Road to Ithica.

After a week or so in Salonika we decided to cross the central mountain range to the western coast of Greece .Little did we realise at the time the grandeur of the country  we were about to pass through.  Boarding a rather old bus on the outskirts of town we set out to travel across Greece, hopefully in our quest to discover the lost city of Odyssey when we reached Ithaca. Even today great uncertainty still surrounds the exact location of this legendary Trojan Hero's palace.

A vast expanse of mountain of tops, melting snow and perilous slopes greet the eyes, the sides of which were covered with wild chestnuts and ash forests. Small villages and hamlets clung to the mountain side, often their deep gullies had been turned into narrow terrences to bury the dead. This was the territory so vividly described in many books on the Greek Civil War. Houses perched on hill tops surveying the scene looking for an approaching enemy like an eagle. At times our bus would edge around the sharp corners, as the road plunged hundreds of metres into the abyss, these roads were not built for the 20th cent. Albania was not far away in the distance and my thoughts drifted back to what I knew of the Greek Civil War. I tried to imagine what it must have been like,  the various political factions fighting each other, at times brother against brother,  trying to stay alive in this hostile landscape. The Communists had their route to Albania, while the Nationalist had to dragged their supplies and re enforcements across this wilderness. Then there was the poor peasant families caught in the middle, having to keep changing sides in order to survive. The women abused by one side then the other, it must have been hell on earth.

Slowly the trees turned to pine as the road continued to cling to the mountain side, the now rocky landscape covered in snow stretched as far as the eye could see. Suddenly we were above the cloud cover, basking on a sunlight peak a worthy home for the gods. Such is the road to Ithaca. Gradually we descend after several hours of unsurpassed mountain vista to Ianina on the shore's of a lake before turning south to Preveze. Fittingly we crossed to Lefkada by boat and the realm of Odysseus.
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