4Runner Roadtrip – Sardinia to Turkey

After almost 6 months living on Sardinia we were ready to head out on our big Caucuses adventure. Shani had successfully navigated the Italian citizenship system and had a freshly minted Italian passport and ID card. None of which would have been possible without the help of our new friends Nicola and our landlady Piera. Nicola runs the language school Pintadera in Alghero where Shani took Italian lessons for a few months. We couldn’t thank them enough for all the help they gave us while we lived there. It’s quite difficult navigating bureaucracy when you don’t speak the language!

Pintadera is located in the old part of Alghero.

Prior to heading off on our adventure, we needed to kit the vehicle out for long term travel. This involved sourcing things like a refrigerator and battery power supply, storage boxes for the roof basket, a water purification system and of course some sort of sleep pads and related kit.  So, here’s what we settled on (we don’t get anything from these companies). We went with the Dometic CFX3 45 refrigerator powered by an EcoFlow River MAX battery that we can daisy chain to the 4Runner DC output while we are driving to keep the batteries topped up. On a full charge the EcoFlow can power the fridge for about 3 days before it needs a re-charge. Both of them have apps for our phone so we can monitor them.  Pretty cool!

Sebastian helping unbox the fridge.

Because we have way too much stuff, we need a storage solution for the roof basket. After a lot of deliberation we ended up with 3 Front Runner Wolf Pack Pro storage boxes. These are ideal for keeping all the kitchen equipment and bedding and other things we aren’t using all the time out of the way. The boxes are waterproof and hard plastic and so far seem pretty good.  Our running setup has 2 of these on the roof rack along with one of the paddleboards. (Which we decided to bring kind of last minute, may live to regret that decision!)

Figuring out what to do with all of our stuff!

With all of the various bits sorted out the time had come to bid Arrivederci! to Sardinia and start the push east.  It was about a 2 hour drive to the port of Olbia where we had an overnight ferry to the Italian mainland. As I was unable to get my booster shot to extend my Green Pass, I had the joy of a PCR test the day before departure.  We arrived in Olbia a few hours before departure and had dinner and a glass of wine parked up next to the water at a lovely little spot. Once parked on the ferry we found our cabin and called it a night.

Leaving our little Sardinian village.

Getting on the boat had been an easy and smooth process, getting off…not so much.  The boat was supposed to dock at 6:30 am which meant we set our alarm for 5. By 6 we were out of our cabin and waiting and waiting and waiting. And not waiting with any social distancing; everyone was crowded together practically rubbing shoulders.  By 7:30 we were able to get to the 4Runner and finally off the boat.

We landed in Civitavecchia which is a bit north of Rome.  It seems like a very nice sea side town and under different circumstances we might have opted to stay a bit.  It’s here that I should mention that time was running out on our import permit for the 4Runner in the EU. We had 6 months and were down to 6 days, so lingering was not really an option.

Sebastian tucked in with all our gear.

It was a rather uneventful drive across Italy. We did get some honks and thumbs up and some strange stares at our California license plates! That part has been really great actually. The drivers in Italy are pretty aggressive, it’s like they all think they are race car drivers.  This includes people driving decrepit old Fiats, tiny Smart cars and of course all of the Audi and BMW a-holes.  But, I do have to say the mainland was better than the driving on Sardinia!

We arrived in Bari with a new mission.  Greece required a PCR test no more than 24 hours before travel and I was 72 hours.  We searched frantically for a pharmacy to get a test but there was a double whammy hitting us.  It was a public holiday and most shops are closed in the afternoons in Italy. Shani had been calling trying to find a place as we drove but it was closed-o-clock and we needed to be at the ferry at 5:30. So we drove from closed pharmacy to closed pharmacy as the clock was running out. Just as we were ready to throw in the towel, Shani got a break and a pharmacy gave her the name and location of where we could get a test.  We were pretty close but it was 5 pm already and there was a large crowd out side. I figured there was no way in hell we would get this sorted out in time.  And yet I was wrong. Shani is tenacious and ran over and found out that the testing was available and I could get in right away and they would process it in 10 minutes. The crowd was waiting on their results that had started processing at 4:30 when the pharmacy re-opened.  And so my brain got another good tickle from the PCR test.

We raced to the port and got there at about 5:40, so not too bad! There was no line and when checking in of course Shani was only asked if we were vaccinated.  My PCR test and quest was all in vain. But hey, we got to drive around Bari for a couple of stressful hours, so we’ve got that going for us?

Arriverderci Italy!

The overnight ferry to Igoumenitsa arrived at 5:30am which meant we were getting up at 4:30 only we didn’t know there was a time change and we got the wake up alarm at 3:30. Pretty rough start for our day of driving. It was dark out when we rolled off the boat and so we found a parking lot to chill in until the sun came up. The drive from the port through the mountains was stunning. So many tunnels! Still loads of snow on the mountains, we drove past villages that seemed to be barely clinging to the steep hillsides.  It was gorgeous.   

We arrived in Alexandroupoli without incident and checked into our hotel, the Hotel Park. We had a nice little room with a balcony and a surprise sea view! For dinner that night we had a walk down to town and got some take away donner and kebabs from a joint called Chicken Stop. The next day we had a visit with an awesome veterinarian for Sebastian’s checkup and shots before we went into Turkey. I can not recommend her enough, probably our favorite vet so far!

And then we were ready to cross into Turkey.  I was a little anxious as you never know how these things will go. I had read some mixed reviews and didn’t want to spend all day getting across the border. As it turned out, things went swimmingly and we exited Greece in about 10 minutes. There was some holdup with a van getting into Turkey but that went easy as well and we crossed in about 45 minutes.  

And so now here we are, at long last, starting our road trip in the Caucuses. Stay tuned as we travel around Turkey, head into Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan over the next several months.