31st of March, 2022.
The workers from the gas station are not the nicest ones. They actually ask me to move along and stay outside, at the small road which passes by the gas station and it leads to the highway. Luckily for them (warning: it follows a contradiction!), this place is a tiny shitty whole station, so there are almost no customers at all. The majority of the people are passing through the small road, coming from the restaurant a few hundred metres before, so it is better for me to stay there. Later on, I see the fucking owner of the place, and the Mrs., leaving the place. So most likely they were the ones who told the employees to make me leave. Bastards!
After many hours waiting, nobody is stopping. And to make things worse, the back of the restaurant is under reconstruction, so the men working on it keep looking at me. Fuck you all, bastards! People make so many absurd things to be illegal, like free camping, for example, why don’t they make starring at people be illegal? It is for sure incredibly rude!
At some time in the afternoon, two men come and talk to me. They are going to Sparti! Yay! They are quite sensible guys and when I tell them I am here since early morning, one of them say: “Standing here since morning and still smiling…”.
We talk about many things. The way to Sparti is beautiful and full of mountains and hills. They want to buy some gyros at a place in the town where they both served the army, but the restaurant is closed. We pass by many closed restaurants. But this quite fancy, rocky restaurant in the highway is opened and the guys invite me for a bite. We have some chips, bread and pork kebab.
They drop me off in front of the tourist centre of Sparti.
I used the wi-fi in a hotel to get directions to a place where I can camp for the night. It is evening already so no chance to go around town today. I hang out by the central square for a while and then take my way.
When I am at the last small road I have to take, in between abandoned orange fields, a man is coming from there. Argh… so annoying! I chill and hide for a bit in the darkness until I finally decide it is safe to go.
There is a horse in one of the fields and that make me think someone might be coming back for it… ? Or the animal will just stay here for the night?
It is an olive field but in the opposite of Eastern Greece, here the trees are not surrounded by a fluffy and lovely green grass. People tossed the soil around it and add lots of rocks, so no chance of camping under a tree in here.
I walk around a bit more and find other olive fields, with grass this time. After a long time deciding where to make camp, a fucking dog in the house across the streets start to bark. I try to make as less noise as possible but he keeps barking from time to time. But I finally manage to finish everything and get some sleep.
I go to visit the ruins of old Sparta in the morning. Weather is looking bad though. I leave The Hulk by a small local restaurant with a lovely lady.
The ruins are nice and I would like to spend more time by them, trying to figure how it was to live here by that time, how it was to be an Spartan. But it starts to rain when I get to the Amphitheatre, the main attraction, so I decide to come back. There are some people working on the excavation. The site is for free and there are explanation about the particular places. I do recommend for you to stop buy if you are going to Kalamata or South Pelopponese, an area that you should definitely visit on your visit to Greece.
