Google ‘driving in Greece‘ and the search results are alarming for holidaymakers in waiting.

Road rage is in the DNA of Greek drivers, says the Internet. No one in Greece has passed their test – they all bribed the examiner, we’re warned.

And red lights? They’re not really red, more ‘dark green‘ for the Greek road user.

And as for driving on the islands, it’s practically anarchy – apparently – with few road signs and perilously narrow and twisty cliffside routes featuring heartstopping drops to the sea – with no safety barriers.

It’s enough to put anyone off hiring a car in Greece.

But I’m here to tell you – don’t be.

In July, I spent a week driving around two Greek islands – Kefalonia and Ithaca – and not only did I survive, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Even when the roads lived up to their perilously narrow and twisty billing.

Said roads on these two islands are among some of the most spectacular in the world and well worth the occasional heartstopping moment.

I travelled to Kefalonia on a Jet2holidays package with my partner and young daughter, diverting across to neighbouring Ithaca via a car ferry for a few days before returning to Kefalonia for a final night and the flight home.

We made our forays around the thoroughfares on these Ionian gems in a Thrifty hire car booked through Jet2 that we picked up at the airport, the keys handed over at the desk by a wonderfully cheerful lady.

And it was a scam-free process, incidentally.

Car-hire firms are notorious for pushing their insurance policies. I had my own insurance though, and braced for a hard sell on buying Thrifty’s – but it never came. My disclosure about already being covered was met with an exclamation of ‘oh, perfect!’

Our car was a Toyota Aygo, which had a piddly sewing-machine engine. And I quickly discovered that it offered no pull at all in second gear up any sort of incline.

And on Kefalonia – there are a lot of inclines.

It’s an extremely mountainous island, dominated by the imperious Mount Ainos to the south of the island, which has a summit 1,628m (5,341ft) above sea level.

We were staying on the west coast at the Electra Kefalonia Hotel & Spa, with vehicular incursions that included journeying over to the town of Sami on the east coast and to the pretty village of Assos on the north-west coast.

How would I sum up the drives? Breathtaking. And full of surprises.

The roads on Kefalonia can go at the drop of a hat from being dual-carriageway-wide to so narrow you have to squeeze past oncoming traffic at walking pace.

And inclines of 20 to 25 per cent on Kefalonia can rear up with no warning whatsoever.

The Greeks seem to view road signage as a luxury optional extra, along with road markings.

There was one irregular four-way junction near our hotel that had no road markings at all – and negotiating it involved saying a little prayer each time.

The first time we drove to Sami we took a detour along a scenic back road that appeared on the map as a seemingly random squiggle.

The views were amazing. For the passengers. My eyes were glued to the road, which was… challenging. Full of switchbacks and manic ups and downs.

At one point, we met a car coming the other way on a very steep single-track section.

The driver of the other car surely had seen me coming when he was some distance away and could easily have pulled over on a reasonably wide section of road.

But no, this was Greece, where the sensible option is often swapped for the silly one.

The driver came barrelling down the road until we met on a single-track section so steep that when he came to a halt inches from my bonnet and I yanked the handbrake on – we still rolled backwards.

Once I’d halted our descent, and with my daughter belting out songs from Matilda the Musical in the back, I took stock.

At first, the driver in front of me indicated that I should reverse… before changing his mind and realising he could inch past on the verge.

Praise be. But that still left me with a brutal hill start.

We eventually hit the main road to Sami, which was glorious – wide and enjoyably sinuous (with plenty of crash barriers on the steep bits).

What’s more, for much of the time we had the road to ourselves, slowing only occasionally for wandering goats.

The drive to Assos was similarly eye-catching, with a dramatic descent from the lofty mountainside main road to the coastal village involving multiple hairpin turns.

All good practice for neighbouring Ithaca, where even the main roads feel like the back of beyond.

My family and I, and the Aygos, arrived on the island via an Ionion Pelagos ferry from Sami, a sailing that lasted just 30 minutes or so.

Then the fun began.

Ithaca is a rugged little number and our explorations involved inching the Aygo through impossibly dinky villages, around full-lock hairpin turns and along cinematic hillside roads from our base of operations – the boutique-y Perantzada Hotel 1811 in the main town, Vathy.

With superyachts anchored in the bays and cicadas in full song landside, we ventured to the impossibly cute coastal villages of Frikes and Kioni and to stunning Filiatro beach, reached from Vathy along a road festooned with mirrors to allow drivers to see what’s coming around the corners.

Want a sneak preview of what’s in store via Google Street View? Not an option. The Google car has yet to board the ferry to Ithaca.

At first, I’d cursed the Aygo and its lack of torque, and came close to taking it back to Mrs Cheerful at Thrifty for an upgrade, but after a few days of sneaking into crowded beach car parks and past oncoming traffic on those slender, serpentined village roads, I had a change of heart. The bigger the better? When it comes to cars on a Greek island, definitely not.

And what about that famous Greek road rage?

I didn’t witness any, but did see lots of impatient drivers.

For instance, I was beeped from behind by a car that couldn’t get past me on one occasion – because I was driving slowly in the middle of the road through a small village, simply being mindful of groups of pedestrians walking along both roadsides.

Oh, and Greek drivers tend to approach in the middle of the road and course correct at the last second. Which is slightly unnerving.

But drive carefully, keep your eyes on the road and not the views to the side, and your ego in check – and you’ll be just fine.

In fact, it’s likely you’ll have the drive of your life.

A charity worker who survived a 950 million volt lightning strike opposite the White House that killed three others has spoken out about her horrific injuries – and grueling road to recovery.  

Amber Escudero-Kontostathis, 28, was in Washington DC for her birthday when six bolts of lightning hammered the spot she was standing on in the space of half a second, giving out an electrical output of roughly 950 million volts.

The freak weather event on August 4 fried her nerves, melted her watch to her wrist, and stopped her heart – and her recovery has also been marred with chronic pain and survivor’s guilt.  

The strike killed Brooks Lambertson, 29, a Vice President at City National Bank, and James and Donna Mueller, 76 and 75, who were visiting the capital for their 56th wedding anniversary. 

The group hid under a tree during a summer storm, which was subsequently hit by a bolt and flash of lightning that was caught on camera. 

Amber survived, but suffered appalling injuries which left her using a walker. She was forced to take three hour showers to soothe her wounds – but would still scream with pain throughout.  

Speaking about her recovery, Amber told the Washington Post: ‘Everyone’s been optimistic. But I just want to know if any of my nerves are, like, dead-dead. Like not coming back. Is there any way to test that?’ 

When she watched a clip of the first responders giving her CPR at the scene, she said: ‘They were putting so much force on me. They were practically jumping on my chest.’

Without watching the videos, she said she has no recollection of what happened. 

When they started resuscitating her, Amber recovered just long enough to squeeze one nurse’s hand and lock eyes with an agent – but her heart stopped again for 13 minutes.  

And talking about her painstaking recovery, she added: ‘Whatever I’m experiencing that day, however much pain I’m in, I try to hold on to the fact that I’m the lucky one.

‘The one who gets to feel anything at all.

‘I didn’t survive because of a miracle. I survived because good people, complete strangers, ran toward danger in the middle of a storm to save me.’

Amber said that her injuries were so intense, and her pain was so great, that in the first few weeks after the event she would spend hours just simply screaming.

But after a while, she would follow each scream with a whisper: ‘But I’m grateful.’  

Nearly a year after the event, Amber revealed she still has no feeling from the lower part of her back to her upper thigh and she can’t sense where her legs are going.

She said: ‘It’s like I’m floating on a box on my tailbone. I feel pressure pushing up on the box, but nothing else.’ 

Five months into her recovery, she told her doctors that she was experiencing bewildering sensations thanks to the way that the intense lightening strike had affected her nervous system.

She told them she felt a ‘grinding pain, like sand grains’ that were trying to squeeze through the pores of her skin. 

Amber experienced consistent hot and cold feelings – with the sensations of burning and freezing striking at random times of the day. She felt piercing needles in her toenails, bruising bone aches, and a twisting in her right foot.

She said it felt as if a mechanical gear was spinning inside her ankle – the direct point where the initial split-second lightening strike entered her body. 

Her iPad, which had been sitting near her stomach during the strike, exploded – causing severe burns on that area of her body. 

In the early days, she would have to sit in the shower for three hours every day to scrub the wounds to avoid infection. 

And on her chest, the lightning left intricate red marks which have been likened to the roots of a tree, marking the intricate system of veins and arteries in her body. 

She said she was waiting for her husband to pick her up so they could celebrate her birthday as she canvassed near at Lafayette Square for non-profit Threshold Giving. 

Last year, the charity worker said she thought her shoes may have been the decisive factor in her survival as they were platform sandals with large rubber soles made by Doc Martens. 

Still, the flash of lightning traveled through the ground and shocked her body, resulting in her being rushed to hospital in critical condition as she struggled to breathe and suffered from severe burns. 

The tragic first words spoken by children who survived 40 days in the Colombian jungle have been revealed by their rescuers.

After wandering alone for more than a month, the Huitoto Indigenous children – ages 13, nine, five, and one – were rescued and airlifted out of the Amazon on Friday, and were recovering two days later in a military hospital in the capital Bogota.

In a televised interview on Sunday, members of the rescue group – themselves members of the Indigenous population – recounted the first moments after meeting the children.

They described how the eldest child ran towards them holding a baby when she saw them coming.

‘I’m hungry’ and ‘my mom is dead,’ the rescuers say they were told.

‘The eldest daughter, Lesly, with the little one in her arms, ran towards me. Lesly said, “I’m hungry,”‘ Nicolas Ordonez Gomes, one of the search and rescue crew, told public broadcast channel RTVC.

‘One of the two boys was lying down. He got up and said to me, “My mom is dead.”‘

‘We immediately followed up with positive words, saying that we were friends, that we were sent by the family, the father, the uncle. That we were family,’ Ordonez Gomes added.

In a video released Sunday which showed the children soon after they were found, the kids seemed to be emaciated from their time spent in the wilderness.

Their rescuers are seen singing, smoking tobacco – a plant considered sacred among many jungle residents – and celebrating.

The four children had been lost in the jungle since May 1, when the Cessna 206 in which they were traveling crashed.

The pilot had reported engine problems only minutes after taking off from a deep Amazon area known as Araracuara on the 217-mile journey to the town of San Jose del Guaviare.

The bodies of the pilot, the children’s mother and another adult were all found at the crash site, where the plane sat almost vertical in the trees.

But when the wreckage of the plane was found after weeks of hunting not only were the children not found dead alongside the adults, there was part-eaten fruit that suggested they had all survived.

That sparked a huge hunt across miles of dense and remote Amazon rainforest, culminating in their rescue of Friday, June 9. 

The children’s father, speaking to the press on Sunday outside the hospital, said that his wife had been severely injured in the May 1 crash, but that she did not die until four days later, her children beside her.

‘The one thing that (13-year-old Lesly) has cleared up for me is that, in fact, her mother was alive for four days,’ Manuel Miller Ranoque told reporters.

‘Before she died, their mom told them something like, “You guys get out of here. You guys are going to see the kind of man your dad is, and he’s going to show you the same kind of great love that I have shown you.”‘

Magdalena Mucutuy, the children’s mother, was an Indigenous leader.

It was in part down to the local knowledge of the children and Indigenous adults involved in the search alongside Colombian troops that the youths were ultimately found alive despite the threats of jaguars and snakes, and relentless downpours which may have prevented them from hearing possible calls from search parties.

‘The survival of the children is a sign of the knowledge and relationship with the natural environment that is taught starting in the mother’s womb,’ according to the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Colombia.

The children ate seeds, fruits, roots and plants that they identified as edible from their upbringing in the Amazon region, Luis Acosta of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia, told AFP news agency.

Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez, who visited them in the hospital with President Gustavo Petro, said they were recovering but could not yet eat solid food.

Lesly Jacombaire Mucutuy, Soleiny Jacombaire Mucutuy, nine, Tien Noriel Ronoque Mucutuy, four, and one-year-old Cristin Neriman Ranoque Mucutuy remain in a military hospital in Bogota after their astonishing ordeal. 

The youngest two children, now five and one, spent their birthdays in the jungle, as Lesly, the oldest at just 13, guided them through the ordeal.

‘It is thanks to her, her courage and her leadership, that the three others were able to survive, with her care, her knowledge of the jungle,’ Velasquez said.

General Pedro Sanchez, who led the search operation, credited Indigenous people involved in the rescue effort with finding the children.

‘We found the children: miracle, miracle, miracle,’ he told reporters.

Army chief Helder Giraldo said rescuers had covered more than 1,650 miles to locate the children.

‘Something that seemed impossible was achieved,’ Giraldo said on Twitter.

In addition to the jaguars, snakes and other predators, the area is also home to armed drug smuggling groups.

Petro touted the success as a ‘meeting of Indigenous and military knowledge’ that had demonstrated a ‘different path towards a new Colombia’.

On Sunday, the father of two victims and stepfather to the others, expressed frustration with hospital authorities as they prevented him from seeing two while they recovered.

He came out from the hospital again in the afternoon and was highly emotional when he told DailyMail.com: ‘I was so excited the moment I saw my children.’

He went on to say to reporters: ‘You have got to understand I can’t speak about the situation inside the hospital because it’s very sensitive… but I can say they are doing way better.’

And he put their survival down to their upbringing, saying: ‘ ‘The kids are possessed by nature.’

But he revealed his anger at authorities who he says are not allowing him to see the two older children.

‘This is not a game,’ he said. ‘They are fine. I cannot talk to the [two older] children, I cannot tell you anything about them until the father, the creator [apparently referring to God] allows me to…

‘You will never understand our world. We are indigenous people. We cannot lose time getting an education, we have shown our skills, what we are capable of, we found the airplane, we found the kids, what else do you want?

‘Now may God continue to protect them.’

In an emotional state, he continued: ‘I have only been able to see my two little kids, because the Government will not allow me to see my other two daughters. I don’t know why I can’t see them.

‘They [the authorities] haven’t completely understood that I am coming from 40 days in the jungle, they think I’m coming from a bar or from the streets.’

He went on: ‘I want to thank the military hospital, the kids are in good hands and I think after a month I will have my kids with me, that is my dream.

‘They [the authorities] don’t understand I am their father. The government has taken this as a joke to step over me.

‘I am the father. I went to look for them, I searched for them and now that I brought them back, now I cannot see them. How is that possible? And the other search teams, the other people, can see them.

‘They are allowed to see them, to take pictures with them. And us, my colleagues that have come from suffering, they haven’t been given any medical attention. I fought 40 days on my knees in the jungle.

‘I have only seen the two older children in photos. And that worries me.

‘I call upon the nation to please respect that I am the dad. They [the older children] have got to talk to me first. How come they are talking to people who when I was in the jungle didn’t even send a glass of water while I was dying of hunger and thirst in the jungle?

‘I never had any support and now the kids are here there are people trying to make money out of this.’

DailyMail.com asked about the future of his children and he replied: ‘The children have to have a decent place to live, access to education and many big things are coming for my children.’

The father’s anger comes amid sources indicating to DailyMail.com the Colombian authorities want to have influence over the future upbringing of at least the two older children. 

Ranoque, who fled his area after being threatened by FARC guerrillas, said the two older children were being brainwashed by the group into believing that he was abusing them.

But he said Sunday: ‘I am not their biological father, but they were trying to tell them I was abusing them. Lesly shut their mouths, saying I am their father.’

Their grandmother, whose voice was played from aircraft above the jungle during the search to reassure the youngsters they were being looked for, told reporters: ‘I never lost hope, I was always supporting the search. I feel very happy, I thank President Petro and my “countrymen” who went through so many difficulties.’

After the siblings were found alive army radios could be heard saying: ‘Miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle’ – the army code for a child found alive and repeated four times to reflect all four children.

Officials are crediting Lesly for her efforts to help save her siblings, and family members said a survival game they played helped prepare them for the ordeal. 

Lesly, the eldest, ‘knew what fruits she can’t eat because there are many poisonous fruits in the forest. And she knew how to take care of a baby,’ aunt Damarys Mucutuy told the Caracol news network.

‘She gave them flour and cassava bread, any fruit in the bush, they know what they must consume,’ Ms Valencia said.

‘They were raised by their grandmother,’ said John Moreno, a leader of the Guanano group in Vaupes, in the southeastern part of Colombia where the children were raised. ‘They used what they learned in the community, relied on their ancestral knowledge in order to survive.’

Between May 15 and 16, soldiers found the bodies of the three adults and the debris of the plane, which was wedged vertically in the thick vegetation, its nose destroyed.

But the children remained missing.

Some 200 soldiers and indigenous people with knowledge of the terrain have been combing a dense jungle area of some 320 sq km (124 sq mi) – about double the size of Washington, DC.

The air force had dumped 10,000 flyers into the forest with instructions in Spanish and the children’s indigenous Huitoto language, telling them to stay put.

The leaflets also included survival tips, and the military has dropped food parcels and bottled water for the children.

Powerful searchlights were shone into the area ‘so that the minors can approach us’, search team member Colonel Fausto Avellaneda told the Noticias Caracol TV show.

Huitoto children learn hunting, fishing and gathering, and the kids’ grandfather, Fidencio Valencia, had said the children are well acquainted with the jungle.

At one point the search team believed it had come to within 100m (300ft) of them, but storms, thick vegetation and marshy terrain prevented them from reaching them.

Members of the indigenous community held traditional ceremonies ‘speaking to the jungle’ and asking it to give up the children.

But the jungle began giving up tantalizing clues that hopes were not lost for the youngsters. In photographs released by the military, scissors, shoes, and hair ties could be seen among branches on the jungle floor.

A baby’s drinking bottle and half-eaten pieces of fruit had been spotted before the shelter’s discovery.

Then nearly two weeks ago, a footprint was found on the muddy jungle floor. Army officials believed it to belong to 13-year-old Lesly.

Leaders from the Huitoto indigenous group expressed hope that the children’s knowledge of fruits and jungle survival skills should give them better odds of being found alive.

Boxes of food were dropped to the jungle floor to help sustain the children. And yesterday the efforts paid off when one of the rescue dogs who had been on their scent led soldiers to the group, the President confirmed. 

They had been following footprints left on the muddy floor.

‘The jungle saved them,’ Petro said. ‘They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.’