Day 12

The early morning swim was very good - desserted beach and warm water at 6am.

Continued east across northern Greece, stopping every hour to refill the oil in the Baja. Finding fuel proved difficult as Greece is closed on a Sunday.

Baja developed a further couple of problems, a slightly loose front ball joint and a strange noise from the passenger side rear wheel. Ball joint was fixed by tightening, but the noise meant removal of the rear hub and drum to investigate. Problem turned out to be the hand brake linkage having detached from the brake shoe and rattling around inside the drum. Caused some damage to the shoe retainer which fortunately is almost identical to our van, and we had a spare (or four). Baja now has hand brake operating on one rear wheel.

Now sitting in the queue to cross into Turkey, which was about 3/4 mile long when we joined it. 2 hours on and we are through the Greek side but not yet into Turkey. Must be the start of some kind of holiday as the queue seems to be entirely Turks driving German, French, Dutch, Swiss registered cars.

As I write, we have crossed the river marking the border and now have to clear Turkish immigration.

3 hours in the queue and we're about 15 cars from the front. To make it worse, we have just realised we crossed a time zone entering Greece, so have lost another hour.

3 hours 45 mins and we're in Turkey! An easy crossing by African standards, but this country wants to be part of the EU.

Now, find a campsite and a VW specialist for some Beetle parts/service tomorrow morning.