Checking my email first
thing there was a message from TomTom asking me to complete a brief
satisfaction survey on my recent experience of using their support service. I
did and they scored ‘Extremely dissatisfied’ in all categories. I explained why
in the feedback section at the end of the survey. I still hadn’t heard back
from them and wondered whether my feedback might generate a response.
We were on the road in
Smarty shortly after 09:00 heading south for a trip around the Mani, the
southernmost peninsula in Greece. The peninsula’s spine is a rugged mountain
chain dominated by Mount Sánglas. The mountains have played a significant part
in the peninsula’s history, they form a natural stronghold that has resisted
every occupying force over two millennia and the area is noted for its blood
feuds. According to our Rough Guide blood feuds developed across the Mani in
the 14th century. Vendettas were conducted under strict rules from
strongholds – often stone towers developed in the villages. The object was to
destroy towers and kill the male members of an opposing clan. As the favoured
method of attack was to destroy the tower roofs, the towers were often four or
five stories high. The start of a feud was signaled by the ringing of church
bells and from that point on the adversaries would take to their towers and
fire at each other. Battles could last for decades. Women were safe from attack
and would supply food and ammunition to the men. Feuds lasted until either one
side was annihilated, or through a ritual surrender in which the losers had to
file out and kiss the hands of enemy parents who had lost children. These feuds
have given the Mani a unique architectural style with square towers dotting the
landscape, or clustered into villages. The style has been mimicked by new angular,
stone faced buildings.
It wasn’t long after
leaving Stoupa that we were climbing into the mountains via lots of hairpin
bends spotting numerous old tower houses and their modern counterparts. The
road provided magnificent views down to the coast we had just left as well as
ahead to the south. In marked contrast to the verdant landscape we had driven
through on Saturday, we were now in very arid country. We descended to numerous
very attractive bays and coves, many of which had sailing boats riding at
anchor, before climbing back into the mountains. There seemed to be recent
developments in some of the bays with lots of shuttered holiday homes dotted
around the hillsides.
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| Lots of Bays Like This |
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| Lots of Fishing Boats |
We stopped to take our
first photographs of the day and Jane found her camera wasn’t working, there
was no image on the screen. I fiddled with it and found I could get an image in
video mode, but not for still photography. Nothing would rectify the problem
and I decided it would have to wait until we could consult the manual back at
Mabel.
Greece has some amazing churches, they come in all shapes and sizes. Here's some we passed today:
Reaching the largish town
of Areópoli we had the choice of driving clockwise, or anti-clockwise around
the peninsula. We chose anti to follow the west coast and 10km further south
we took a detour to visit the Pýrgos Dhiroú caves. There we joined a small
party waiting to enter the caves. Having been issued life jackets we walked
down a few steps into the caves where we were divided onto groups of six which
were each assigned a punt for a thirty minute 1,200m ride through well
illuminated water-filled caves. The caves are magnificent with hundreds of
thousands of stalactites and stalacmites reflected in the crystal clear water.
As our punt weaved its way through the cave system we had to keep a careful
lookout, often having to duck our heads under low hanging stalactites.
Sometimes it appeared the cave was a dead end but the punt would suddenly jink
left or right and dart through a narrow opening into another cave. Our
‘puntsman’ gave a commentary in Greek with the occasional ‘mind your heads’ as
we went.
We hadn’t been going long
when our punt stopped and the ‘puntsman’ said ‘miss, your glass’. He had
spotted Janes’s prescription sunnies go overboard. He and a man sitting in the
stern spent a time edging backwards and forwards looking for the glasses. He
spotted them but couldn’t pick them up with his paddle. He called up the
following punt and using two paddles managed to retrieve the glasses. The delay
to our, and everyone else’s, trip would have been about 10 minutes.
Still in the caves we
finally reached the end of the waterborne part of our trip, disembarked and
handed back our lifejackets. Jane gave our ‘puntsman’ €5 for retrieving her
glasses. He didn’t want to take it and Jane had to insist. We walked about 300m
through dry caves before emerging onto a Cliffside walkway that took us another
300m back to the cave entrance. We have visited a lot of caves during our
travels over the years, but we had never seen anything as spectacular, and
never had we taken such a long boat trip through a cave system.
We rejoined the main road
and continued southwards passing yet more stunning bays and coves as well as lots of tower houses, old and new. often
stopping for photographs. Here's some of them:
And these are modern buildings mimicking the style of a tower house:
It was lunchtime but tavernas were few and far
between on the quiet road. We took a road that dropped down to the secluded bay
of Pórto Káyio. There were numerous sailing boats anchored there, but the bay
was dominated by an enormous sleek two masted yacht. Dotted along an unmade
road over a short length of the bay were a number of tavernas, most of which
had tables and umbrellas along the water’s edge.
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| Porto Kayio |
We parked and checked out the
tavernas deciding to eat at the last one we came to, mainly because the female
owner was very persuasive. While waiting for our food we took in the view over
a Mythos and red wine. We noticed an inflatable tender that had been tied up
alongside the large yacht heading for a small jetty near our taverna with two
men on board. As it neared the jetty two small white dogs similar to that we
had seen stuffed into a backpack in Sicily popped their heads over the bows.
One of the men and the two dogs got onto the jetty, the dogs ran along its
length and, near the shore, jumped into the sea swimming and frolicking. The
man sat on the shore and watched while the other took the tender back to the
yacht. The tender and yacht were flying what I later found to be the Liberian
flag. Half an hour later the tender returned to collect the man and dogs. We
speculated they were both crew tasked with taking the dogs for their afternoon
dip.
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| View From Our Taverna Table |
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| Dogs Coming Ashore For Their Afternoon Dip |
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| Our Host Waving Goodbye From The Taverna |
Our meal of taramasalata
with bread, sardines and an enormous shared main of spaghetti with king prawns
was delicious. After lunch we took a brief walk around part of the bay. Then we
headed to the tip of the peninsula, as far south as we were going to get in
Greece (36° 24’ 08”N, 22° 29’ 10”E). We walked down to a small cove where a
number of small fishing boats were anchored and took a look at a ruined
building, possibly the remains of a tower house.
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| Cove At Southernmost Point In Greece |
The afternoon was flying
by and with me at the wheel doing the afternoon’s stint we retraced our
morning’s route northwards towards the village of Alika. Just before we got
there we came across a scrub fire, a lot of the hillside above the road was
burning. A small red fire truck was just setting up hoses although I‘m not sure
how they could have reached far on the very steep slope up which the fire was
spreading rapidly. Shortly afterwards we saw a small red water bowser climbing
laboriously up a hill towards the fire.
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| Roadside Fire Just Getting Going |
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| About 20 Minutes Later |
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| We've seen this a few times, goats with no sign of a goatherd but dogs that seem to be there to look after the goats - the two dogs in the foreground certainly let Smarty know who's boss around here. |
At Alika we turned east
so that we could follow the road up the east side of the peninsiula. As we
climbed the very quiet road we could see the fire had really taken hold and was
burning over a large area of the hillside. Surely, they were going to have to
call in a helicopter to deal with it? Stopping in a village to photograph a church
Jane and I had a bit of a falling out. She criticised my driving saying I had
stopped in a dangerous spot on a blind corner taking a schoolmistress approach,
as she can do from time to time, lecturing me on what I had done wrong. That was
enough for me, I decided to get out and walk. Jane drove alongside me pointing
out I couldn’t walk the 72km back to Stoupa. She was quite right of course, but
I wasn’t in the mood for logic and continued walking. After a while Jane had
had enough and drove off. The road I was walking was high in the hills and
after a while I saw Smarty, just a small speck on the road far below, heading
north. Strangely I wasn’t too bothered, although should have been as, while it
was late afternoon, it was still very hot and I had no water. Nevertheless I
was quite happy walking and taking in the magnificent view. I guess I was in a
state akin to Forest Gump on his long runs. A while later Jane came back for
me, the Gumpesque moment had done me good and I was happy to be driven back to Stoupa.
The trip was silent except when coming round a bend there was a black snake about
a metre and a half long writhing crossing the road. Jane screamed and then
drove straight over it.
It was also a quiet
evening back at Mabel. I downloaded a manual for Jane’s camera but nothing I
tried would fix it. Interestingly, while the screen stubbornly remained blank,
the camera would take photographs.
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