Well, this turned out to be a strange day.
I felt uncomfortable about getting the Grammos Guesthouse owner up at 7am, to make me breakfast, given that it was pitch dark outside, pouring with rain, and low cloud covered the hills.
 |
| Early morning at Aetomilitsa |
I cleared my room, settled up, and was about to leave, when suddenly the hotel owner needed to depart in a hurry to rescue a horse that had escaped. So I closed the hotel door and headed out the village of Aetomilitsa, trying to find the track that leads to Mt Grammos.
 |
| Grammos Guesthouse |
 |
| First sight of the dogs that would follow me all day |
 |
| The muddy dirt track leading towards Grammos |
 |
| Climbing above Aetomilitsa |
My more immediate problem was to get some shelter from the wind and rain, scoff some food, get my head down, and beast it along the ridge as fast as possible for about 8km. On an nice day, I'm sure this would have been a fantastic ridge walk, but this wasn't a nice day. It was full-on grim Scottish conditions, with everything getting cold and wet.
Funnily enough, I'd kind of forgotten about the dogs at this point, but when I looked round, there they were. Hot on my heels. Nonchalantly, mooching around like they just happened to be heading in the same direction.
I was starting to get a bit freaked out by them now. I thought if they don't turn back soon, they really won't have a clue how to get back home. It was big, wild country up there. No visibility. And no obvious tracks once you were off the ridge. I started to shoo then away. They took no notice. I threw rocks in their general direction. They took no notice. I really started laying it on the line that they should go back. But it wasn't sinking in.
I tried running to get rid of them. But that didn't help. I tried yelling and screaming at them. But that didn't help. I ran up the hill, hurled rocks at them, screamed at them, touched the trig point, and then hurtled down the other side into Albania as fast as I could, diving off the path to try to lose them.
I descended down rough ankle-breaking ground, then picked up a better, but seriously muddy path, and lost more height. I finally dropped out of the mist, and could see a bit more and started to breath a sign of relief, when out of the mist... trotted... the 2 dogs.
I was beaten. There was no way to escape from the dogs. I'd tried everything. But we were now in Albania, and there was no going back.
We dropped over a shoulder, and in the hollow below were mules, a water tap, some basic form of shelter, a shepherd, and a pack of dogs. A pack of wild snarling dogs. A pack of wild snarling dogs charging straight up the hill in my general direction.
At last I realised why the Greek sheepdogs had followed me. They thought I needed protection. And they duly obliged by engaging in full-blooded dog on dog warfare, and providing the perfect cover for me to edge past the snarling, howling, barking fury of bared teeth going for each others necks.
I headed down towards the shepherd, arms up, and hands out, partly to say "Please don't shoot me (or my dogs)" if you have a Kalashnikov, and partly to say "They're not my dogs! They just followed me from Greece", but it's hard to convey that in an open-handed shruggy sort of gesture.
The shepherd had a quality of toughness, resignation and kindness that's hard to explain. It was cold. It was pouring with rain. My dogs were attacking his dogs in a high-pitching squealing frenzy. But he took his time. He moved slowly. He invited me into his shelter. Constructed from bits of wood and plastic sheeting, it was quite astonishingly completely dry inside. There were at least 4 beds. Or at least 1 bed that was as wide as 4 beds. Food was hanging in plastic bags from nails on a post.
 |
| Inside the shepherd's shelter |
The noise outside from the warring dogs subsided.
I thanked him, "Faleminderit", and got on my way.
Down and down into Albania. My canine companions getting further and further from home, but not looking too worried about it.
 |
| Descending from Mount Grammos |
 |
| The Wilds of Southern Albania |
 |
| Albanian Hospitality at Starje |
"Please mister, does your dog bite?"
"No, my dog doesn't bite" [Dog bites]
"Ouch! I thought you said your dog doesn't bite."
"That's not my dog"
 |
| Wandering down the road to Erseke |
 |
| Rain bouncing off the ground in Erseke |
 |
| Hotel Inxhujo and Rinia Park |
After hiking 8 hours from Aetomilitsa, everything was soaked. There was no way I was going back to Greece.
Frantic searching on the hotel laptop to track down the owner of Grammos Guesthouse, eventually gave a lead, and somehow the owner (Theodoros) got the message and phoned through to my mobile.
"Where are my dogs?" he said, in a deep serious Greek voice.
Now, having tried every trick in the book to get rid of them all day, I'd assumed 100% that the dogs would simply be mooching around outside the hotel, especially seeing as I was the only person they knew in Albania. I went outside to find them.
They weren't there.
I checked Rinia Park. Plenty of scavenging dogs. But not my dogs. I checked up and down every street, the town centre, the out-of-town, the waste ground between houses, the road back to Starje. I checked everywhere.
They weren't anywhere.
Theodoros said he would phone back in 3 hours, once I'd found the dogs.
He phoned back in an hour. I hadn't found the dogs.
"Where are my dogs?"
I told him the dogs had disappeared. He then relaxed, and said "Don't worry, I'm sure they will find their way home by midnight". I severely doubted this, but admired his optimism, and it got me off the hook... for now.
I felt terrible. The dogs had been with me all day long, on a big adventure hike. And now just when I needed to let the owner know they were OK, they'd vanished. No trace. Nobody saw which way they went. I felt entirely to blame that they'd slipped away.
I didn't enjoy the evening much. I was too worried the owner would never see his dogs again, and the dogs would never find their way back home.
 |
| Early evening in Erseke |
No comments:
Post a Comment