Areopoli to Gerolimenas: blood feuds and getting close to the edge of the known world.

Posted on June 24, 2012 by BarryH

Saturday and moving on yet again  I had been inspired to make this trip by reading the book ‘Mani’ by Patrick Leigh Fermor.  Amazingly I met an Italian couple in the restaurant which I singled out as the best place to eat in Areopoli who had read the same book and been similarly inspired.   PLF walked across the Taygetos from Sparti to Kardamili and then gradually made his way south which is kind of what I have been doing.

My aim has been to do the whole trip by public transport and to explore entirely on foot.  So I sussed out that the bus to Gerolimenas, a small fishing village with hotels to the south of Areopoli, and the last reliable place to find accommodation on a bus route, left at 11.30 ‘peripou’ – approximately.  If the Greeks say ‘approximately’, it really is!  If they say ‘definitely’ it means ‘approximately’.

Not wanting the ‘approximately’ to mean the bus left before 11.30 I checked out of the hotel and arrived at the bus station by 11.00 knowing that the ‘stathmos’ had not only a ticket office but a café at which frappes could be had.

It turned out that Saturday is market day in Areopoli and the car bus station doubles as car park and market.  It was great.  Just like a market day back home. Not!!  Local farmers came in with their crops of fresh local produce: oranges, melons, courgettes, aubergines, potatoes, beetroot, garlic, onions, honey and stuff I didn’t even recognise.  Pickup trucks were loaded down with great bundles of herbs such as oregano and sacks of ripe black olives.  I wandered around salivating and wondering if EasyJet hand baggage allowance would stretch to a sack of olives.

Market day in Areopoli

In the event the bus turned up about 11.50 and I was on my way with 3 locals who were laden down with plastic carrier bags full of fruit, veg and honey.

Gerolimenas is one of the most laid back places I have stayed in.  The hotel I had sussed out on the internet is at the corner of the harbour and the beach.  It is also a fish restaurant and does draught Amstell at €2.50.  The tables along the edge of the harbour are 4 paces from the door …. but I do have to walk down the stairs as well.  The room I was allocated had the ducting from the restaurant overhead and I complained about the constant noise so they moved me to a ‘triklino’, a 3 person room, on the corner with a balcony on two sides extending to about 10 metres.

The bay at Gerolimenas from my balcony

I settled in and then went for a walk.  If I complained about the aggressive vegetation around Areopoli, forget it!  The vegetation round Gerolimenas is totally impenetrable thorn-scrub which I wouldn’t tackle even encased head-to-toe in thornproof clothing.  And fields with rocks in?  More like scraps of soil between almost blanket cover of rocks.

I have mentioned tower houses before but it was clear from the bus that moving south from Areopoli was moving from an area which had good representation of tower house to an area dominated by high-rise.  They are defensive towers to which families retreated in times of feud to bombard each other’s towers with firearms including canons.  Men of the families were fair game but the women were allowed to come and go ferrying provisions and ordnance to keep the battles raging in some cases for decades.  Truce was declared at harvest time but once crops were all gathered in the feud resumed.

Now the villages around Gerolimenas are still dominated by tower houses, many, though not all, are being restored and new-build is in the tower-house vernacular though of broader dimension inline with modern space requirements..

I ambled up to one such village called Ochia and found it apparently completely deserted.  About 90% of houses were towers with a significant number still semi ruined and unoccupied. No shop.  No taverna.  No public provision except a children’s playground completely desolate and overgrown, doubtless paid for by EU funding.  Two very small churches next to each other with a connecting tunnel through the thick stone walls.  One thing about the tower house architecture is that they are totally enclosed.  The whole concept is to seal people inside.  Windows are very small and usually built up on the outside with stone walls with a gap at the top to fire a rifle.  Doorways in the older ones are often less than a metre high.  There is no provision whatever for any kind of social interaction.  As a town planner I learned long ago that the physical form of a place can strongly influence how people behave socially.

An isolated tower house on the ridge overlooking Gerolimenas bearing the initials KKE, the Greek Communist Part

The main street in Ochia

Tower in the main street, preserved but unoccupied

The village play area

Entrance to the village church

It is amazing that there is any sense of community or trust here at all.  Yet under the leadership of a couple of the clan chiefs including in particular Petrobey  Mavromihalis of Areopoli the Greeks fought for and won their independence from the Ottomans with the revolution of 1821.

At the edge of the village was what looked from a distance to be a cluster of small seaside chalets but was in fact the village cemetery.  The only signs of life I saw the whole time I was there were a couple of people tending the mausoleums.

The Ochia village cemetary with the Byzantine Church in scaffolding undergoing renovation

This is historically bandit country and, as if to underline the fact, as I was going out for my evening meal about 21.30 there was the sound of automatic weapon fire from the hills above.  I’m heading up there on Sunday. Let’s hope they are all in church.

View at night from my balcony of the cliffs on the north side of the bay

…. and of the harbourside

 

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Areopoli: footpaths, anthropiverous spiders, and irritability

Posted on June 23, 2012 by BarryH

Thursday’s exertions had taken a lot out of me so I opted for a gentle amble along footpaths heading to a beach and swimming.  Because I wasn’t focused on the need to get from A to B and back within a tight timeframe I could pay a bit more photographic attention to the landscape I was passing through.

The landscape of the coastal plateau is dominated by rock and stone.  The whole is divided up into fields which seem to be of three types: olive groves and rocks; hay and rocks; scrub and rocks, all divided up by stone walls.  In some ways it’s reminiscent of West Cornwall but with added sunshine.  And olive trees.

The fields are full of rocks

Olive groves with hay under-storey hiding the rocks

The paths are often contained between substantial stone walls and are stone paved, though that is getting lost in the vegetation.  I suppose that in a landscape which has so much stone lying about it is in the farmers’ interests to clear as much as possible off the fields and heap it up …. in stone walls.  It made a lot of sense when labour was plentiful and the objective was to maximise the growing potential of the bits between the big rocks.

Path between stone walls

Old stone bridge where the paved path crosses a narrow but deep gully

The other  dominant man-made structure in the Mani is the defensive tower and modern building reflects that vernacular.  It is often difficult to know if the towers are entirely new or renovations.

This Mani Tower was being used as a chicken coup

Getting closer to the beach I again disturbed a couple of eagles.  Fortunately, as I was now on a track rather than a scree slope at angle of rest, I was able to get a couple of passable photos.  They wouldn’t entertain impress an ornithological society but I was quite pleased to capture something for the record.

Taking off from the trees close by this eagle turned before I could get a shot of it full profile

Thermalling upwards

Then a couple of hours of the ‘swim-dry off-get hot–swim’ cycle.  I’m still a self-taught splasher when it comes to swimming but I don’t tire as easily now and enjoy it enormously.  I can only swim on my back and, given that the main temperature sensors in the body are in the back of the neck, getting into the sea after a hot walk is amazingly refreshing.  Cold water on the back of the neck when you are overheating sends shivers of pleasure through the whole body.  Wonderful!

But I can only take so much of the cycle and so come 14.30 and I was ready to move on.  The walk back to Areopoli is only an hour at a comfortable pace along a good track so I decided to continue on a footpath from where the track hit the road.  Another path was shown paralleling the coast at about 200 metres ASL before dropping down to some caves marked on the map.

Remember that footpath which traumatised me on Wednesday?  This was one almost as bad.  It started off OK, a bit overgrown with tall grasses, wild cereals and small prickly stuff, just as the path I had followed in the morning had been.  But after about 15 minutes it had become gradually so bad that I resorted to walking, or rather teetering’ along the top of the stone wall much to the surprise and then the terror of cows grazing in the field on the other side of the path.  They ran off like the herd of pigs in the Biblical story, though thankfully not off the edge of the cliff.  I teetered along the wall for about a mile.

Teetering along the top of the wall, here broad enough to get the camera out but soon to be blocked by trees

Bemusemnet before the terror took over

Then trees started overhanging the wall and I had to climb through them as they also completely blocked the so-called ‘path’.  One olive tree had obviously drawn its last sap and was lying straight across path and wall.  Then a stretch where the farmer had let his cows onto the path and they had flattened the vegetation quite nicely.  Only problem was that to keep them from wandering off the farmer had constructed barricades out of old pallets, dead branches, rocks, feta tins, iron bedsteads …. anything which came to hand really.  It reminded me of scenes in paintings of Revolutionary Paris, but without the corpses and the bare-breasted warrior maidens.

As you can guess I was not only very hot and very tired  but also starting to hallucinate by this time.  Anything to take my brain away from this nightmare.  Did I mention the spiders?  On both this and Wednesdays path they had stretched webs across the ‘path’ in their thousands.  I’m sure I wiped out the habitat of half the spiders in the Mani.  The webs were made out of high tensile steel and coated in a very effective adhesive which stuck to anything which touched it, particularly if it was hairy, like my head and arms and legs.  Extricating this stuff, usually carrying a mass of dead fly husks, was a constant chore.  My face was the worst because of the beard and …. enough is enough, you don’t want to know more.

I don’t think that any of the spiders were  anthropiverous (introducing  a new word to the world: from Greek ‘anthropos’ (man) and Latin ‘vorare ‘ (to devour)), but in size they were certainly getting that way.

Look what this one caught!

The ordeal goes on.  But I won’t.  Hiding myself inside my head from the reality of what I was going through I came to a conclusion: irritability is a luxury.  We get irritable when we are tired and things are not to our liking but there comes a point where the tiredness reaches a threshold and it becomes matter of survival.  You just do what has to be done to get out of the situation and don’t waste mental energy on useless emotion.

Another thing I also concluded was that either the map needs to be revised or the paths need to be cleared around Areopoli.

I survived to be grumpy another day.

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Areopoli: longest day, longest walk, highest mountain …. shortest me

Posted on June 22, 2012 by BarryH

Thursday dawned bright and sunny.  Well, it probably did but as ever I was not around to see it.  Still, the statistical probability was pretty high given that the weather has now settled down to a truly Mediterranean ‘climate’ of cloudless blue sky and warm sunshine.  In fact the sun was potentially at its warmest today it being the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere with the sun closest to being vertical overhead.

After grovelling along the worst path of my life on Wednesday I set myself a tough challenge for Thursday to climb the other local Profitis Ilias,  Προόφιτηης Ίλιας Πύργου Δίρου the Profitis Ilias of Pyrgos Dhirou, the next village/town south of Areopoli.

Enquiries about buses to Pyrgos Dhirou indicated the earliest I would get there by that means was about 12.00 which would have meant sitting on my thumb for the morning.  So I chose the alternative which was to walk the whole way.  I seriously didn’t know if I was up to it.  I estimated crudely that it would take me 2 hours to get to the start of the path up the mountain which at 1079 metres was the highest I had tackled so far.  And it would be from sea level straight up in the heat of the day when all except mad dogs and Welshmen are sipping frappés and playing Tavli (backgammon) in the shade.   And I had to get back to Areopoli afterwards!!!

En route to the mountain I passed a pink church

With a stone above the door saying it was built in 1868, is this a 19th century graffito?

This, however, is a very modern graffito

It was hard going but not as bad as I feared.  In large part that was because I managed the route-finding OK to the mountain and the path to the top was reasonably obvious most of the way.  It was, as is always the case on such mountains, an ‘accelerating’ path, it got a lot steeper the higher it went.  But I got to the top from the hotel in 3 hours 15.

My aim was to get there by High Noon, the point in the year when the sun is highest in the sky.  Because of Summer Time correction that is 13.00.  I reached the compound of the Profitis Ilias chapel at 12.59.  I kid you not.  I steadfastly refused to look at my watchon the way up but simply kept the pace which I (hoped I) could manage from the bottom to the top.

The point of the exercise?  To take a photo of my shadow on the shortest day at the highest point.  The shortest me until the same day next year.

But then disaster.  Don’t you always kick yourself for missing the bleeding obvious!!  Sybil Fawlty has a degree in it according to Basil.  I over-elaborated and thought it would be a good idea to put my watch on the ground to record the time.  My legs were pretty tired after the climb and I found it difficult to maintain the penguin pose with my feet splayed apart and I kept toppling over.  I had thought to do it on the wall around the compound with the vertical drop back the way I had come but I’m very glad I resisted that one.

However the real idiocy of the ‘smart’ idea only struck me when I got back to the hotel and loaded the photos onto the computer.  They were completely unpublishable for reasons I just hadn’t anticipated.  The one below is the worst photographically but the only one publishable before the watershed.

The shortest me, 2012

I lolled around on top for over half an hour.  Having spent all that energy getting to the top of the world (locally at least) it seemed a shame to give it up, especially so in the knowledge that it was a long way back down …. and going down loose paths is always more risky than going up.  Going up is tiring because of overcoming the effects of gravity but going down is equally tiring because of the greater need for control.

The views from the top were more impressive than from the Profitis Ilias above Areopoli and I spent a long time soaking it all in and trying to capture it on camera.

Looking straight down the mountain to Pyrgos Dirou

Looking north to at least two other Profitis Ilias mountains, the one above Areopoli just to the right of the cross and the highest in the Taygetos in the far background

Looking west, the beach I was heading for next is bottom right

… and looking south to Cape Tenaro, the southernmost part of the Greek mainland

Eventually I gave in and headed back down to enjoy a frappé in Pyrgos Dhirou en route to the beach and a really good cooling off swim in the sea.  I said it last year and it’s true this, I’ll miss the swimming probably as much as walking in the mountains in the sunshine.

The whole trip took 8 hours including frappé-time and swimming.  Covered about 27 kms, height gain was about 1330 metres.  Easier day called for on Friday.  Then probably heading even deeper into Mani on Saturday.

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Areopoli: from above the clouds to below ground and time warping

Posted on June 21, 2012 by BarryH

Tuesday, my first full day in Areopoli, was really something.  So was Wednesday!!

The Plan-for-the-Day was to walk to the Pyrgos Dhirou caves, one of the major tourist attractions not only of Mani but of Greece outside of Athens.  I put together a walk from the ‘hiking trails’ on the map, confirmed with the very helpful hotel staff that I could circumvent the cliff which seemed from the map and viewed from the top of Profitis Ilias to get in the way, and off I went, confident that after yesterday I could tackle anything.

Within half an hour the air was turning blue with expletives. To put it bluntly, the path marked on the map as the route to where I wanted to reach turned out to be the worst I have ever walked in my entire life  (and that’s a lot of paths!).  After 100 metres or so of averagely overgrown path, it was blocked by dense very aggressive vegetation, collapsing stone walls, and slumping earth banks.  In my optimism I pushed on.  I teetered along the top of stone walls, I climbed over into terraced fields,  I climbed back over 2-metre high overhanging stone walls, I pushed through the most aggressively spiny vegetation you can imagine,  I clambered down into a deep gully and then had to down-climb a 4 metre-high waterfall into its plungepool and then climb out of that and immediately down-climb another drop.  In short, I would never walk that path again unless I was wearing high-ankle leather boots, thorn-proof trousers, thorn–proof coat, thorn-proof gantlets hardhat  and carrying secateurs, loppers and a chain saw.

By the time I staggered torn and bleeding onto the road leading to the beach for which I was heading I was frenetic.  My brain was going 100 mph. I checked my watch convinced it must be at least 15.00 and was amazed to find that it was only 13.00.  My perception of time had been warped by the fact that I had had to choose every single step carefully while at the same time checking the route ahead and that the entire path had been so vividly attention-grabbingly ‘immediate’.

A guy I used to know from white water canoeing summed up his enjoyment of the sport as “you can’t be anywhere else at the time”.  It’s true.  No matter what the stresses of your job or personal life with white water canoeing you have to be switched on every second to where you are, what was coming up, and judge precisely every paddle stroke.  Or you are wrecked and maybe dead.  So it was on this s…ing path today!!  I actually thought “if I get this wrong nobody will ever find me”.  As I climbed the 2 metre overhanging stone wall I even thought of Aron Rawlston’s book/film ‘127 hours’.  At least I had my Swiss Army knife and antiseptic wipes.

But I had got through it.  I headed straight for the beach and a long swim, partly to cool off, partly to chill out, partly to get my cuts and lacerations into salt water.

During the eternity of that path I had given up any prospect of going into the caves because of the wrongly perceived time lapse and because I just wasn’t in a calm enough frame of mind to take them in.  An hour in the sea and on the beach, and wrapped around a banana and sesame seed bar (I sometimes do sesame seed bars instead of nutbars …. I don’t want to be predictable) I realised that it was still only 14.15 so I checked out the system for viewing the caves.

The system is set up for those arriving by car or bus so weird individuals like me who walk over the cliffs have to walk 150 metres up the access road to the ticket sales kiosk … and then walk back down.  The very attractive young lady at the kiosk looked at me as if I was something from outer space.  If I hadn’t come by car or coach, where was my flying saucer?  I proffered a €50 note for the €10 entrance fee just to show that I was solvent and therefore not a candidate for immediate deportation and my brief flush of self-assertion was washed away by the humiliation of being asked if I had a €2 as the entrance fee for old farts was only €7 and it was easier to give two €20 notes and €5 in change.

Then my second experience of the day of time-warping.  The first part of the trip around the cave consists of 1.5 kilometres in a boat.  I was told to sit down and having done so for 30 seconds was then ushered to what turned out be basically a blue punt.  There were only 3 of us in the boat plus the boatman and he gently steered us through the most amazing series of passageways and caverns covered in multi-coloured stalactites.  I have done a reasonable amount of caving and been in a couple of commercial cave systems in Yugoslavia (as it was then), the Peak District and the Mendips so I’m not new to  underground ’pretties’ but this was fascinating.  Around tight bends, duck your head to avoid getting it speared in low passages, into broad caverns.  I have read that the trip is a waste of time and money.  Don’t believe it!  If you are in the area, go for it.

A sign at the entrance said that video cameras were not allowed but there was no problem with my SLR.  I had set it at ISO 3200 to take account of the low lighting provided by the strategically placed spotlights and I just popped away for the whole trip.  I knew I could delete the shots which didn’t work.  To be honest, most of them didn’t but some did.  Though the punt moved very slowly it still meant that few shots were from a sufficiently stable position for the low shutter speeds which the camera needed even at ISO 3200. (technocrap over!)

The last 500 metres or so was on foot and so I could set my own pace and the success rate with the camera was higher.

Showing the problem of photography in low light from a moving boat in narrow, low-roofed passages

Many of the formations are reflected in the flat calm water

What cavers call ‘straws’, thousands of long narrow stalactites

Multiple colours as the water dissolves minerals as it passes through the rock

Sometimes fluted shapes

High in the wall of a chamber at least 100 feet to the visible ceiling

Much of the red colour is added by the nature of the lighting used

I eventually emerged blinking into the light and the heat of the outside world.  Assuming it must now be getting on for 1½ or 2 hours since I went down the steps into the cave I thought I had better head back to Areopoli, via a different path obviously.  But in fact I  had been in the cave barely 45 minutes.  It was so interesting, with so much to see at every turn that time had again been warped.

I had plenty of time for yet another swim and laze in the sun before heading back.  And the footpath back to Areopoli was a piece of cake.  A welcome pleasure after the first  path. And I found a taverna on the opposite side of the square from the hotel which sold draft Amstel … and it was only €2.50.  Very refreshing and relaxing end to a (seemingly) very long day.

Yet more time warping.  It seems that I have been travelling around Greece for months.  It’s difficult to remember Meteora, Metsovo, Parga, Paxos, Corfu and Patras.  They are distant memories difficult to summon up, another world. Yet I flew to Athens at the beginning of May and have only been here 6 weeks.  Once again it’s time warping.  Because there has been so much which has been new and interesting time in retrospect time has been considerably elongated.

I started to think about an exit strategy from the Mani because I realised that I was not going to be able to include the second part of the original plan which was to travel from Geithio to Crete and possibly into the Cyclades.   An exit strategy proved elusive. The first one I tried, flying back from Kalamata didn’t work out because flights were apparently fully booked until the end of July.   For a number of reasons I have therefore now booked a flight back to the UK from Athens on Friday 29 June …. just over a week.  Ho hum!

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Areopoli: above the clouds and with the eagles

Posted on June 20, 2012 by BarryH

Tuesday, my first full day in Areopoli, was really something.  There are many footpaths shown on the map of the area and on the Big Map in the main square outside the hotel.  I decided to go for a big hit, climbing Areopoli’s Profitis Ilias.  Many mountains in Greece are called Profitis Ilias (the Prophet Elijah) and nearly always have a small chapel on top, often a monastery, but in either case there is usually a footpath.  The local map and hiking guide information indicated that this was the case here.

It did have a footpath but not one for the fainthearted.  It is a very steep and in many places rocky climb.  A road has been bulldozed up the back of the mountain to the chapel on top and I reckon that since then the footpath as been neglected.  It shows indications in places that it was once a well laid paved path but is now difficult to follow and a number of sections close to the top have been overrun by loose scree.

It was while negotiating one such scree that I disturbed  pair of eagles nesting or perching on the crags around.  Very good view of them before they soared away, screeching their annoyance at having their solitude disturbed.  Despite the close-up there was no possibility of getting the camera out of the rucksack, it was difficult enough keeping myself in place without separating myself into bits which might easily disappear over the edge.

The view from the top was very much worth the climb.  On the West side a thin band of cloud was spreading up the coast from the south  creating a very strange ‘edge of world’ impression.  The mountain seemed so massively high with the near-vertical drop to the low level plateau the whole thing looked unreal.  In the opposite direction the whole East coast of the Mani peninsula was in sight all the way up to Giethio.  To the north, Itilo and the higher peaks of the Taygetos, to the south the end of the peninsula.

I didn’t want to leave but after dragging out my banana and nutbar and taking photos as much as I could …. and lying on the wall in the sun at the edge of the chapel compound … I decided that I had better get back down to earth.  I mooched around the tiny and very old village of Sotiras on the way down.

There had been a very pleasant breeze on top but back in Areopoli it seemed stifling hot.  As it was still only 15.00 I decided to go for a swim.  Problem with Areopoli is that it is about 250 metres ASL and so a long walk down to the sea.

I didn’t realise quite how far until on the way back I thought that I was on the wrong path because the big ‘zag’ which I was expecting was a very long time coming up. It was partly that this bit of walk had been preceded by the climb up Profitis Ilias but I felt it was more than that.  Perhaps I wasn’t as fit as I thought. Perhaps  the heat was getting to me.  Perhaps the new-build going on all over the hillside sloping down to the sea had destroyed the path.  Perhaps … Then it dawned on me that it was the map.  Not that it was wrong but that the map of this part of the world is at 1:50,000.  It has all the same symbols and footpath markings as the map of Kardamili  which I had been tramping all over for 2 weeks at 1:25,000.  No wonder I seemed to be  covering the ‘ground’ at half the speed.

Not a hugely long walk, only about 18 kms.  Not a huge height gain, the peak is 815 metres.  But it was very steep and very sustained …… and very enjoyable.

All the world spread out before you …. well, Areopoli and Sotiras anyway

Itilo and the Taygetos to the north

Limeni and the beach where I was to go for my swim

The main square of Areopoli, the hotel I’m staying in is on the left

The church, the bell tower and the wall I dozed on at the top of the mountain

One of the better bits of the path close to the top

The church in Sotiras, the village I passed through on the way up and down the mountain

The body of the church was date-stamped

…. and so was the bell tower, added over a century later

Detail on the side of the bell tower

And so down to the coast for a swim

The tiny village of Limeni with Mavromihali’s Tower …. and boutique hotel

Photographer on the edge of modern art

At the end f the day, Mavromihali’s statue and Profitis Ilias mountain towering behind

 

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Kardamili to Areopoli: getting in deeper

Posted on June 19, 2012 by BarryH

Monday was the day for moving on …. for me at any rate.  I just hope that Greece and the rest of Europe followed my example.

I had sussed out a potential hotel in Areopoli on the internet, e-mailed about availability and they had, without being asked, e-mailed back with bus times and connexions.  I had originally planned to catch a bus from Kardamili at 08.00.  Perfectly do-able but a little early to be able to take on board a caffeine fix and spot of breakfast.   I should explain that though this transfer was entirely on the West coast of the Mani Peninsula it involved two buses.  There is a bus from Kalamata to Itilo via Kardamili and another from Athens via Geithio on the East coast which completed the journey to Areopoli.  They met up once a day in Itilo for the final leg of my journey.

The information from the Areopoli hotel suggested catching a bus at 14.15 from Kardamili so I went along with that.  It gave me plenty of time to faff about in the morning and have a leisurely, and very enjoyable, breakfast in the coffee shop as I had eaten all the provisions in the fridge.

As I have mentioned a number of times in the last few days, I have been reading a book on perception of time which I have found very interesting and insightful.  But, practically speaking, I couldn’t help becoming a bit concerned, even up-tight, when the bus still hadn’t turned up in Kardamili 10 minutes after it was due.  I couldn’t forget the number of incidences at home when the bus just hadn’t turned up at all.  Nor could I  forget the unceremonious dumping of passengers in obscure lay-bys at the edge of town which I had already experienced this trip. The fact that I had waited hours on harboursides for ferries to turn up without turning a hair meant nothing.  I had a connexion to make!  Didn’t they realise that!!!

I started to work out alternative scenarios.  Finding a place to stay the night in Itilo.  Forking out money on a taxi yet again. I took to pacing the pavement instead of sitting placidly and patiently in the taverna in the square by the bus stop.   I even wondered if I was in the right place and had to keep reminding myself that the road through the centre of Kardamili is the only road south.  The bus couldn’t possibly have gone any other way.  Thank goodness for the Viros Gorge, it pushed the road right to the edge of the sea.  Why my brain couldn’t accept this I don’t know.  I guess it shows how irrational we are all capable of being, imaging the worst rather than hoping for the best and expecting an actuality somewhere in between the two.

Eventually, 20 minutes late, the bus turned up. A great welter of people who had been loafing around the square all queued up to get on board.  I was clearly the novice at this.  By the time it left Kardamili virtually every seat on the bus was occupied.  Most got off at Stoupa, a holiday place and the first major stop on the route.  Most of the rest got off in Agios Nikolaos, a very pleasant fishing village where the bus had to breath in to get along the harbourside.  From there the bus ground its way very,  I mean VERY, laboriously up into the mountains. It stopped at tiny villages ever higher and higher, seemingly with one person getting off or on each time.

The landscape became increasingly rugged and rock-strewn, the mountain peaks of the Taygetos towering above us.  It was clear that this was a different world.  We were now in ‘Meso Mani, the ‘Deep’ Mani rather than ‘Exo Mani’, ‘Outer’ Mani.

The views were breathtaking but progress was very, I mean VERY, slow.

I gave up hope of making the connexion to Areopoli and started homing in more closely on contingency plans.  Then all of a sudden, rounding a bend the bus pulled into a dirt lay-by with a curtained tour bus parked and, underneath a large shade tree, a rusty old pickup truck laden with fruit and veg and two itinerant vendors stretched out having a siesta on the long roof rack.  The driver switched the engine off and shouted up to me ‘Itilo’.

For quite a time now I had been the only passenger left on board.  It seemed that we were on the outskirts of Itilo and this was the bus ‘terminus’. No KTEL buildings or tavernas or signs any kind.  The driver started unloading boxes from underneath the bus and carrying them around to the other side of the tour bus …. which turned out to be the scheduled bus to Areopoli.  It was waiting for the bus from Kalamata with its parcels and any stray tourists who might have strayed this far south.  I was the only person on that bus as well.

At 16.30 the bus stopped at what was, in comparison to Itilo, a proper bus terminus at the edge of town. It had a ‘stathmos’ sign, a café and another bus parked up.  Tumbleweed blew across the parking lot.  Though that might have been in my imagination.

I trundled my Big Bag to the centre of town, about 400 metres away, and found the hotel I had sussed out occupied one side of the man square. Everywhere seemed hushed and closed, the broken wheel on my Big Bag echoing embarrassingly as I trundled it over the paving.  The hotel was a haven of cool and the reception staff couldn’t have been more helpful.  There is no WiFi in the room but there is an Ethernet connection, cable supplied.

When I emerged back into the sunlight after sorting myself out in the hotel the town was starting to come to life after the siesta. Checking the map and the 8 foot high copies of it in the square outside the hotel, it was clear that there is a lot of good walking here including two mountains called Profitis Ilias to climb and lots of ‘must see’ places to visit.

I can’t close today’s blog post without reference to the fact that in front of the hotel is the famous statue of Black Michael himself.  More about him tomorrow.

So now in almost as deep as I can get into the Mani.  But not quite.

Petrobey Mavromichalis, Black Michael to his mates.

 

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Kardamili: back from the edge, time to move on!

Posted on June 18, 2012 by BarryH

One of the (many) things which irritate me is people referring to the ‘eye of the storm’ as where the most violent winds are.  It’s not.  The ‘eye’ of the hurricane is  flat calm. Not that I have ever been in one, but I learned that in the meteorology course in college.

That was the impression Sunday morning.  After the arguing and shouting of the political debate which had been raging for days and seemed to reach a crescendo on Saturday morning and the roaring in support of the football team in the evening ….. there was a quiet, a hush.  Had the storm passed or was this the ‘eye’ with more to follow?  Even the church bell only rang for a minute or so to announce the beginning of service.

There was no clamour outside the polling station.  A few at a time were making their way to the hall being used for the purpose, many of them elderly people and dressed up for the occasion.  Obviously election day in small-town Greece is a world removed from Athens.  No TV cameras or pundits asking exit questions.  More a family affair.

For my last day in Kardamili before I move on to Areopoli tomorrow  I put together a route on paths I had walked before but in a different combinations.  I had 3 objectives in mind: to revisit the tiny church with the bats; to have another frappé in the tiny taverna in Proastia; and to go to the less accessible and very quiet Kalamitsi beach for a good long swim.

The walk to the church was on a path I had only taken in the opposite direction and was as if I hadn’t walked it all.  At a couple of points I missed the turn-off and had to backtrack.

Staggering views back down to the coast

The locked gate of the semi-derelict house which has that view.

This brought to mind the stone houses on Nisyros

But the roof construction is very different, just slabs leaning in on each other .

The reason for going was to check that the bats hadn’t been freaked out by being photographed yesterday.  They are remarkably sensitive to changes in light and temperature so even opening the door and going inside could have spooked them.  I peeped over the door without going in and saw they were still there and in the same numbers.

Having eased my conscience I headed down to Proastia and made straight for the taverna.  It was closed.  I didn’t know whether  that was because it was Sunday, or siesta time, or what.  When a couple of old guys came, expecting to find it open, it became clear.  The owners had gone to vote.  I started talking to one of the guys in a mixture of Greek and English and, as I have found is often the case with elderly people over here, he asked if I was German.  When I explained no, I was Welsh, he seemed relieved and intrigued.  He was clearly  dredging his memory and then he put me in my place by saying  “Ουαλλία!  Είναι πόλυ μικρή” (Wales! It’s very small).  I couldn’t disagree.  He pulled a silver coin out of his pocket to show me, an old Italian lira coin, and then became very passionate about what the Italians had done to Athens in WW2.  Obviously something he felt very strongly about even after all these years and felt he could unburden himself to a lone, itinerant Welshman.

View along the alley from the taverna to Byzantine bell tower

The top part of the tower

Detail of one of the carvings, the symbol of the Orthodox church, an eagle looking East and West

Looking back towards Proastia as the path climbs away uphill

As I headed off to continue down to the beach I could hear him explaining to another of his mates who had arrived that I was Welsh and explaining where Wales was … and presumably how small it is.  I hadn’t felt it appropriate, or even faintly possible given my limited Greek, to explain to him that yes, Wales is small, but we still beat the English and won the Grand Slam yet again this year (that’s in rugby for those who don’t know).

Good swim.  Laze in the sun.  Back to Kardamili for a frappé.  Meal. Live music at a seafront taverna. Then started to pack ready to move on.  Decided to go out for an ouzo at the end of the evening.  Portugal were playing Holland on the huge TV screens in all the tavernas except one.  The coffee shop opposite the hotel, with the biggest screen and the most chairs, was showing the reports on the election results.  That was where the locals were gathered.  The shouting and arguing was now all over.  But the results mattered.  Very much.  That was where I had my ouzo.

It seems that the likelihood is a coalition between the New Democracy Party and PASOK the socialist party centred around finding  a way of staying within the EuroZone.   I find that comforting.  The way ahead will not be an easy one but the alternative, the New Drachma, would be more traumatic for Greece and for Europe.  Destabilising the currency is not a good way ahead for a country so dependent on tourism, that is clearer in a place like Kardamili than it is in Athens.

Time to move on.

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Kardamili: bats, belfries, frescoes, gorges …. and on the edge!

Posted on June 17, 2012 by BarryH

Very sober thinking as I set out for my walk on Saturday.  For a start there was a raging argument going on in the coffee shop across the road when I got up, and they weren’t debating England’s 3-2 victory over Sweden the night before.   It was still continuing when I went there for my caffeine fix.  Political passions run high in Greece and rarely more so than now.

Mesh covering on the windows designed to keep bugs out, also keeps them in. This guy seems to have come in to shelter from the political storm

I had planned to blast the Viros Gorge (metaphorically not actually) by walking back up to Tseria at 600 metres and then get as high up the gorge as I could on footpaths and walk back down the bed of the gorge, circumnavigating waterfalls as necessary.  But for some reason it didn’t gel in my mind. Couldn’t put my finger on it but it just seemed wrong.

So instead I put together a route on paths I had already walked but in different combinations.  I must say that both at the doing and with hindsight, it worked for me.  Very interesting, satisfying … and sobering!

I walked 20 minutes along the road and then up the very good kalderimi to Proastia once again.  There is something very appealing about the village.  There is the Byzantine Agios Nikolaos church in the centre with its 12th Century core, today with no parked cars getting in the way of composing photographs.  There is the tiny back-alley taverna with good frappé and iced water at €1.20.  Very laid-back, chilled place.  There seems to be no concession to tourists, it’s a ‘locals’ village.  I stick out like a sore thumb but that’s only to be expected given my rucksack, camera and walking clothes (M&S shorts, bright red Decathlon sleeveless T).

The Byzantine Agios Nikolaos church

Bell towers have external access – you don’t need to go inside the church – and many have old frescoes

Looking straight up the tower …. devoid of bell

The seriousness of the day, another indication that Greece is on the edge, was evident when I sat down for my frappé.  Two elderly guys, clearly lifelong friends from the village were having their customary morning ‘elliniko’ (Greek coffee) and were arguing furiously about the election tomorrow and the merits or otherwise of the political parties.  It seems that a general and powerful apprehension about the future is heightening the emotion of a traditionally volatile people.

My onward path crossed a stone bridge over the Noupadi Gorge, narrower but just as deep as the Viros Gorge, and then hugged the southern rim of the gorge before zigzagging down to a convenient crossing point and climbing up the other side.  Significant delays on this section of path while I crept around aggressive vegetation with the camera poised, determined to get a reasonable photo of one of the large dragonfly-like creatures which flit around neurotically and move whenever you get close.  In the end I gave up but hope someone can identify what I was looking at from what I did manage to photograph.

Sometimes they fold their wings completely

Sometimes they stay ready for flight

I stopped to have my banana and nutbar, and a very good swig of water, sitting on the doorstep of one of the many tiny ‘family’ chapels set along the paths and in the olive groves.  It was the first decent bit of shade I had found for a while and very welcome. I stuck my head inside as I often do and found within the miniscule interior were not only extant frescoes in reasonably good condition but also a small group of bats.  One advantage of a fairly high resolution SLR camera fitted with a good zoom lens is that you don’t need to get up-close and frighten timid wildlife.  So I took a couple of shots and left.   A bit of a highlight this.

Bats and fresco

Zooming in

Having crossed the Noupadi Gorge and navigated the olive groves on the shoulder of the mountain I reached the ‘large’ village of Exochori and had a very good and very welcome fresh orange juice in the ‘Taverna With a View’ (‘με θέα’, rather than ‘με θεά’ which would be a taverna with a goddess) before the last leg of the trip down into the Viros Gorge.

Main church in Exohori

Another of the small family churches

One of many ‘investment opportunities’ advertised for sale ….. but not just at the moment

I must be honest, part of my choice of route today was to re-visit the rock-pinnacle-top tiny chapel of Agios Giorgos.  At least, that’s who I think it is dedicated to given the number of pictures of himself slaying a dragon (I might have written that before … apologies!).  It really appeals to me because of the sense of exposure at the top.  Vertically straight down bare rock!!  It’s the only place I’ve managed to get to in the Taigetos where the rock has been razor sharp. Very reminiscent of parts of Symi though a lot smaller in extent.  The height difference between the top of the pinnacle and the bed of the Viros Gorge alongside the Lakaki monastery, almost straight down, is 285 metres.  I know, I checked my altimeter.  In fact I got part way down and then climbed back up to the chapel because I had forgotten to check the altitude: 370metres ASL at the top.

I repeated a photo I had taken last year on Amorgos to demonstrate the exposure of the place: a foot on the edge of the abyss looking straight down.  In fact I did it looking in both directions, up and down the gorge.

The rock pinnacle

On the edge looking downstream

On the edge looking upstream

….. and just to show the sharpness of the rock

That was when the somewhat clumsy allegory hit me.  Greece is today on the edge.

In or out of the Euro? Experts vary in their opinion as to what should happen, nevermind what will happen.  Too many pontificate with hindsight: “Greece should never have gone into the Eurozone in the first place”; “The country should have exited gracefully in 2010” when the present crisis hit.  The issue is: what should the country do now! It’s not like a computer where you can hit ‘back’ or ‘delete’ and pretend the mistake never happened.

In a sense it’s unrealistic to expect the country to vote effectively on Sunday.  The issues are far too complex even for the great financial minds of Europe never mind the ‘atoma’ (person) in the ‘odos’ (street).  How a vote is cast simplifies down as it always does, to political preference and to one issue for each person but in a sense I guess it boils down to: “How can I best preserve my way of life?”  The answer is that the only ones who could really do anything about it are pulling the strings to protect their way of life …. and stuff the rest.  By all accounts (pardon the pun) wealthy Greeks are already moving their money.

Greece is most certainly on the edge.  Some pundits reckon that if Greece leaves the Euro zone the austerity measures will be like a walk in the park for a number of years until the economy finds its equilibrium in the world.  But arguably so is Europe as a whole on the edge and possibly even the global economy.  Being brutally frank about this, it could well be that the only winners in the long run will be the emerging economic giants of China and India which doubtless are already protecting their interests in the face of confusion and possible meltdown in the EuroZone.

It all seems crazy given that the multinational corporations which are dominant in Greece, as elsewhere in the world, and are even sponsoring the European Cup (including CocaCola),  each have economies far bigger than that of Greece.  There are many individuals, some of whom are Greek,  whose personal fortune is far greater than Greece’s debt.  How can this be right?

Greece is on the edge most certainly.  But a positive factor.  Greece beat Russia 1-0 in the Euro cup.  A very good end to Saturday indeed.  It may inject optimism into the elections on Sunday.

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Kardamili: in and around the town .. and the Viros Gorge … and some villages

Posted on June 16, 2012 by BarryH

I set out on Friday with the intention of doing a moderate walk and focusing more on looking for photo opportunities.  I reckoned that my usual mentality when I’m doing a long walk is to focus on bombing along single-mindedly in order to make sure that I get to where I’m going and then finish in time for a good swim and a laze in the sun to dry off.  And a frappé on the beach.  By doing this I reckon I miss lots of interesting stuff.  So Friday was to be different. I was going to be more conscious of my surroundings.

In particular I wanted to try to take photos in Kardamili itself as I was conscious of the fact that the only photos I have taken in the town were of the old derelict olive processing plant.  I’ll be moving on on Monday so it was time to look a little more closely.

Thoroughly enjoyed it.  Didn’t cover a huge distance, a mere 16 kilometres but I was ready for my swim by 16.30. A good result.

By coincidence, the next section of the Claudia Hammond ‘Time Warped’ book which I read over my early evening beer was to do with developing the technique of …. looking around ourselves for new and interesting stuff.  By doing so we  enrich our memories and time spent appears longer and more worthwhile.  It’s something I tend to do as a photographer anyway but need clearly need do more of.

It is inevitably the case that a path which we haven’t walked before reveals things which are new and hopefully some of those things are interesting.  The challenge is to find something new on paths walked many times.  Initially all the paths I walked were ‘new’ but I have been on ‘new’ paths or sections of paths every day since I have been staying in Kardamili.  Friday was no exception. As a number of times before I walked up the bed of the gorge, stopping to take photos on the way, to a point where I had seen a sign to Aga Sofia and took that path.  Very good path it was, offering new perspectives on the gorge and in particular on Lakaki monastery.

Nothing really stunning emerged but it was very satisfying to spend time looking more carefully rather than flashing past.

Morning Glory (I think that’s what it’s called) seems to cover disused buildings and spaces

The colours in the walls of the gorge are sriking

… and so is the effect of the sun filtering through the trees

Many glimpses through the tress of Lakaki monastery as the path climbs higher

Zooming in

Climbing higher still there are views down to the bed of the gorge as it reaches Kardamili and the sea

Ruins of an old old tower house used as the framework for a brilliant rock garden in Proastia

colour

Underneath the olive trees

Hay cut back under the olive trees

Old building in the centre of Kardamili

The other half of the same building is somewhat more ornate

100 metres from the hotel is a swimming pool called the Aegean Sea

The evening light on Old Kardamili and Profitis Ilias

The sun finally sets on the day

 

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Kardamili: Viros Gorge, Likaki, Tseria – looking back to the see the future

Posted on June 15, 2012 by BarryH

I did another longish walk today, about 20 kms, once again up to the village of Tseria but via a different route.  Much, though not all, of the route was new to me but the over-riding impression of the day was to do with perception of time.  This was not only to do with the book I’m reading”  (‘Time Warped: unlocking the mysteries of time perception’ by Claudia Hammond)which has got me thinking but also a ‘chance’ conversation with a Manchester couple in the ‘Gorge Hotel’ taverna.

Snide aside here: there is a much higher probability of a conversation with someone from the North of England than anyone from the Saarfeast of England who generally regard anyone they haven’t been formally introduced to as not worth passing the time of day with.  Apart from which they often caint toke propa or have their mouths stuffed with bankers bonuses and so are difficult to understand.  Snide aside finished.  I generalise for effect, they aren’t all like that.

I set out up the bed of Viros Gorge again with the intention of going back to the Likaki monastery and then following the footpath from there up to the rim of the gorge.  I had failed to find it when I was coming down and was working on the principle that if you can’t find a path from one end, try it in the other direction.

The elegant cairn on the bed of the gorge which marks the point where the footpath to Likaki goes off

It worked a treat.  The path was clear, if a little overgrown in places by maqui.  Reaching the top I was surprised how close I had been to finding it originally.

But the overwhelming thought as I headed upwards was that this was an ancient pathway which must have been trodden for centuries. It linked the Likaki monastery with the village of Kalines on the rim of the gorge.  And the theme of Greece’s long history persisted through the rest of the day.

I wound my way up connecting paths to Pedino and then to Tseria where  I had a bottled juice in the local, very laid-back, kafeneion. My guess was that it hadn’t changed since before WW2.  As I walked back through the village towards the path leading down once again into the Viros Gorge I passed the village church which had a number of ‘picture stones’ set into it.  The present church structure and the stones dated back to 1826 though it would not be surprising if there had been an earlier church on the same spot.

High up on the bell tower

Just can’t fathom the symbolism of some of the carvings. An angel with a gremlin in the belly?

The symbolism of the carving over the main door is somewhat clearer

This one dates the current church structure

Greek dancing?

The path down to the bed of the gorge is brilliant.  Again it must be centuries old and is still an intact stone-built kalderimi zigzagging  down about 350 metres to the bed of the gorge.

The stone-paved path zigzags steeply down to the bed of teh gorge hundreds of feet below

I had to hang over the edge of the path to take this photo. Still no idea what the creature is. Some kind of dragonfly?

From there and a climb up to the taverna in the ‘Gorge Hotel’ in Kolibetseika on the rim of the gorge.  This was the third time I have walked to it and the view from the terrace is still breathtaking.  I fell into conversation with the only other customers there, a couple from Manchester.  We agreed that the view would difficult to beat, how pleasant it is to have the warmth and the sunshine, and agreed also that the sense of history which is everywhere in Greece is one of things which makes the country special.

Which brings me back to the main theme and the Claudia Hammond book.  She concludes the 5th chapter with the view that: “our concept of the future is tied up closely with our perception of the past”  and makes a convincing case in support of the thesis.  She also quotes Churchill as saying: “The longer you can look back, the further you can look forward”.

Hammond applies this concept at the personal level but I can’t help thinking that it also applies culturally as well.  Despite all its failings the ‘Old World’, Europe, has got ‘history’ in spades over the ‘New World’, the ex-colonies which are now part of ‘Western Culture’.  Without exception that I can think of the ‘New World’ countries have almost completely destroyed previous cultures.  And in Europe nowhere has more sense of history than Greece.  It’s everywhere: in the ancient monasteries; ancient settlements; old pathways; as well as the vast amount of extant remains going back beyond the Christian era.  And there is a cultural connectedness to that sense of history.  So if Hammond and Churchill are right, there should also be an ability to see further into the future.

I certainly hope so.  It will be needed.

The walk back down to Kardamili from the Faraggi (Gorge) Hotel was once again a pleasure and I had to discipline myself to not keep stopping to take photos.  The route I chose back down was the one which I had worked out would give views down to the Likaki monastery near the bed of the gorge.  It did.  And that closed the circle.

The church next to the Faraggia Hotel/taverna. The mountain Profitis Ilias in the background.

Zooming in on Profitis Ilias: the patches of snow are still there

Looking down to Likaki momastery

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