WWOOFing @ Corfu

I know the updates have been scarce so far, but I've got lots more time on my hands now. I've arrived at my first WWOOF farm, so obviously that means things have slowed waaay down. Things are going perfectly according to lack of plan.

The first month with Lydia and Suzie was great. It was a bit draining financially, but easily worth it. We got a whirlwind tour of Prague, saw Das Beinhaus (bone chapel) in Kutná Hora, drank wine from an underground fountain in Budapest, tip-toed through radioactive Chernobyl, got chased by wild dogs all through Kiev, broke bread in Sighişoara, Romania (the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler), grinded an endless rail through Bulgaria, got a Turkish bath in Istanbul, and took a boat tour up the Bosphorous. We set foot in the Hagia Sofia and were entranced by the call to prayer.

Needless to say, I'm not going to make it much further traveling like that. I'm not a rich tourist, or close to it. Lydia and Suzie flew back to LA from Istanbul, I continued on to Greece. The night train to Thessaloniki was much more comfortable than the Bulgarian version. I finished off my rail pass getting to Kalampaka, the town underneath the monasteries of Meteora. Really spectacular place. The monasteries are on top of huge cliff-like rock formations. Some of them are just cylinders, high-up islands of rock. I stayed the night and climbed to the top of one of them the next morning. That afternoon I took a bus to Igoumenitsu, where I got on a ferry to the island of Corfu.

Here I am. The WWOOF farm here is a kiwi farm/horse riding center. I've been working with the horses for the last week and a half. I can stay here as long as my visa will hold out (as much as 2 months), bed and food are free for the work I do. I'm working 6 hours a day. It's a diverse group of people here. There are 2 other volunteers, one from Hungary and one from Kyrgyzstan. There's a Brit here who runs the kiwi farm and a couple other Brits who I work with at the horse stables. There's a few other riding instructors, Hungarian and Brazilian. The owner of the whole estate is a nice old Greek lady who really likes animals. This place is a zoo.

We eat dinner together each night, so I'm getting some good Greek home cooking. The island is a really nice place to be. They actually filmed a Bond film here at this very estate (For Your Eyes Only). The other day we drove out to a cliff-side beach that I enjoyed a lot. We swam out around the cliffs and found a flooded cave, swam through it and found another beach. It felt like some dreams I've had.

I spend most mornings shoveling out horse s--t, so it's not all wine and roses. But it's not a bad arrangement at all. I'm looking toward what I'm going to do next, but that's still very much up in the air.