Leaving Lamia

We left Lamia on Monday; it was the first place in our trip that we felt happy to leave because it was just too noisy and neither of us felt in the mood to be there. The guy at the front desk of our hotel was really nice though, he helped us figure out bus times and, as we were leaving, asked us "Bush or Kerry?". He was very happy to hear us both say "Kerry!"

Our two and half hour bus ride from Lamia gave us a great tour of the Greek countryside with plenty of cliffs and mountains rising steeply from the sea, rows and rows of olive trees, watermelon patches and the smell of burning leaves as farmers cleared their fields after the summer harvest. Our bus ride took us over the beautiful new (and earthquake-proof) Rio-Antirio Bridge that connects western Greece and the Peloponnese.

We were dropped off in Patras and, after a short train ride, we arrived in Amaliada. Now, all we had to do was find the farm where we would be WWOOFing for the next week. We'd been trying to call the owners, Jennifer and George, all day but kept getting the frustratingly-vague "The subscriber you dialed is currently not available" message. We wandered around the town's main square for a few minutes, looking completely lost and ended up asking for directions at an "American Fitness" workout club. Everyone stopped what they were doing to stare at the two foreigners with their huge backpacks. They ended up being very friendly though and had a long discussion in Greek about the best way to go and we were lead out the door by the main fitness instructor to the street we were looking for. We finally figured out that the address we had couldn't be the actual farm's address since we were standing in the middle of the city. We found an older gentleman washing his car in front of the house with the address we were looking for. It turned out he was George's father and he called a taxi for us. The taxi drove us up the long gravel driveway to the farmhouse where we met Jennifer, George and their nine month old baby Elli.

For the past three wonderful days we've been picking walnuts, black berries and pruning olive trees. We both love climbing the trees and discovering the unique personality of each one. Don't worry, we're not working too hard. We're done by one o'clock to enjoy one of Jennifer's tasty, healthy lunches (with plenty of homemade wine!)

We tried uploading pictures again, but no dice. We'll have to wait until Athens or for a decent internet connection.