You can guess the nature of the first part of todays travel - yet more narrow mountains roads and very narrow villages. I think we can safely say that Peloponnese roads are perhaps the most challenging we have driven on this trip. While the road surface is good and we therefore dont have the shakes and bumps of Tajikistan or Mongolia the narrow village streets with their balconies intruding into the road space (at least for a vehicle our height) have been very demanding.

The site of the Acient Olympic games at the town of Olympia was pretty well deserted when we got there (as was the town). So we had the luxury of touring the site with almost no-one else in sight other than a few hopeful guides.

The ruins were interesting enough, and like the other sites we have seen testify to a powerful and wealthy culture. To me the more interesting thing to contemplate is just how long the games lasted - the Olympic Games were help continuously on this site every four years for over 1100 years. That seems simply staggering.

The nearby Museum of the History of the Games and our varous guide books also had some interesting tid-bits of information about the acient games. For exampe; drugs in sport is not a new problem. Apparently the ancient olmypics also had the problem; athletes would drink animal blood for strength and this was not allowed under the rules. So what did the games officials do - they had urine tasters who could detect (apparently) the bulls blood and other banned substances in the athletes urine. Leaves one wondering doesnt it. Try saying " ... offical urine tasters tested ..." 5 times really fast.


After our visit to Olympia our Peloponnese visit was pretty much over and all that was left was to head north to Patra and catch a ferry to Italy. On the highway to Patra we had trouble finding a place to stop for the night so eventually we picked a gas station that seemed like a truck stop and asked if we could stay the night.