Day 5/6 - June 21/22 - Peloponnesus & Mani

Today meet up with Nick’s brother Demetri, his wife Voula, and their two sons Lykourgos and Agisilaos (Agis – for short) at their house in Athens. We are meeting up with them to drive down to their house in Peloponnesus - the southern peninsula of the mainland – village of Goranoi for the weekend. We meet up with Voula’s brother George, his wife and their kids and caravan it south. We stop off for dinner in the city of Sparta, the biggest city near the village. More souvlaki! Good thing I love the stuff. The drive to the house in the village was up some dark, narrow, twisty, unpaved mountain roads. Our little car strained but did really well. The road was not very wide, with a fence on one side and the hill on the other. The house was perched atop a very steep hill and we had to leave the car at the bottom of the hill and almost literally climb up to the house.

The following morning I am awakened by the sounds of clanging and bleating getting closer and closer. A goat herder is taking his flock to the pastures and they are passing right below our balcony. I run outside to catch a glimpse and cringe as the goats pass alongside our parked rental car.

The view from their balcony is wonderful, I feel like if I had a guitar and some talent I should be writing songs like Leonard Cohen out here!

But none of that because today were are going to drive even farther south to an area called Mani. We are going here to visit the caves at Pyrgos Dhirou. The cave is about 5000 meters long and part of an underground river. To tour the caves you board small low boats which are steered masterfully by a guide through narrow passageways and around beautiful formations of stalagmites and stalactites whose brilliant colors (amazing shades of red and emerald) were created by rain water penetrating the calcium carbonate in the rock. It is really chilly in the caves and it brings a very welcome relief to the scorching dry heat outside. After about 40 minutes underground, emerging from this otherworld is almost a relief just so we can warm up again. The cave exit dumps you right out to another picture postcard perfect coastal scene of clear blue water and small boats tied to anchor.

We have also come here to go to a cook out at Voula mother’s house. There are few houses in this area but you can see every now and then off in the distance what look like medieval walled villages with a tall rectangular castles about five stories high made of stone. This part of Mani is famous for these outposts. In 1204, Italian and French knights (known to the Greeks as Franks), occupied parts of the Peloponnese. The battle towers were built during the blood feuds that followed as strongholds for the villages they protected. A feud could last for years with the men of villages (women were safe from attack) sometimes breaking for harvests. The last feud took place in 1870. Needless to say, this style of architecture has a big influence in the area and as we pull up to Voula and George’s mother’s house I am truly blown away. The house is a huge stone structure with a lovely garden and lots of shade trees. The high stone wall that surrounds the house makes you not notice that the house sits a mere few feet from the road. One other interesting thing about the house is it has its own chapel. Apparently, the land where the house sits was once a church and when George’s father in law bought the place he agreed that he would build a chapel on the site. Were are here to celebrate Lykourgos birthday and we have a wonderful meal sitting in the garden drinking bottle after bottle of water and beer. In all the reverie Demetri fell backwards out of his chair, lucky for him we had our bottle of Windex handy and all was well again.