Wet and dirty is my favorite thing, my favorite thing, my favorite thing! Oooooh wet and dirty is my favorite thiiinng… at least I am not cold!

sung jovially by Tara as we packed up camp this morning.

Every time we camp near the ocean, Tara worries about us being "swept away in the tide!" I am usually quick to laugh and dismiss this fear as being totally implausible, until last night when we set up on a tiny pebble berm just a few feet away from the rolling waves. I have no idea when high tide is in Greece, but thankfully the ocean didn't wash us and our encampment away in the night!

It was raining as we packed our things this morning, but we hardly noticed. We'd just awoken feeling practically intoxticated from what we agreed was the best sleep we've had in ages. Maybe it was the combination of our hearty dinner (the best in recent memory), the ocean waves crashing against the shore a few feet away, and the hypnotic rhythm of rain pelting our rain fly last night? Who knows. In any case, it was the kind of sleep where you drool all over the side of your face while dreaming eeirly vivid dreams. We were out. It was great.

Our laxidasical morning of slowly packing up in a daze, eating cereal huddled under a bush, watching the rain, and then pushing our bikes together up the huge hill we'd rolled down the night prior (you can see it in the distance in the photo above), put us on the road at the late hour of 11AM.

A few kilometers into our wet ride we passed what appeared to be polluted runoff from a river pouring into the ocean.

The roads today were incredibly flat; according to our database they were some of the flattest we've seen on our entire trip. We didn't stop often for photos, but during a lull in the showers Tara ran over to capture the colors of this rusty guardrail while I examined other possible photo-taking opportunities.

We covered the rainy, potholed, mud-puddly, 75km to Corinth in just a few hours, arriving on the outskirts of town covered in road grime on two remarkably dirty bicycles. We almost set up camp near this Greek farm before deciding to use a birthday donation Tara received from her brother to stay in a nice hotel where we could have a hot shower.

Thank you so much Lian! Not ending our day all clammy in a damp tent was a godsend.

We were so relieved to have a dry room and a hot shower waiting for us that at first, we didn't realize how modern, clean, and ritzy the hotel was. Shortly after we agreed upon a reasonable price with a safe location to store our bikes, the receptionist in turn, realized he hadn't noticed how dirty and bedraggled our bicycles were. He'd agreed to let us wheel them into the courtyard (accessible only through the lobby)!

When he saw our gargantuan mud-splattered road machines, he balked a little, gulped, and then opened the double doors to let us through as agreed. Like a giant dirty freak parade (Tara's addition: "HI! WE'RE HERE! HERE WE ARE!!!! SEE US?! WE'RE FOREIGNERS AND WE'RE DISGUSTING!!!"), I wheeled our bikes through the very clean lobby that was taken over by a group of wealthy middle aged women were enjoying a tea luncheon while perusing racks and racks of fur coats to buy! The expensive furs had to be wheeled out of the way so that we could access the courtyard!

Sometimes it would nice to be inconspicuous. Oh well :)