Friday, April 26, 2002 16:52
Weather: Partly cloudy, stormy in the upper mountains.
Location: Internet cafe in Kardamyli.

Oh my aching feet. Spent a lot of time hiking today, up the mountain above Kardamyli and down the Tagetos Gorge. More details when I've caught up to that point from yesterday.

Ok, I had no trouble catching the 13:10 bus yesterday, capitalizing on my previous experience with chaos of the Kalamata bus station. I'd taken a bit of a risk earlier by chaining my locked clothes pack to a discreet (and sturdy) fence just down the hill from the bus station, to avoid lugging it all over town for the morning, but it was fine there so I feel a bit smug.

On the bus to Kardamyli I met an entertaining Greek-Australian woman named Maria, who's moved back to her childhood village of Hora, up above Kardamyli. She'd been in Kalamata visiting a relative and attending the court case of a group of British air show enthusiasts who were arrested after allegedly taking pictures in restricted areas and keeping an unseemly amount of notes about aircraft types, serial numbers, etc. Seems nobody in Greece has heard of air show enthusiasts, and the military were entertaining dark thoughts about them being in collusion with the dastardly Turks. Meanwhile, she said, the British authorities had disclaimed any knowledge of the group's organization or objectives. Such are local politics...

Anyway, Maria and I had a good long conversation on the way to Kardamyli, and she invited me to stop up in her village on my hike. Her directions were pretty hazy, so I wasn't sure I would be able to find it, but I promised to try.

In Kardamyli I got a very nice room in a dhomatia with a balcony overlooking the sea and a private bathroom, for a reasonable 5 euros. I spent a relaxing afternoon, had a fairly dull dinner, and went to bed early.

This morning I got up, packed up the picnic supplies I bought yesterday, and set off up the mountain. I left on schedule at 9 am, stopping only to mail a couple of postcards, but ran into difficulties rather quickly: there are signposts right in Kardamyli pointing out the start of the paths up the mountains, but they also point towards roads that turn back into town or go up towards isolated houses, and nowhere else. In short, I got lost, and had a tough trek up cutting through farmers' olive orchards, getting myself stuck on needle-tipped thorns, etc. No matter. After some time I came up to the village of Saint Sylvia, found a couple of workmen, and got rough directions (of which I understood about 5%) up to Hora.

From there, I immediately made a wrong turn, heading up between the walls of unused fields until it became clear that I should have been on the road below to my right. I scrambled down, followed the road up for a short distance, and on faith took a turnoff to a durt road that headed off to the left. This wound its way around the hillside, providing spectacular views of the Taygetos Gorge, carved deep into the mountainside on my left. After a while, I could see that the dirt road was going to go down to the Monastery of the Savior, an abandoned monastery that was the goal for the hike. However, I still hadn't found Hora, so when a path branched off to the right and started climbing steeply upwards I took it. I followed marks blazed on the rocks up the hill face, until I came out to a village, perched on the edge of the gorge. And what do you know? I'd found it.

The village was larger than I expected, very picturesque with old stone houses on all sides. I walked straight up, looking for a hotel under construction that Maria had said was opposite her house. It turned out that the hotel wasn't very large -- only about 20 rooms in a three-story building -- so I couldn't see it from far, but it didn't matter, as Maria was coming out of her house as I came over the last rise, and greeted me.

She invited me in, and fed me tea, and told me all about the problems the Greeks have with the Turks, the court case, her life in the village, her husband from an arranged marriage who'd refused to move up to the village (so she'd left him), and so on. She gave me some tea leaves to take with me, and cut a pink rose from her garden. Finally, she walked me down the road leading to the gorge, pointing out her recently-acquired properly (steeply banking off to the left of the road) where she planned on building a small chapel and two or three workrooms for her looms. She bemoaned the pavement the village was putting in, and especially the electrical wires, that she predicted would soon spoil her view. She also wished the river in the gorge was still running, though conceded that it was serving a useful purpose, having been diverted into pipes for the local villages' running water.

I finally said goodbye, amid invitations to come back (or send friends or family), and headed off down hill towards the gorge. When I got down to the riverbed, I found that the road stopped suddenly and there was no path leading down. A path did lead up to the village on the hill opposite, but I wanted to get to the monastery, so I started making my own way down the river bed. Other than a couple of places where there had clearly been big waterfalls, and I had to divert into the overgrowth, I had no serious trouble making my way over the boulders and rocks, which were mostly quite stable, but it took a lot of attention to avoid slips and sprains.

Eventually, after passing through some precipitous canyons, I found the monastery at about 2:30. It was set not far up from the river bed, still being maintained, and (according to Maria) opened once a year for a service. It had a little church, and a couple of small residence buildings, all locked up, but it made a nice place to stop for a drink of water, some bread and chocolate, and a banana. After a while, I set off again, but once again the only alternatives to the river bed led up the hillsides towards villages. I wanted to see the gorge, so I continued down the river. From here it got a bit easier, and there were occasionally marked paths around difficult bits. It still took a good two hours further hiking to make it back down to Kardamyli.

I hope the pictures I took today come out: the terrain here is incredible. It feels mythic, if that makes any sense, as though created by supernatural force. There are caves, steep cliffs, and beautiful trees everywhere, though the cypresses are currently beginning to show the signs of a disease that's causing some of them to wither, distressingly.

Tomorrow, I'm off on an early early bus to Kalamata, so that I can catch an 11:30 train up to Argos and Nafplion. I'm starving--I'll eat well tonight--and my feet ache, so I'm going to try and get to bed early again. Andio!
posted by Tom at 12:24 PM | link |