On a Rescue Mission

We had to return back to Mikro and try to get back our cars and the luggage which we left behind

Suddenly, three days after we got back safely in Sofia, I received a call from the host that the local authorities had prepared some temporary roads so now it was possible to reach Mikro by car. They also had fixed the parking lot behind the hotels and cleared the remains from the demolished house. A lot of cars had already left Mikro safely. Great news! They even sent us some pictures to check the conditions around the hotels. They were not sure though how long these roads will be active. No time to waste then – we had to go as quickly as possible. Right on the next day at 6:00 am we were already driving towards Mikro. Unfortunately the highway to Larissa was still blocked and we had to go west. The detour was passing near Meteora through Kalabaka village on mountain roads full of tight hairpin turns. It would have been great fun to drive here if we were not in a hurry and these roads were not so crowded with all the traffic from the highway to Athina. All in all, this meant around 180 km or approximately 2.5 hours more driving. We hoped that this would be the only detour in our route, otherwise we couldn’t make it one day… Around Larissa it was like going through some apocalyptic movie set. There were still a lot of places under water. I haven’t seen so much damage on the roads and the surrounding area done by the water. Volos was not in good shape either – everything was in muddy orange water leftovers, swept away bridges and walls. The last 2 km to Mikro were quite scary. The road was almost wiped from the rocks by the water from the storm. Luckily enough we managed to get there safe, load the cars and then head straight to Sofia on the same route.