Winding down (?!)

There are officially 30 days left of our trip! Wow. I’ve been saying that I understand the concept of time less and less the more we travel. Some weeks, it feels like we have so much time left that we don’t know what we’re going to do with it all. Other weeks, we feel like we still have so much more to do before we leave and not nearly enough time.

Either way, 30 days is 30 days. We have been road-tripping around the mainland of Greece, and it has been amazing. Hiking, running, and driving our way through the mountainous regions. Packing lunch and eating it next to the bluest water I’ve ever seen. Swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. Fumbling our way through conversations at movie theaters, mini markets, and toll booths.

In about 2.5 weeks, we will start our Peaks of the Balkans trek. I would say I’m equal parts nervous and excited. I’m feeling confident in our level of fitness and our ability to navigate trails. We will be staying in guesthouses along the trail. I did read on a Facebook page that people can get sick from the water and/or food along the trail, so I’ve been doing some preparing in the freaking-out department. Less about getting sick and more about how we have a pretty tight timeline for flying out, back to the US, the day after our trek is done. Gosh, it never stops, does it? The ebbs and flows of travel, the highs and lows, the confidence and the insecurity. As Sam would say, “it’s a fickle dance.”

So, I’m going to control the controllables. Filter and treat the water, bring supplemental food, and try my hardest on this trail. We did something similar to this trek when we first met, the Wonderland Trail in Washington. Fast forward some years, and Sam is still checking the trail conditions and the weather, and I’m organizing the food and thinking, “How am I possibly going to wear one pair of shorts for 10 days?” Something about being fickle but dancing anyway.

Last week, we stayed at a hotel and were playing cribbage on the balcony when our next-door neighbor asked, “Where are you from?” over the fogged glass separator of our porch. We ended up chatting for about a half hour with our mystery neighbor from Holland. Sam joked with her that he felt like he was at confession at church, not being able to see who he was talking to. She told us she started traveling to Greece in the ’70s. Lots of things changed, and lots of things have stayed the same. The thing that surprised her the most was that now they give out receipts when you purchase something at a mini market.

She told us how brave she thought our trip was. That made me tear up. It is pretty freaking brave. The pictures might look nice on Instagram, but the in-between can feel hard and uncomfortable and impossible. Heck, we almost stopped in Asia and turned around to come back home over issues flying over the Middle East. That is pretty brave, in my opinion.

I’m really thankful to be able to write out my thoughts semi-regularly on here and share them with people, to be able to express all sides of this trip. I saw a quote yesterday that said, “let it be unpolished and messy and true.” So here’s to that, to one month left, and to finishing out our trip doing this amazing trek with fewer gutters and more strikes.