Athens to Gjirokaster | Day 2

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

Delphi at 7:30am, looking southwest toward Itea.

Delphi is quite high up. Not unlike our home town Santa Fe, the temperature drops drastically at night then regains its losses late-morning before hitting t-shirt temperatures in the afternoon.

Snowcapped Pindus Mountains to the west of Delphi.

We waited till 9am for the air to warm up to 12C before hitting the road that morning, but in hindsight we should have looked at the contour lines on the map. The northwest decent out of town is so steep the temperature goes up 5 degrees in 15 minutes.

As we descended a set of switchbacks with breathtaking views of the mountains to the west, there was more than a hint of a great riding day ahead.

Delphi to Meteora

Our destination for the day was Meteora, possibly the top tourist attraction in mainland Greece north of Athens. Picture mountain-sized stone monoliths rising 500 meters above the valley floor several with a Greek Orthodox monastery clinging to their tops.

For Bond fans, rewatch For Your Eyes Only.

As painful as it was to circumvent most of the Pindus Mountain range sometimes called the Spine of Greece, we didn’t have it in our time budget to explore in detail. One day dash would have to do.

That said, we started the day with a bang. The first hour and a half of mountain roads leading north of Delphi is one of the very best rides we’ve experienced anywhere.

E65 offers sweepers and switchbacks galore, endless mountain views at every turn and countless variations on the theme along the way.

If I lived in Lamia, like the dozens of bikers we encountered going south probably did, I’d ride it every weekend.

Our mouths agape for most of our journey along the E65, we reached the final descent into the plains around 11am and paused for a stretch and a couple photos. To the east we got our only glimpse of the Aegean separating Greece from Turkey.

I was not looking forward to the plains ahead. Always a bit of a grind and even more so now that we began the day with an adventure biker’s dessert. But the day was about to become quite a bit harder still. Five minutes later, Min suddenly crashed.

No, no motorcycle was involved.

Being very sensitive to caffeine she barely slept that night after two late-afternoon cappuccinos the previous day. Now her body started calling for an immediate time out. Luck would have it we just pulled over by an olive grove where I was studying our route options.

Grass in narrative is on the opposite side of the path.

Great looking grass beneath the olive trees, it seemed like the perfect place for a nap. But no sooner did Min set foot in the grass than she ran into a snake. A large one. So much for that idea. Now she was not just sleep deprived, but rattled.

We had to make adjustments. More caffeine, more local roads, more stops, lower speeds.

Tough patch, but it worked.

After what seemed like hours of endless plains and rolling hills we rolled into Kastraki, one of the two town-villages abutting the Meteora around 4pm. Min immediately hit the sack and I set out on foot to explore the surroundings.

There I discovered a map of a national-park-like drive following the circumference of the Meteora.

When I checked on Min an hour later she was already up and about. It was a very warm 25C out, a perfect evening for a sunset ride.

Done with all the gear for the day, we put on jeans and windbreakers and set out to explore the Meteora two-up at a relaxed Sunday pace.

What we found was stunning. Both the nature and the man made architecture. As an experience, Meteora bears many similarities to Sedona in Arizona — beautiful rock formations with a tourist town or two below. The analogy would be more complete had someone built geodesic domes atop rather than at the base of the Red Rocks as the monasteries in this Greek marvel are very much the centerpiece.

Initially inhabited by hermits seeking solitude amidst caves and make-shift wooden structures in the 11th and 12th centuries, the first organized Meteora monastery was built in the 1300s and many others followed. Today, 6 functioning monasteries survive.

Above, Min filmed a cable car delivering guests and supplies to one of them.

Riding through Meteora. 360 Video.

End of day two. Two marvels — Delphi and Meteora — bookending a day of much grind.

The following day would take us across the border to Albania.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3