My "Saharagelber" 300TD

I woke up from the voice through the speakers, announcing our arrival in an hour of the port of Athens, Piraeus. We got ourselves some coffee. We left the ferry and drove through Piraeus to Athens. In Athens we paid a visit to the Acropolis. Unfortunately the Acropolis was shrouded in scaffolding. But we were able to walk around and check out the musea over there.
Luckily it was not high season so we were able to see it pretty good. Then after this not too long visit to Athens we continued to go inland. We drove a bit out of Athens in northern direction.
We found ourselves a nice camping in the evening in Rafina, which was far enough from Athens to be quiet. It sounded promising too: ‘On the beach’. When I arranged a place I entered the campsite, there was hardly anyone around. It was indeed on the beach, only you had to be a professional cliffhanger to descend the 80ms of rocks. We had some nice dinner tonight and enjoyed the peace and rest after busy Athens. We enjoyed being together and had a joyful cosy evening. After that we creeped in to the Mercedes again for a long night sleep.

When the time was right we said goodbye to our friends and entered the ferry. This trip would take all night. I entered the deck on the back of the boat and saw Rhodes becoming smaller. Some strange line of smoke hang all over the horizon, I was wondering if that was the smoke from the boat or from Rhodes island perhaps. I stood there and thought about the time on Rhodes and what was to come.
We found ourselves a good place to sit on the couches. In the evening I laid myself on the couch with my head on Melissa’s lap, that felt so trustworthy. I fell asleep and Melissa stayed awake as she was not tired.

We departed very early, the owner tried to rip us off by asking way too much and he put on his ‘I am very surprised’ face, but it didn’t help. The deal was made and I did not want to pay twice as much now. I ignored further arguments and stepped in the car. He waved goodbye and openend the gate, no further problems or whatsoever. We were bright on time for the ferry, it was a very small one where only four cars were able to enter. May this was why its so expensive. “Stop thinking about that!” I screamed to myself in my head.
After we had this relaxed sunny boat trip we disembarked in the port of Rhodes. When I drove the car from the ferry on the dock we were very surprised to see some of our dutch friends!
They wanted to surprise us, and succeeded! Such a surprise to see them in front of us here! They told us they planned to be here 2 weeks and this week they wanted to help at the clinic too.
So, first get through all the official stuff here and then we can start to enjoy Rhodes.

Then the disaster began. We had to take EVERYTHIING out of the car, which would be a hell of a job.
I never had to do this before and now we really had to do it, so it seemed. But the worst part was, we had to carry everything inside, we had to take everything out of the car and walk inside to the moving belt.
I tried to deal with one of the customhouse officials to just check the stuff by the car. This would take a very long time. This official was very mad, he started to scream at us and did not want to talk with us. Melissa got very mad at him but that didn’t help of course, there was no room for discussion or any deal, we had to take everything out.
Because of the medicine we were expecting problems and that they would take it. We had to cool down and just do it, otherwise we could not expect too much from them in a positive way anymore. But it did not matter, when we were waiting at the belt they were inspecting the medicines when they passed. ‘What’s this!?’ They asked.
We explained this were needles, tranquillizers, some sterile instruments, rubber handgloves and so on. We explained that this was for a animal clinic.
The sullen officials called another official and they told us we had to have paperwork for this and for that, otherwise they would destroy it. So, we started calling vets in Holland, we started callling the animal clinic in Rhodes, but it all didn’t help, when we we close to get what we needed they thought of more we had to arrange. This greek arrogance and hate towards people getting from Turkey (because that was mainly the problem we heard later) provided no room for us to arrange anything. It took us hours and we ended up with nothing. We had to leave the stuff here. This sucked big time, this was so valuable for the clinic, worth a couple of hundred dollars. DAPS told us already that the greek authorities were very much against their foundation, which was purely based on arrogance: People from western Europe who were trying to help the stray animals in -their- country. DAPS is trying to castrate all the stray animals on Rhodes, to stop the ever expanding amount of animals walking over the streets, which is very dangerous for them as many of the greek people over there are kicking and poisoning them or driving them over. This took us the whole afternoon and without any result. They at least gave us 8 days to arrange all the paperwork, but we more or less knew chances are that they would destroy it anyway. We left late in the afternoon and decided to enjoy the rest of the day. We drove via a Lidl (Yes, they have one at Rhodes too! ) to do some shopping and getting some fuel.
Some gypsies were hanging around at the parking lot of the Lidl, trying to get the coins of the shopping trollies when people brought them back, or just some food.
We decided to buy some stuff for them in the Lidl that they could eat.
Then we paid a visit to the DAPS clinic, where the vets were working hard at the moment we came in. They showed us their work and we talked about how we could help them the coming week. We then tried to find a place where we could stay. Some other volunteers who worked there knew a place and we managed to stay there for 10 Euros a day, quite a good price.
Our own one room appartment, and it looked very nice. Quite a luxury comparing to what we were used to.

Today we had a day of rest. In the afternoon we went to Marmaris, checking if boats were going to Rhodos which were able to take the car. In the centre of Marmaris we heard some strange things, at different places they told us it was not possible anymore to take your car on the boat to Rhodos, this ferry wasn’t going. I had to find a place where I could park the car and go without it. This was a very bad idea, we wouldn’t leave the car here with all the stuff in it, and also it is very impractical. We also brought a lot of medicine (three or four plastic bags) for DAPS, the foundation we were planning to help the coming week. We had to try other agencies, see if it was really true, we suspected them to just offer us what they could and desperately wanted to have customers even when they had to tell us we couldn’t bring our car. After a while we found an agency which told us that it was possible, although very expensive.
I had to pay 350 Euro’s only for the car, round-trip! For this very small distance! But, then, we were lucky because we could take the boat the next day. So we booked, bummer that it costed so much for an distance of practically nothing, but so be it. We went back to our private campsite and relaxed for the rest of the day. In the evening the owner gave us some fresh milk and salad. I think this man tried to live from all his own supply, gardening and the cow which was walking around here. This cow broke loose earlier today and walked over the campsite
Melissa was able to get enough rest now. We spend most of the time relaxing and reading.