Globe Gallivanting- motorbiking across the world

The next day we were due to leave for Passu, a 3 hour drive away.   It took us 8 hours.  The place was full of JCB s, excavating vast chunks out of the mountains to widen the road.   The ‘culvert construction’ diversions continued, mostly into mud.     We only fell in once, when we were going through a river and hit an underwater boulder.  There was no disaster though, I jumped off and pushed the bike back up, and we carried on.         We stopped for watermelon and mango juice at a roadside shack, by a bubbling brook that the drinks were kept cold in.       The route was stunning.  Every time you turned a corner it got more incredible, with massive mountain vistas.  There were huge chunks of snow and ice.  There was an enormous glacier in the distance.     The water rushing everywhere meant there were fruit orchards and grassy meadows.   The restaurant was perched high on a rock in ...

We headed off towards the main roads, with our new desire to visit Halkidiki driving us forward. We rode down the first prong of Halkidiki and immediately ran out of petrol. Just made it on reserve to the petrol station though- our luck was really in that day what with bears and all. We spotted our first snake, about a meter long, but with its head squashed as though someone had run it over on purpose. The prong was fairly pretty, but possibly not quite as beautiful as expected. We rode through a strange deserted tourist resort with a few rich Greeks eating over-priced fish in a beach-side restaurant- one place had a fish dish for 65 Euro. We got sneered at for only ordering coffee, and the coffee itself was undrinkable, with the grains lurking in the bottom. It was possible a very refined way to drink coffee, but I am of the Nescafe school, and I took a gulp and had to discreetly spit. It transpired we weren’t going to be able to afford restaurant food in Greece either, and we fou...

We left towards Monaco, not having quite had our fill of uber-rich filth, and zoomed through, stopping for long enough to photograph the bike and Adam next to some millionaire toy-boat, and riding on a short section of the Grand Prix track, where they were setting up all the start flags etc. I got humiliated by a very swanked up postcard seller in a bow-tie and breeches. It was a very full-up place, with hotels with swimming pools on the roof, and garage attendants who sneered at you. The Barclays branches looked like 5-star restaurants, and Lambourghinis were as common as Fords would be anywhere else. It was small though, a little bay of mentalness, and we passed through and into Italy without noticing. We didn’t realize we’d crossed over until the service station man was speaking a funny type of French we couldn’t understand. There were espresso bars in the garages, and Estonians in tiny cramped vans with their babies swaddled up so much they couldn’t see out. The motorw...