Greek adventures

Rome was incredible, we visited the Vatican City as well as many museums, Borghese museum being Alex's favourite and Lara's the National museum of modern art. We were sad to leave it behind, as well as our new friend Lara Alex, who worked at the hostel we were staying at and Keith who worked at the ice-creamery and served us up the best gelati in a 6 euro super cone! We made our way to Corfu via Brindisi before catching the ferry (which alex loved) to the ionian island! There we were met by the very friendly Spyros who runs the family owned Sunrock cafe hostel. He even bought us our first authentic baclava, YUM! (Contrary to my mothers belief Alex and i are not yet the size of elephants, as we walk too much!) Sunrock was right on Pelekas beach, the view was stunning from the balcony were we were served delicious greek cuisine for breakfast and dinner; Moussaka, spit roasts, lamb roast and greek pancakes! We also met the very amiable Larry who was an old American hippy working there and greeted all new comers with "Welcome to paradise folks!". He took us on a lovely walk in the countryside into the less touristic village of Sinerades, where one of our fellow hikers got sick from eating too many of the delicious figs we picked along the way. Other than visiting the lovely Corfu town we spent our time at the lovely beaches, snorkelling and generally being beach bummers (not beached whales, we promise). We left with Larry's traditional farewell slogan; "real sorry to see you go folks, keep in touch now." Our intended journey to Paxi Island was cancelled at the last moment when we were informed that no boats were going to Paxi from Corfu. Impulsively we whipped open our lonely planet and randomly pointed to a region called Zagorohoria in a TINY village called monodendri which overlooks the Vikos Gorge, one of the largest in the world, 900m deep and is part of the Vikos-aoos National Park. On our arrival to our 40euro a night accommodation, we were quite surprised that our room was so decadently decked out, with an amazing view from our private balcony and a bathroom to die for (We won't mention the Corfu 'bathroom' experience!). Plenty of walks to keep us busy with our included buffet breakfast to keep us going, not to mention running away from Insane, man eating sheperd dogs. We'll elaborate; Alex was talking about how the LP guide mentioned that we may be lucky enough to come across semi nomadic vlach sheperds making their way with their goat and sheep to higher pastures (all very romantic). So with Lara's desperate desire to see a mountain goat, we got very excited when we heard 'goat bells' and we ran down to see them go by, this was a grat plan for about 10seconds, where we just got a glance of the first approaching goat, when one of the ferocious shepherd dogs spotted us and belted towards us with jaws opened, barking and slobbering like mad!!! We ran straight back up the road (we've never ran so fast in our lives) Alex trailing behind while Lara picked up many very large rocks to try and cover Alex's back in case the dog got into biting reach!! We thought we'd got to safe grounds until the man-eating dog and his other doggy friend (2!!not just one of them!!) Kept following us up the road! Eventually the flock went past and the dogs returned, we were safe but permanently scared shitless of goat bell sounds!!! So as we continued on our way home, just starting to see the funny sides of things (seeing we had all limbs still attached) it was a very unpleasant moment when we heard more bells!!!! Straight away we turned back the way we came, Alex worried we'd be caught in the middle of two shepherd flocks and their dogs! Finally, just as we decided to pick up some rocks and confront the danger a car came by which we practically jumped in front of, demanding them to take us to a safe place! Luckily they were a very friendly, english speaking Greek couple who had seen the flock before and understood our problem. We did run into the goat herd in front, luckily no dogs, although the male goats had very large horns and are apparently quite aggressive! All in all we got back safely, we decided we'd prefer to see tortoise (which we saw the day before), a much more peaceful experience!! Today we have arrived in Kalambaka, which is next to Meteora where monastries from the 11th century are perched ontop of very large boulders/pinnacles. Our legs hurt just from looking at what we will attempt to climb tomorrow. Now we are off to try our first real souvlaki, which are apparently on skewars not in wraps. We are here for three nights until we head to Athens, where our journey will sadly end. Love from Alex and Lara.