We all sat on top of the deck of the ferry which smelt like petrol and piss, and saw that no one else was really boarding apart from a few truckers and us! The ride itself was hell. We shared some drinks and a nice dinner together, but sleeping? We paid for seats as getting a cabin was way too expensive. So we slept on the floor and it was so cold I used my snow jacket. We got about 3 hours broken sleep before we were turfed off the ferry at Patras about 6am Greece time (we went forward an hour). The only consolation was that we got to watch English speaking TV for the first time in ages. Event though it was a b grade mythical TV series, we soaked it up.

Then all of us sat around the train station at Patras waiting for the train to Athens. When we eventually boarded the train cut through Greece from west to east. I conked out, but whenever I opened my eyes, we were shooting alongside a lake (or bay) with big mountains sweeping up the other side. Very pretty. We had to change trains at Corinth, which was where we left everyone. They were heading to Athens, while Nate and I were heading to Athens port called Piraus. It took another two trains before we got to Piraus but we met some nice Greeks who saw our backpacks and asked if we needed any assistance. The Greeks are lovely people. They always come over and ask if we need any help and to chat. No strings attached, just general nicety.

We had decided to do Mykonos first, so we had no stress trying to get back to Athens for our flight to Egypt. Once at the port, we found the only boat going was a ferry at 5pm. After some more waiting around (including eating lunch under a pedestrian bridge in the rain) we eventually boarded another ferry. We booked accommodation while we were waiting at Piraus, so that was one hassle solved. The ferry arrived at 11pm. So from 8am yesterday till 11pm today, we have been in transit. Ugh! We raced down the plank of the ferry as there aren’t many taxis in Mykonos. Our hotel met us in the main square walked us through the labyrinth of windy streets and whitewashed buildings. As it’s the off-season we got given the best room there. A lovely big double with a bathroom and balcony. We had a much-needed shower and some sleep!