One of my days in north of Greece

Some weird growl like noise wakes me up in the morning when it's still dark. First my fear of the bears tries to take over. I had seen some bear footprints around the area where I pitched my tent, and I had heard there is lot of bears roaming around in the national park that is located in between Ioannina and Kozani. 

When I move little bit in my sleeping bag for my relief, the growling animal starts barking. Huh, It's "just"  a Shepard dog. The huge shepherd dogs have been giving me little of headache, since they like attacking the bicycle.They are huge and normally they attack in pairs, the day before I got five dogs attacking me on uphill. I normally just get off from my cycle, start talking dog and continue. Once again, I am lucky and the dog outside of my tent is ok. In the evening close to my camp there was a lamb-heard crazing and the shepherd dog kept his few meters of distance. 

Back to the morning, so I change my clothes fast, put all my clothes on me, because it is cold. I am on the mountains and the altitude is around 1500m. The last night was the first night I had to close the sleeping bag and I woke up to put on some more clothes on. I pack my sleeping bag, mattress and jump outside to a beautiful sunrise on the mountains. How energizing  it is to see the sunset and sunrise every day. Feeling chilly and happy, I make coffee and have muesli for breakfast while my tent is drying on the branch of a tree. When I am eating the shepherd from day before brings the lambs from the forest back into the field. He comes to say hello to me and I make more coffee to drink the second cup with him. He tells me that the lambs are more safe in the forest during the night time. 

After the coffee it's time to say goodbyes and shepherds dog follows me barging until I make my way to spring near by. I fill up my water bottles with fresh cold water, wash my face and jump on the bicycle. The morning is cold, clear and beautiful, I cannot stop smiling. I had heard that the road to kosani is not too difficult. I am relieved with the information, since the day before there was basically 55km of uphill to climb to 1500m. I am having love affair with the mountains. I would think that after crossing many mountain regions, I would get tired of them, but no. The more I cycle up and down the more I wait for the view on the next corner. Yes, I do get tired but I get lot of happiness and energy from the views that it keeps me moving. And the mountain passes have not been that big yet. 

The old road from Ioannina to Thessaloniki is very quite. There is almost no cars. I think in average one car passes me by in every 2 or 3 hour. Sometimes there is cows, horses or lambs on the road pretty far away from any farms. Otherwise, it was only me, eagles, bear steps and shepherd dogs. When an old van passes me by, I thought for a second that it was my new friends from Ioannina. I got to be extremely lucky to get three beautiful inspiring people into my life, when I needed it the most. How many adventures and stories there was to share! There is some wonderfully kind people in the world. Goodbyes are not always easy, but the memories last long and keeps making me smile and continue pedaling towards unknown. 

I had been riding up and down for some time, when I hear galloping horse from distance. I am doing 3km uphill and I have made almost to the top and I am as pink as usual. Few times I have scared horses with my bike! So when I hear the galloping horse getting closer, I stop my bicycle. I had seen beautiful small black stallion before and the same pretty thing is galloping towards me. There is a boyman (how to call men in my age?), who tells me that I can keep pedaling, the horse is ok. I keep pedaling the last 400m of the uphill and the boy says that he had seen me in distance and wanted to bring me juice, warm bread and nuts. We have a chat for one hour, eat together the food, and I continue pedaling. The road keeps giving me amazing views. When I fly the downhills down, I feel gratitude how perfect my life is, just right here right now.

The nature changes a lot in the mountains from plain grassy mountains to forested Scandinavian like areas. In some parts it really smelled and looked like home!! If I closed my eyes, I got confused where I was. I found lot of good spots to stop for snacks and lunch. For snacks I had some nuts from the manboy and bread from yesterday for lunch.

I got myself close to Kosani when my back-wheel starts to feel jumpy again. I unpack my bike, straighten the wheel and find out that there is a huge crack on the rim. How long it has been there? The rare wheel had made little sound for few days, but I had not seen or felt the crack before even though only yesterday I was straightening my rare tire. In kosani, the cycle shop that is open does not have a good enough tire for me. I decide to cycle towards Thessaloniki until the rare tyre will not move anymore.

In Kosani, I buy vegetables for dinner and cycle out from the town to look for a place for camping. I found my spot close to a small river. Had a swim, cooked food a bit further away from my camp, because I was not sure if there was stills bears around. Put the food hanging from the tree, looked up to the sky and saw the first stars coming up.
Song for today:

http://youtu.be/T6HjT4SQKJI