(written 16/4/2006, in Ohrid, Macedonia, by
Liz)
We woke up quite early, and during the night, it had occured to Tim that we may need to be at the ferry port we were aiming for a few hours before the ferry actually departed. As we were aiming for the 11.30am ferry to Greece that we had seen on one of the ferry company's website the day before, we packed up and got on the road.
The drive from Matéra to Bríndisi (the ferry port) looks quite simple and short on our map. But Italian roads never seem simple, and somehow we got detoured completely in the wrong direction, and found ourselves driving north.
In the end, we just continued on the road we were on until we made it to the next major town, and then got on a different highway heading south again.
We finally made it to the ferry port in Bríndisi, and we were even in time for the 11.30am ferry to Greece.
Only the 11.30am ferry to Greece doesn't exist. The friendly Italian at the ticket office was helpful... 'Maybe it sails...ahhh... 10th of May, maybe not'. As it was the 5th of April, this wasn't really of much use to us, but he ended up selling us two deck-class tickets and a ticket for our car on the
Blue Star 7pm ferry to Patra, Greece, sailing that evening.
So, now we had a day to fill up.
Bríndisi isn't exactly known for anything other than it's ferry port (at least to us), so we drove south along the coast until we came to a tiny and seemingly deserted sea-side village Casa l'Abate. We were going to sit on the beach, but due to the huge drifts of rubbish, and the lack of sunscreen (another stolen item not yet replaced), we spent the day sitting in the car, reading books, eating food and relaxing. Tim walked up the road to a 'bakery', that didn't seem to sell anything except the 'local specialty' - so we ate two pastries filled with cheese and tomato sauce that he had heated up in the microwave for us.
It was actually nice to just have a slow and lazy day.
We had to board the ferry two hours before it sailed, so we went back to the ferry port just before 5pm and had a coffee outside the ferry terminal. One of the port staff said 'Ahh, I know Australia - the Big Rock, yes?!', to which we replied, 'Yeah, it has a big rock' :) before I managed to do a burn out on the boarding ramp (well, it's not often I have to drive onto great big ferries with Italians all yelling at me which way to go!), and finally parked to car where we were told.
Our 'deck-class' tickets provided us with two seats in a windowless room that looks like a big bus, and where the heaters were turned up much to high. Luckily there were plenty of seats available, so we had a bit of room to stretch ourselves out.
Dinner was on board the boat, and was expensive but not too bad. The boat left at 8pm Greek time (we put our watches 1 hour forwards), and off we went.
Sleep was not too easy, but a little was managed, and sometime in the night we chugged into Greek waters.