Kastoria, Greece day sixteen. Twenty days have come gone since we started this journey. Despite the rain we ventured to a lake high in the mountains about an hour and a half from Kastoria. The Greek – Albanian border divides Lake Prespa somewhere near the middle of the body of water. At the Greek Shore there are Greek police waiting to catch illegal immigrants. We departed a little later from the house than I had planned, however this did not ruin our schedule, just something of note. We had our cameras, the tripod, some maps and a few snacks – we were ready for our excursion. We traveled along a very scenic highway littered with poppies and other wild flowers. The highways here are much like the ones of other countries with one exception, the grade of incline and decline here is higher than I remember seeing anywhere else. It is quite common to see a 10-12% grade here, for miles at a time not just for one hill but one after another for thirty-five kilometers. The weather here can be quite tricky, as we have learned from other daytime excursions. It can be raining here at the house and be sunny at our destination, and vice versa. It was raining at the house but we still held hope of playing at the beach and getting some sun. But after driving for about three hours we arrived at our destination only to find a monsoonal rainstorm. We drove around the lake a little hoping to find a single ray of sunlight, no joy! So we gave up and stopped at a restaurant for some lunch. The building looked like it was once a Greek village type cottage. Unlike the other houses like this that I had been in so far this one had exposed rock inside. The effect was a comfortable but cavern like setting. Inside we found three customers sitting at two tables arguing about how foreigners were taking all of the room at the collages and taking their education and leaving the country, thus hurting the economy. Then in the next breath they were talking about hoe foreigners were taking all the jobs. It seemed sort of contradictory. The woman that ran the place was very nice, she gave us menus let us look at them for a minute then told us that only four or five things were actually available. The meal was pretty good. Since the weather was so horrible, we just decided to head for home. There were so many hills, and so little power in that little KIA. We were listening to a CD by a Greek band called “Pix Lax” their music is very good. They have a song called “Thalassa” (The Sea) that describes life at sea or in the Navy very well. Once we arrived back home the sun was out and it was warm, we were told that at home it was a nice day the whole time we were gone. Despite this news we still had a great day.

¶ 6/08/2005 07:46:00 AM

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