We left the Zagori region thinking we were saying goodbye to the serious mountains, but we were wrong. Firstly, as soon as we crossed a pass out of the Zagori, we looked down on a chequerboard of farmland.
A wonderful lady in a National Park office had earlier recommended that we take the long route to get to Filippaioi, our next destination. What a great recommendation it was! It was 3/4 of an hour longer but it was time spent with jaw-dropping views, yet again! Tymphi Mountain had dominated the back of the views in the Zagori, and now we drove around the back of it. The mountain was even more spectacular from this side. It was jagged and interesting. It was superb!
We stopped for lunch at a friendly taverna in a small village with views over vegie gardens to the mountains.
This area was called the Aoos Valley, named after the river that ran through it.
There were gorgeous scenes all along the drive.
We found some relatively recently constructed watermills along the way. We're not sure what they were powering. They were a bit like the old gunpowder mills we saw a while ago, but they weren't quite the same.
Our plan had been to stay at the village of Samarina as there was a huge dance festival there, however we couldn't find anywhere to stay,. The closest we could get was a room in a small family-run hotel with very mixed reviews, in the village of Philippaioi, about 25 minutes drive from Samarina.
We arrived in Philippaioi and found the place but couldn't find the owner. It turned out that her family also owned the taverna across the road. Cristina spoke very little English but was lovely. We couldn't believe it though when we walked into the second-storey room and it was stifling hot inside and there was no fan or flyscreens again. Arrgghh! Luckily, the curtains did a pretty good job of keeping insects out and, as the windows were large enough to be effective, we could get the temperature down to a reasonable sleeping level, ie, below 30 degrees, for a change!
The altitude was higher here and, for the first time in months, we didn't have to get up early to beat the heat. The maximums were usually a lovely mid-20's. It was just as well we could sleep in because, at 4am on our first morning, our bed fell apart! I had simply rolled over and some of the planks supporting the mattress suddenly fell out with a huge crash. It would have woken everyone in the building. I realised the planks weren't placed evenly along the underside of the mattress - they had moved so there were only a couple of planks supporting the bulk of our weight. I straightened them up and that seemed to fix the problem.
After this bad start, we quite enjoyed this place. The family consisted of Cristina and her husband plus her two daughters and their husbands plus the young grandchildren! I think they all slept above the restaurant. They were all lovely. The grandkids were little buggers though, a bit surprising for Greece where kids are usually better behaved than ours as a rule.
The village only had one or two places to stay and eat. I really don't know why they ever needed this sign, old as it was, but check out the last attraction. Is that for real?
On our first morning we decided to go for a walk and ride near Samarina. We drove out of Filippaioi and I was looking at the navigation on my phone when John suddenly slowed down and told me to look. I looked up and an animal was beside the road. I thought it was a dog at first. Then I got really confused because it looked like a koala. It then turned and crossed the road and I realised it was a bear cub! Wow! We knew mum mustn't be far away but we couldn't see her. We were well and truly in bear territory now, but there are only about 400 or so in all of Greece. (That number varies according to different sources). We were so lucky to see this cub. It all happened so quickly though that I couldn't get a photo.
We pulled up at the monastery we were starting our exercise from and got talking to a guy who was having a takeaway coffee there. He had bought his coffee in the village then he drove the few kms to the monastery to drink it in the lovely surroundings. His name was Nikos. He was local but married a woman from another village and lived not far away. He had travelled a lot. He was keen to swap contact details as he hoped to come to Australia one day. We reckon, out of all the people who have said they want to come, he's the most likely.
He helped us with directions for our walk and ride and we finally said goodbye after about half an hour. He headed off on this quad bike, going the same direction as us.
We had a quick look at the monastery and got talking to some local visitors there. We told them about the bear sighting the guy was astonished. He had been returning here for 40 years and had never seen a bear! After a short chat they brought out some eggplant pie for us! It was delicious. We've never seen eggplant pie anywhere. He said it's because traditionally, people don't eat meat for 15 days before the festival that we had to come to this area for.
We headed off on our walk and bike ride. We had only gone about 500 metres up the road when, lying right in the middle of the road where he had thrown it, we found Nikos's takeaway coffee cup. After extolling the virtues of the area, he had simply tossed his cup when he finished his coffee. Unbelievable.
The views were pretty cool.
I walked along a dirt road which ran above a bit of a gorge. Some of the pine trees here grew with horizontal branches.
Like other places I've seen, water just bubbled up out of springs. One place formed a small pond that was full of tadpoles and frogs.
There were heaps of these strange nests in the trees. They seemed to be built with sticks and spider webs. I later researched them and learned that they're caterpillar nests! Some were the size of a football.
John and I met back at the car. John put his phone on the bonnet while he got changed.
We then we drove off - with the phone still on the bonnet............
John didn't realise his phone was missing until about two hours later. By this time we had returned to Philippaioi, 25 minutes away. We jumped back in the car and returned to the monastery. There was no sign of the phone but, to our surprise, our new friend Nikos was there talking to another man.
Nikos helped us enormously. He put up a post on a local Facebook group while his friend took it upon himself to search our car from top to bottom! We then followed Nikos back into Samarina (the dance festival village) where he would speak to the Mayor for us. Apparently, if anybody had found it, they would have told the Mayor. I love this local system!
We were following Nikos and he pulled up at a busy place where I couldn't park. John jumped out and went with Nikos while I double parked. That lasted less than a minute before cars tried to get past. I had to leave. I drove through narrow laneways and squeezed past cars that were parked anywhere they could. I was proud of myself for making it through the busy village unscathed.
Samarina was pumping now with people that were arriving for the big festival. We ate lunch in the square and were lucky to get seats.
We discussed what our odds were of getting the phone back. I felt that if it wasn't festival time then the chances would be very good as only locals would be around and I believe that people in the villages would hand the phone in. However, with the town full of people from other places, I wasn't so sure. I still gave us a better than 50% chance though.
We couldn't do anything else about the phone now so we returned to Philippaioi, where it was also their celebration time! When we asked what time the dancing would start, we were told 9pm or 10pm or so. Sigh......
We headed to the church grounds at around 9.15pm but not a lot was happening. They had a food stand and heaps of tables and chairs set up though. The place slowly filled and, about an hour later, the dancing began. Local women dressed in traditional costumes did the usual dancing. It was very different to the dancing at Halki. At Halki, the dances are fast and complicated. Here, they are slow and simple, with grace and balance being important apparently.
The girls were really lovely.
We woke up the next morning, still feeling somewhat depressed about John's phone. It was going to be such a pain to cancel banking apps and replace the phone. We walked across to breakfast, which was included in our accommodation - and were handed John's phone!
So the story that follows is as complex as any Greek tragedy! A man found the phone while he was out walking his hyperactive toddler, trying to get her to sleep. His extended family had returned to Samarina, the village they grew up in, from other towns. The families were all pitching in together in three adjoining houses. His nephew, an 18 year-old IT guru, tried to hack the phone to find out who it belonged to, but couldn't. (Who says simple lock screen codes don't work?) The family had fun trying to guess how the phone came to be lying on the side of the road in Samarina. Apparently they came up with all sorts of stories! The place they found it was on the road we drove on but nearly 3kms from where we first left with the phone on the bonnet. It must have stayed on the bonnet for all that distance before it fell off!
Someone in the family suggested that they put up a post on the local Facebook group. The man's wife went to do it but accidentally looked up the wrong group - and saw Nikos's post! She phoned Nikos, he picked the phone up, then drove the 25 minutes to our village, as it was on his way home. He dropped it off at the taverna across the road as it was around midnight and we had gone to bed. It was all pretty amazing!
Nikos gave us Phoebe's contact details. Phoebe was the sister of the man who found the phone. Are you still following this, lol? We arranged to meet her in Samarina. For the umpteenth time, we drove along that road between the two villages. We met Phoebe and she was great. A teacher, she was a ball of fun and we got on really well. It was afternoon at festival time so drinks were in order. I had to drive so I only had one but John and Phoebe had a few. It was a great afternoon.
At 7pm it was time for some dancing to start. I went down to the church to watch. Firstly, the little kids danced, all dressed up in traditional costumes. It was hard to see as all the parents and grannies pushed to the front to see their little darlings dance. There were many phones taking videos and proud, smiling grandmas.
Next up were the middle-aged kids, then the older teenagers. I noticed that the crowd around me was suddenly filled with teenage boys when the teenage girls were dancing. Traditionally, many of these celebrations involved people from different villages, and it was a well-known way of finding a partner outside your own village.
Finally, they all danced together.
The dancing was happening in the grounds outside the church. This church is famous for having a tree growing out of the apse. The story is that the tree took root there a long time ago. A priest thought it would damage the church so he climbed up and started to cut it down. Before he succeeded though, he fell and maybe was injured or maybe he died. These stories are only hearsay. The people decided it was a sign from God that the tree was meant to stay, and so it has!
Young women in traditional costume under the famous tree.
When the family tried to open John's phone, the only thing they could see was the photo on John's lock screen, which is a photo of Courtney pulling a stupid face. Phoebe and John re-enacted the photo!
It was a fun afternoon!
The sky looked lovely as the sun set.
We learned that the special event, the big dance, would happen the next morning at 11am. We didn't believe for a minute that it would actually start on time, but it did! This dance was really interesting and very different to others we've seen.
All the men in the village gathered in a large circle, led by the oldest men. They held hands and walked very slowly around the circle. A man dressed in traditional costume stood in the centre of the circle. He seemed to be conducting the singers around him. Half of the circle seemed to be singing something then the other half would respond. It was quite intriguing. It was almost mystical.
My understanding was that it was some sort of reenactment of the Ottoman invasion. In true Greek casual style though, people just wandered through the circle if they wanted to take photos or just to cut through to the other side!
The singing went on for about 15 minutes but the people moved so slowly that I don't think they even did one whole lap, presumably due to the age of some of the men.
Some participants were dressed in traditional costumes and the priest and other church officials joined in too.
On our last walk and bike ride in the area, we headed towards a memorial that stood on a hill. On the way up, I saw another of these cool pine trees, this one with not-quite-horizontal branches.
The memorial stood dramatically on the hilltop. It marked the site where Greeks first fought in WW2. The strange helmeted building was a little chapel.
Carvings commemorated various things, including the fact that women carried all food, ammunition etc, up to the soldiers.
John arrived not long after me. The mountains looked spectacular behind him.
A mob of sheep were driven slowly across the landscape by a shepherd and his dogs.
What a fun time we had here! We were sad to leave.
We headed to our next destination and found these mules just wandering along the road. They would belong to someone.
The closer we got to our destination, a village called Nymfaio, the more of these signs we saw. There's a bear sanctuary and a wolf sanctuary there, and they're trying to make people aware of the possibility of wildlife being on the roads.
We lashed out in Nymfaio and stayed at a bit more upmarket place for a whole week. Disappointingly, the price didn't reflect the size of the room or - again! - any sort of cooling option in a hot upstairs room. It was very professionally run though and Eleni , the owner, spoke good English.
Breakfast was a spread fit for a king!
We were now at 1,350 metres in altitude. They get one to two metres of snow here each year! Apparently the front doors of all the buildings open inwards, so you can get out of your door when it snows overnight. This is probably commonplace in many snowy places but I'd never heard of it before.
We came to this village as it's supposed to be one of the top 10 most beautiful villages in Europe, according to UNESCO. The town was originally a silver- and gold-smithing town and the people were wealthy and built large homes. Over time, people left, but then returned in the 80's. One man drove the change and now, the whole village has been renovated.
The village was nice but the homes seemed too grand to be in a village really. I can't say I agree at all about it being in the top 10. I can think of heaps of other Greek villages alone that are far more beautiful than this one.
The slate rooves of most buildings had been replaced with snow rooves.
Right behind our accommodation was the church. Like everything else in the village, it had been extensively renovated. The painted interior was spectacular!
We don't often see female saints depicted in churches.
On our first day, we headed down the hill from our village in the car and there, crossing the road in front of us, was a mother bear and her cub! Again. it all happened so quickly that I didn't get a photo. I can't believe we saw three bears in a few days!
There were two animal sanctuaries in the area - the bear one just out of our village and a wolf one down the bottom of the big hill that our village was perched on.
Strangely, the wolf sanctuary also had some lynxes and jackals, mostly passed on by zoos that were closing. You can only visit on a tour, and the tour was in Greek, so one of the lovely volunteers came with us and explained things in English for us.
The animals were in large, well-fenced areas but it was a hot day and we didn't see any wolves at all. We did see one jackal though.
It was a bit hard to film through the wire fences!
This lynx hung around in the shade then climbed a tree and lounged in it like a leopard.
The bear sanctuary was just a 20 minute walk from the village. A huge dog came up to me as I was walking to the bear sanctuary, obviously friendly. I gave it a pat then it decided it would accompany me! I must say, it was lovely having a dog walking with me, until we caught up to a man with a dog on a lead. There was a bit of argey-bargey but they were ok.
The dog was apparently a mixed breed, but mostly local sheepdog. I can't believe how much it looked like a bear!
The paved road to the bear sanctuary was gorgeous!
Much to our surprise, the volunteer who had taken us under her wing the previous day at the wolf sanctuary, was now at the bear sanctuary! Both places are run by the same organisation and volunteers live for a couple of weeks at a time helping out at both places. We were the only people on the first tour of the day so a guide took us around and our friend came along for the ride. Talk about personal service!
The bear sanctuary started as a way of re-homing bears that had been mistreated. There was a tradition of 'dancing bears' for a long time in Greece. The only way to train a bear was to do it when it was a cub. People would kill the mother so they could take the cub. 'Training' involved torture and the bears were usually poorly treated. When dancing bears were finally banned, somewhere had to be found to look after them because if cubs haven't been raised in the wild by their mothers, they can't learn how to fend for themselves.
We were kept a long way from the bears by a number of fences. We saw a few but the photos aren't great.
I had some lovely walks but was always on the lookout for bears!
One walk led me to the top of a nearby hill. The views and the walk were lovely!
Ruins of WW2 lookouts were scattered along the ridge.
Great loads of wood were being cut out of the forests in preparation for winter. Horses and mules were used to bring the wood out of the forest. It was then stacked on the sides of the roads to be transported away.
I had learned that one way they track the movements of bears is to catch hair of the bears and analyse it. They can get genetic material from the hair. Bears love to scratch on trees and power poles so they wrap barbed wire around the poles to catch the hair. I found one of these poles on a walk.
The vivid green forest was magical.
To get to our village, we had to drive up a long, windy, steep road. John decided to ride down it and back up again, as you do. On the way up, he found some great blackberry bushes. He ate some berries then put his bike close by to take a photo. It took about 10 minutes for a blackberry thorn to pierce his tyre tube. He had to stop on the side of the narrow road in the hot sun to replace his tube.
At least he got to see some wildlife along the way - he came across six tortoises in a few minutes!
We had been told about a great restaurant in a village at the bottom of our hill. We ate there twice and it was one of the best restaurants we've ever been to in Greece. Not because it was fancy, but because the food was sensational and they were really switched on.
They had an amazing cellar with really old wines.
John enjoyed one of the older bottles very much!
This area is one of the major wine-producing regions of Greece. We decided to visit two wineries - one vary small and one very large.
The first one was so small that we had to knock on the door to be let in. A thermometer sat on the outside wall - admittedly in full sun - and read 42 degrees.
The lady who showed us around was fantastic and we met the owner as well. He was passionate about his wines and we had a great chat with him. We didn't actually need any wine to carry away with us but what do you do when someone has just spent 3/4 of an hour showing you around talking you through their wines? We bought a few of their good bottles, which were incredibly good value.
The next place couldn't have been more different if it tried. Alpha Estate is the biggest winery in Greece. The buildings were massive!
1,300 barrels were lined up in a massive air-conditioned, moisture-controlled cellar.
One day we went for a drive to Kastoria, a city that is prettily stretched along a peninsula in Lake Orestiada. It has been there for a very long time and at various times had been ruled by the Byzantines, Bulgarians, Normans, Serbs, Albanians and Turks.
There were some buildings with unusual architecture. This looked more Romanian than Greek.
We stumbled upon this. It speaks for itself.
Nearby, a Neolithic settlement was discovered in 1832. The original inhabitants built over the lake on stilts and 3,000 people lived there from about 5,500BC to 3,000BC. A reproduction village had been built nearby. I thought this would be fascinating but it was just a few huts with a few tools inside. A tour bus pulled up at the same time as us so we didn't get much of a look at it.
We had to go out of our way for our last destination of the day - the Koresteia. Without writing a historical essay, the villages in this area were abandoned after the mostly Slavic-speaking communities fought on the wrong side of the civil war. Houses and farm sheds were built out of mud bricks, orange/red from the local soil. Now they are slowly decomposing, the bricks returning to the soil they were made from.
Many of the homes were quite large. They must have been very grand in their day.
Staircases led to mysterious upper floors. I would love to have explored upstairs but the steps were in no condition to walk on!
This spiral staircase was collapsing.
Some buildings were being used by farmers. I saw feed troughs with fresh hay in them. This old saddle hadn't been used for a very ling time.
Old cartwheels lay rotting on a stable floor.
We had found many blackberries on our walks and rides but the ones here were incredibly sweet. While I was picking some I found this old radio sitting on a windowsill!
On our last day, John went for a big ride. After a while he messaged me to say he would be late. Then he messaged again to say he would be even later. He finally arrived back with scratches all over him. He had had a big stack off his bike. He had sore ribs, an injured thumb and the other hand was very sore. As I write this, about five days later, he is still very sore and can't get back on the bike yet. We don't think anything's broken but it's all going to take a while to heal.We sure don't bounce like we used to!
If you made it to the end of this post, you're doing well. Sometimes this isn't so entertaining for everyone else, but it's my record of our trip and I don't want to forget the details.
No comments:
Post a Comment