Southern Italy to Greece

Southern Italy

Sunday 21st April Cantanzaro Lido,

Jacqui got up early and had her swim in the sea before breakfast. We then set off continuing along the southern coast road towards a campsite at Badolato where we hoped to pick up internet and to service the van. We arrived at lunchtime only to find it closed. I wandered into the site to see if anyone was around. I spoke to resident Italian who spoke no English but who kindly phoned the site manager. He came down to the site advised us it was not open but was happy for us to stay, no charge but there was no internet facilities. But our need was wifi, so we thanked him and set off down the coast to see what we could find. The manager had told us that wifi was available on the sea front at Cantanzaro Lido and sure enough we found wifi so Jacqui managed to finish the marking she needed to do. This was quite a nice town so we looked for spot to park up and stay for the night.

Monday 22nd April Sibari,
Our plans had been scuppered by the last site being closed. We had planned to go into the local national park for two nights and use our kayak for the first time. The weather in the national park was also very cold (7 degrees), wet and foggy. We had been experiencing 20 degrees so we decided to stick to the coast and possibly get an earlier ferry from Bari to Greece.
I discovered that the electrical connection we had been using to charge the computer in the van had burnt out so en route we stopped off at a few electrical retailers to see if we could find a replacement. After four different attempts we eventually found one. We arrived in Sibari where we stopped at a lovely campsite, although it did not have internet we spent the afternoon cleaning the van inside and out. in the evening we went over to a British couple who had a brand new Hymer B544 (our previous van). We spent a very pleasant evening exchanging ideas and past experiences of places to visit.

Tuesday 23rd April
Following on from our discussions the previous night we decided to visit Matera on our way to the ferry. Matera is famous for its houses and churches that were built into the limestone caves. The amazing thing is that people lived in these (slum) dwellings until the late 1950s/early 60s when a law was passed which forced 15,000 of the population to be rehoused into more modern accommodation. We spent a couple of hours looking at the site, visiting one of the cave houses where a family of 2 adults and 6 children (child mortality was 50%) lived along with their animals in a room no larger than my living room but probably bigger than our van.
From here we drove to Bari arriving a 5pm. We were able to get a direct ferry to Patras immediately at the internet price of 290 euros so we paid our money and got on board. As we had a camper we were allowed to sleep in it on an open deck.  This made the 15 hour ferry crossing much more pleasant. The sea was really flat and it was an easy crossing although we were woken by at 5am by all the lorries disembarking at Igoumenitsa.

Wednesday 24th April Patras
The morning of our ferry trip was spent watching the various Greek islands come into view as we crossed the flat scintillating sea.  It was a gorgeous day. We had a interesting chat with a bloke from Devon who was now a sail maker in Sicily (although he trained as a ship builder); he was on his way to Turkey.
We docked at 1pm (30 mins late) and headed out hoping our Sat Nav would work in Greece.  It does. First stop was Lidl to get a few bits and pieces, then the bank for money.  We were pleased to see that fuel was about 35cents a litre cheaper in Greece than Italy. We then continued on the coast road to Kato Allisos.  The campsite was lovely: lemons hanging waiting to be picked, wonderful orange blossom scent and shady trees but the beach was a mess and smelly.