Crazy Opa

We left Dilys and Les in Elea and headed to a town called Nafplio for 2 days of climbing.  The bus ride there was interesting to say the least.  The bus driver was smoking with one hand and texting with the other while somehow navigating switchbacks so tight the the edged of the bus would hang over the sides of the mountain!  Overall Nafplio was a bit of a disappointment.  It was beautiful but when we went to climb it was closed due to rockfall.  It was very touristy and for some reason there were hundreds of very loud Greek teenangers from out of town.  Our "hotel" looked like a crime scene out of Law and Order.  Overall we had a good time anyway, hiking 999 steps up to a medevil castle and relaxing on a rocky beach.

After Nafplio we took 2 buses to Meteora which took about 9 hours.  Meteora is completly mind blowing!  There are 600ft conglomerate spires rising out of 2 towns, some with active monestaries on top, and most with ruins somwhere on them. 

We are staying at a funky campsite right in one of the towns, it has wifi but squat toilets (a porcilin hole in the ground that flushes).  We met a 70 year old German climber named Gustl or "Crazy Opa" which means crazy grandfather who is hilarious. To Gustl every thing is either "very good", "shit", or "kaput".  He has been coming here for the last 25 years for a few months at a time and has pioneered many of the routes here. 

We started by climbing a warm up, 4 pitch-5.7 up one of the towers which felt less like a warm up when there were only bolts every 40-50ft and little protection inbetween.  When we went to rappel the route our genious system of only having one rope and a small cord to pull it down failed miserably.  Most of the towers are less than vertical on top so the friction is too much to overcome.  We ended up rappeling down with two Czech climbers.  Later that afternoon we looked up to see Gustl soloing the same route and goats around the top of the first pitch!  The next day we climbed a short crack that Gustl put up that was 5.10a but in the same way a crack at Vedauoo is 5.10a (meaning very hard for the grade).  Again the 70 year old Crazy Opa showed us up by flying up the route on a stomach full of beer telling us water is for animals and washing, not drinking.  After that we climbed another nice route that Lisa led, again very run out. 

Yesterday it rained all day so we just hiked up to one of the monestaries and took it eazy.  It is raining again today but should be ok to climb again by tomorrow.  The campsite is interesting, right now there are 3 canadians, the German, another german couple, a man from Minnessota and a French couple biking to India!  We have our eyes on some amazing towers for the next couple of days!