Mt Olympus

From the Bulgaria monastery we headed on down through Greece to try to find a Greek God.

Oop, sorry, that's Ben drinking his Ouzo in Athens, not sure how that got there.

We stopped at Litochoro, at the base of Mt Olympus, and tried to have our first real Greek kebab/gyros. But it turned out they were out of that, so the waiter came out with a piece of chicken and chips instead. Oh well. There's no camping in Litochoro (don't believe the Lonely Planet), but it was only 5km to the beach and a few campsites there. The first one we went to was full (never heard of a full campsite before...), so we went next door. We knew we'd stumbled on a real locals place when there weren't any dutch people there! A couple of Germans, but it was all pretty Greek. And somewhat established Greeks to - with caravans that didn't look like they'd move, patios and gardens with picket fences and watering systems! Still, it was a lovely beach, great views of the mountain, and they had real Gyros for us for dinner.

Next day we headed up the mountain. Well, more next afternoon. And due to our inability to get an early start we didn't make it up quite as far as hoped. The mountain is 2918m, so we weren't planning on reaching the top anyway, so not too much disappointment. The Clio took us 1/3 the way up:


We made it about 2/3 the way probably (we didn't take out altimeter to be sure). Great views!


Almost as far up as we got there were some horses/mules working on the path. Well, technically the men with them were doing the work, they were busy posing with Ben:


We got a bit further on from the mules but didn't manage to bother any Gods. Got back to the campsite and Ben had a great swim in the Aegean Sea which was more like a heated swimming pool. Joanna thought the wave machine was a bit much though. And finally, here's a wee caption competition from our walk, entries in the comments below...