After Mount Olympus we headed towards the Pilion peninsula, settling on a campground in a spot overlooking the ocean. We spent the time there sunbathing and hiking on train tracks and also met fellow overlanders Jeannette und Ralf (sorry Jeannette for getting Ralf hooked on overlanding Africa ;-)).
And this is where I need to take you on a quick rewind, back to Lago di Bracciano. It was there that we met the “firefighter” whom we gave that name because he lived in a rebuilt fire truck. He took an interest in Boggy and approached us on the campground, sharing his stories of travelling Africa many years ago. The conversation went on towards the mindset of people overlanding Africa and how we, just like him, often feel like misfits in the society we live in back in Germany. But which do you prefer – fitting in and being unhappy or being a happy misfit? The firefighter sure had made his choice. He told us he’s never had a “real” home for the last 20+ years, but rather had been living all around the world. Ironically, he was now looking for a home for his family, wife and 2 grown children, who all of a sudden felt the need for a put place where they could all meet up.
" ...we, (...), often feel like misfits in the society we live in back in Germany. But which do you prefer – fitting in and being unhappy or being a happy misfit? "
We were fascinated by the firefighter and found ourselves in his attitude towards life. When we told him about our original travel plans and concerns about where we would end up, he just shrugged and suggested to look into Africa again - he seemed pretty confident we would make it. We had thinking about alternatives ever since we found out we couldn’t make it to Africa with Boggy via our original travel route by ship from Israel to Italy. Iran? Closed down. Balkan and Mongolia? Too cold.
Inspired by the conversation with the like-minded, we looked into possibilities for getting to Africa again and stumbled across travel southbound, who had shipped their car from Pireus to Alexandria 6 months before. Of course, this was in non-COVID-19 times but since they had shared a lot of information on the process including email addresses and names for the agency in Greece and the fixer in Egypt, we decided to give it a try. We didn’t put much hope in it initially, but after a lot of emailing back and forth, confirmed and then again cancelled ships, the unimaginable happened: Boggy got a spot on a vessel that would take him to Alexandria! Since we had taken care of all the necessary paperwork, insurances etc. back in March/ April we needed for Bogdan to be allowed into Africa, it only took a money transfer to seal the deal. We couldn’t believe it and decided not to get too excited before we really dropped off Boggy, but now there was a fair chance we would at last make it to Africa!
So off to Piraeus we went.