Albania to Germany

The short detour back to Greece had the positive effect off allowing me to ride over 200 km of twists along the Albanian coast.

I had no plans to stay in Albania but the heat and all the nice beaches with clearest water were far too tempting to just drive by.

The Llogara pass is one of the most beautiful I have ever ridden, climbing up to 1.000 m with a constant view to the Adriatic Sea.

Had a light lunch on the road the guy selling the cherries spoke perfect Italian and asked me if I wanted them washed, I said yes but while I was eating them I started to get some concerns about where the water came from as we were in the middle of nowhere but all went well.

The goal for the day was to stop in Montenegro for the night, but the town I chose, near to the border, was very small and didn't have any accommodations.

On the Serbian border I was once more asked for the insurance green card, took my copy out and the officer asked for the original, I said that I don't have it with me and he went away with my papers. Minutes later he came back and told me I would have to go back to Montenegro and cross the border to Croatia.
I thought, "wait, what?!!!" I looked at him with an incredulous look and the SOB winked at me and let me go. Didn't new that the Serbian officers were able to make these kind of jokes at the border.
I've been to Serbia before and it didn't have a good impression of it but the road I took was really beautiful.

My memory of Croatia is spending hours ridding very slow behind cars, campers and caravans along the coast so this time I went for the highway. It was cold and there was a strong wind blowing but it all went well until shortly before the Zadar exit, there I bumped into a 10km traffic jam, very lucky to be on a motorcycle. For some reason they closed the highway forcing everyone out, meaning hours of waiting to pay your way out. Just 3km later the police was sending everyone back to the highway and shortly I got on it there was a sign forbidding motorcycles to continue, not really something I wanted to see so I just ignored it and I wasn't alone on that. Then the speed on the traffic control system displays was reduced to 80, 60 and then 40 km/h with the wind getting stronger as we climbed the mountain. I far as I can remember this was the strongest wind I had ever to face on a motorbike and the hardest part of the whole ride so far. The speed reduction may be a good thing for cars but it certainly isn't for motorcycles so I ignored it to save my life, it may sound strange but it is a lot easier to control such an heavy bike ridding fast than slower. I saw a lot of guys in trouble along the way, some had stopped others were paddling they're way up in first gear. Next I crossed Slovenia to Italy, I haven't been to Italy for a while and was impressed how beautiful it is, have to go back soon.

In the morning I checked the weather and saw that it would be stable the all day, being so near to the Großglockner I thought that it would be a nice end to this long ride to cross it again.

My trip was almost over when just 50 km from home while rolling to an intersection my clutch cable broke forcing me to stop for a last repair before I could get home.

Back home.

Greece

Now that I've got the tire problem solved, my biggest concern is to get an insurance green card for Europe, not being able to get at the Turkey entry border as expected left me with a big problem. During my in Turkey I've done some research and ask for possible solutions and found a Canadian guy that mentioned just having done a green card at the Bulgarian border but without mentioning where he crossed so I went for the biggest one, just in case. Stopped for the night near the border, to get there in the morning, done all passport and vehicle controls but at the end got through without anyone asking or requiring an insurance card from me and I didn't saw any kiosks as the other guy mentioned where I could have bought the insurance, drove all the way to the Greece border, same thing no questions about the insurance. Now ridding in Greece illegally, it was time to have another break and try to sort things out.

Greek mixed salad not really what I was expecting to be honest.

... and a nice fisch to go with it :-)

Mailboxes in Greece.

Had a chat with the owner of the bike, explaining the situation and suggesting that the easiest way would be to extend the Portuguese insurance which he agreed with. A day later I had finally a .pdf of a valid green card insurance for Europe and was now all legal and able to ride in every direction.

Loaded cherry trees all over the place near to Macedonia. 

I went west, to visit Meteora but it was very hot for the first time and not much to see on the way so I changed direction and went north to enter Macedonia and have a look at the lake Ohrid instead.

Beautiful lake but difficult to get in pictures, it's worth visiting I you're near. I had a couple of these animals crossing the road along my journey, couple of times in Kazakhstan and also in Russia but I wasn't fast enough to get a picture of them, in Macedonia I finally got one on camera :-)

My next stop would be the Blue Eye in Albania but easier to say than to do. Now there is one thing that I'm trying to avoid and that is to get a flat tire again. What happened was that the roads that looked paved on the GPS, in reality were all unpaved and the paved roads in Albania are already a challenge to do without breaking anything. A flat tire was not the only reason why I'm trying to avoid unpaved roads, on these you need to ride at a much slower pace if you're not willing to break anything. Following the only paved road I ended up back in Greece again. But before that I found a road to the past, that I obviously didn't follow.

The road in Greece was really nice and completely empty, I enjoy ridding this kind of roads.

Here is something I didn't knew that you could find in the wilderness in Greece even if I only saw the sign.

Back to the see once again.

For a meal, what else :-)

Turkey

In the morning, after getting the tire fixed, I drove down to the Turkish border on the way it started to rain.

Met two guys from Lithuania while waiting for customs, the officers didn't gave us any preferred treatment and we didn't had any shelter from the rain, waiting there for hours, having someone to talk to was a nice way to let time go by faster. According to research on the internet I should have been able to buy an insurance green card at the border, because the bike doesn't have any insurance and I need one in the EU. Unfortunately that information was false, the only insurance I could and had to buy at the border is only valid for Turkey. Anyway my highest priority at the moment is to get a new front tire as soon as possible and in Turkey at least that can be an achievable task, whereas in Georgia near to impossible. Due to the rainy weather I sticked with ridding along the coast.

Shortly before Samsun a British rider caught up with me, we stopped hat a traffic light for a short chat and agreed to ride together until Samsun and have a coffee there. While looking for a place I saw a Yamaha motorbike shop and marked a waypoint on the gps to go back later to check if they have a front tire available. After we were done with the coffee I rode to the shop but saw one from Honda that I'd missed before and decided to try there first. It was a big shop with 3 brand new Africa Twins on display, so I had some hope that would have a tire on stock. Turkey has not been easy with foreign languages but here I was able to find a guy that spoke a little bit of English.

I explained that I needed a front tire, preferably road oriented, he picked his phone and called someone, now I got confused, we stood there for a while and I was thinking, how difficult can this be? A simple yes or no? Around 10 minutes later he said he has one. Another 10 minutes went by with standing near the bike and he talking to another guy, then a motorcycle rider arrived carrying the tire with him. I looked at it and saw that it was far from willing to buy it was late, the price was fair and I had no better choice, so I asked if they could mount it.

I drove the bike down to the basement and was invited to wait in the show room. Almost two hours went by and there was no sign from the mechanic so I decided to go take a look at the happening. There are two guys trying to mount the tire in the most primitive way, stepping at the tire with the wheel lying on the ground with no protection for the disk, so they're practically standing on the edge of the disk.

They have taken both calipers from the fork which is not necessary for this work but they don't seam to know better. Watching these two guys would have been fun if this was not the bike I was on. They have no idea about torque values and I had to stop them from eventually breaking a screw, they looked quite surprised and maybe said that I was crazy (they only spoke Turkish) but I didn't need unnecessary trouble with the bike. The good thing was that while I was waiting I met a Turkish Africa Twin rider that pointed me to stay in a really nice place. Next day I continued my ride along the coast but was caught by yet another thunderstorm.

Spend the night in Abama and woke up with more rain I waited for a while but then after looking at the radar decided to go on, the rain stopped 20 km later and I was able to enjoy the twists along the coast until almost evening when I saw the next thunderstorm coming my way, stopped after Zonguldak for the evening and it started raining the moment I took off my helmet.

The next morning more rain, now I had enough and drove the fastest way to the border.

Georgia

Exiting Russia was the border crossing I was most feared it could go wrong, I had read and eared about how difficult or impossible to cross the it with someone else's vehicle, that I thought it could be the end of the west going. Regardless of all my doubts, this was the fastest border crossing so far \o/
The military road, right after the border is in pretty bad condition but the views let you easily forget about that. After ridding over 4.000 km of plains, mostly against strong winds, cold and rain, looking at these mountains with the top still covered in snow, the absence of wind and the warm temperatures made me feel good.

Plan was to ride up to the Gergeti Trinity church but I met two other Africa Twin riders going in the opposite direction and they mentioned that due to the weekend it was all full with tourists and it would be better to drive up on Monday. Spend the night in Gudauri, took a look at the map for the next day and saw an interesting mountain pass going back to Stepandsminda, that should be partially unpaved at the top. On the way stopped for breakfast at a roadside cafe and had a Chatschapuri, way too big for one person.

The road was unpaved right out of Pasanauri but easy to ride until I came across a strong water stream where the depth was uncertain.

I waited for a while until a truck came by and I could watch it jumping around in the stream and see that it was in fact quite deep, so I made the wise choice and turned around. On the way back, already on tarmac I met Otto, an Austrian guy on a KTM 990 Adventure who is also ridding solo, we talked for a while and agreed to meet again at Stepandsminda. I stopped a couple of times on the way to take pictures and enjoy the views spending a lot of time but Otto did not catch up, so I thought that he had stopped on the way for lunch or something else and I rode up to the church, awesome.

On the way down I saw Otto's bike at one hotel and we I lunch together and chatted the rest of the afternoon.

Next day was time to get as near to the Turkish border as possible to cross it the day after.

I heard that the Khulo pass was a really nice route so I went for it.

Met a Russian guy at the top on a Suzuki DR Big but the only thing we could exchange was the remaining amount of km of bad road ahead for each of us, 20 for me over 10 for him.

The pace on this stretch was very slow and the daylight was getting to the end, once I got to paved ground I increased the speed considerably to avoid ridding in the dark but after a couple of corners I began to loose the front and I realized that the front tire was loosing air very fast. I stopped, took the air compressor that I had with me and tried to inflate the tire but it was broken. I looked at the GPS for the nearest logging possibility and it was only around 5 km away, walked the bike for a while until I saw a parking lot with trucks, went in asked if they had a compressor but had no luck. So slowly I walked the bike further until I reached a hotel, kindly they let me park the bike inside for the night.

The following morning I took care of the tire.

Actually I should not have started with this front tire in the condition that it was but had already lost two days with the electric problem and decided to take the risk. It's true that the front tire was complete garbage from the moment I started but the tube was even worse, full of patches and falling apart, as a matter of fact I didn't puncture the tube, it simply disintegrated itself, very lucky that it didn't happen in the middle of Kasakhstan. It's amazing how careless some people are with the lives of others, unbelievable. Sometimes in this trip, I feel like I'm in a reality TV Show, looking around for the cameras pointing at me.