Fun Meter...Maximum!!

It's been a very busy past couple of days. After getting out of Athens and into Kalavryta, I spent the night up on a hill overlooking the Selinous River valley and continued on to a small town called Dimritsana the next morning. The morning turned into early afternoon as I managed to get completely turned around and heading back toward Kalavryta. Needless to say I finally made it to Dimritsana and upon further inspection, I found an office belonging to none other than Trekking Hellas; Greece's premier outdoor adventure company. After stopping in, I was invited back to their base in Maratha for the evening and hopefully some paddling the next day. WOOHOO!!! continued driving on down toward Maratha and arrived without incident and without getting lost again...(woohoo.) As I have travelled around through the US and now in Greece, I've come to the realization that river guides are the same everywhere. They all sleep either outside or on the floor, are welcoming to anyone and everyone, have at least one dog, and almost constantly smell of wet neoprene. It almost felt like home...

So from their base in Maratha we ended up paddling the Lousios River the next day (Monday.) First we got on the upper section...definitely class IV with steep boulder gardens, small waterfalls, and almost-vertical canyon walls. The water comes from a bunch of streams  up the valley a good ways near Dimritsana, and is therefore crystal clear, aqua blue and is surprisingly cold. The guides drink it as is...however I wasn't so sure. After the upper section, we continued down the middle/lower Lousios where Trekking Hellas does most of their guiding. This section is bouncy class two for the most part with three class III drops near the end. While the whitewater isn't as spectacular as the upper section, the scenery more than makes up for it. Most of the time the river is completely shadowed by trees with vertical limestone walls plunging straight to the bottom. When the canyon does open up, the views of the surrounding mountains are amazing. Every now and then an ancient arched bridge spans the canyon...something you'll never get in the US. Definitely a good start to Greek whitewater

Tuesday morning dawned much like the day before, with the only difference being a commercial raft trip down the middle section. As the guides started getting ready a horde of high school students arrived. They were all fitted out with wetsuits, pfds, and helmets and shepherded into the three shuttle vehicles. Two of these vehicles, however, are rather special. They're old Land Rovers...with open backs and racks on the top. Customers sit in the back, and the guides sit on top, legs dangling down...sometimes over hundreds of feet as they make their way down into the valley along roads that are barely wide enough for the truck and trailer at points. The trip went well, with no real issues, and again at the takeout were the crazy trucks and trailer. We all piled in and on the vehicles and made it up to the base where an amazing spaghetti dinner awaited us. A perfect end to a good trip down the river. The only imperfection however, was that upon inspection of what looked only like a gouge in my paddle blade, turned out to be a rather hefty crack through the spine. With only raft glue or aquaseal to fix it with, I opted for the aquaseal and duct tape. I think that it happened on it's way over on the plane not while I was paddling. I definitely don't remember hitting anything that hard, and I didn't notice any difference in the paddle from when I started to when I finished. If it did happen on the plane, the water from the day of paddling must have swolen the wood and caused the crack to show...otherwise I may never have noticed it. Anyway...we'll see how the repairs turned out when I get on the river next...good thing I brought a spare.

Anyway, right now I'm sitting in a smoky internet cafe in Kaprenisi, half an hour away from one of Trekking Hellas other bases up in Evrytana, north and west of Athens. It was a lot of driving today, but I made it up here without much of a problem. That's about all for now...trying to get pictures up...but Greek internet is being slightly tricky.

Cheers,

West