Worst Drive Ever: Surviving the Mparos pass

A crumbly road at the height of the Mparos Pass. This was the best the road looked for two hours of driving.

The sky was blackening over the Acheloos Valley in central Greece, and I was barreling straight into it. My car bounced over rickety metal bridges across chasms whose bottoms were hidden in shadow. A lone goat herder corralled her flock from the roadside as I passed. Where was she leading them? We were miles from the closest village.

               Switchback after switchback I climbed. No guardrails to prevent falling hundreds of feet from the foot wide shoulder of the road. I slowed to try and photograph the Kamili Waterfall tucked deep in a ravine, fat droplets peppering my windshield. Too dark. No dice.

               All around me giant pines swayed like a concert crowd in the wind. The rain turned to pebbles of ice. I parked to wait out the hail, weighing my options. 3.5 hours to Meteora if I went back. Three if I went ahead. Fucked either way. I put the car back in drive and climbed deeper into the mountains.

               Water gushed down the green hills making rapids in the gutter to my right. The road, strewn with yesterday’s rockslides and today’s cow pies, forced me to dodge back and forth – a game of pinball where to the reward was to continue living. I went higher.

               Every hundred yards the road had collapsed down the mountain – great bites out of the asphalt threatened to tip me to certain death with one small slip in concentration as I continued to weave through the rocks and poo piles.