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GREECE 2006 - Weeks 12~13 |
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The broad Macedonian plain rises suddenly at its western limit to a high plateau, and perched on the escarpment edge is Edessa, our next stop. Water courses from the mountains converge to flow through the town and plunge down to the plain below, endowing Edessa with its main asset, the magnificent waterfalls.
We had
travelled the length and breadth of Greece, seeing much and learning
even more about this fascinating land and its enigmatic people. Our time
was fast running out but the climax of our trip was still to come - a
few days spent in the Zagoria villages of Epiros and the unbelievably
spectacular Vikos
Gorge. To reach this area meant a long drive over
Our 2006 Greek trip has brought us such a wealth of experience, not only visiting such historically significant places, but so many recollections of encounters with so many delightful people. And the modern Greeks - well, you come to both love and hate them: their almost dutiful sense of bountiful hospitality to stranger/guests sometimes overwhelms with kindness, their cultural inheritance is admirable, their language reminds how much we owe to Greek, their tragic history evokes sorrowful empathy ... BUT ... their apparent easy-going manner disguises a seemingly inherent laziness, their abuse of boundless EU grants, squandered on ill-conceived and unfinished projects, appals those of us whose taxation pays the bill, corruption and nepotism are still endemic in their society whatever their politicians claim, and their homicidal driving standards explain why the road death rate is so high; but we survived, having driven almost 4,000 miles in the country over the last 3 months. But despite all these negative feelings, a week's absence from Greece, and the nostalgia that brought us here is already at work planning a future Odyssey. It's home now for a few weeks while the Continent is awash with holiday makers, then later in August, our plans are for a trip closer to home - NE France, Flanders and the WW 1 battlefields, Alsace-Lorraine, and the Ardennes - for us, unexplored territory. As always, we'll be reporting via our web site, so stay tuned Sheila and Paul Published: Friday 23 June 2006
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We had planned to spend a whole day here, but having
seen the waterfalls, eaten the previous evening at the town's apparently
only and very mediocre taverna, and been appalled at the irresponsible
squandering of EU grant given to restore the town's 19th century
industrial heritage but used largely to tart-up the former rope-factory
as a yuppie restaurant, we were about to give up on Edessa as a sad
little town worthy of the motto Parvum in parvo (Rutlanders will
forgive the pun). Then we discovered Edessa's real highlight: it was in
fact the only place in Greece stocking Camping Gaz cylinders. 1 of ours
was exhausted and the other was getting low, and in the length and
breadth of Greece, we had so far not found replacements - until that is
we came to Edessa. At Nikos' garage near the town centre, we replaced
our pristine blue empty for a battered rusty full cylinder - we could
cook again! If you need Gaz in Greece, this is the place to come. And
that was Edessa; gratefully we departed westwards.
En route we wild-camped at
an idyllic vantage point overlooking Lake Vegoritidha. On a wonderfully
sunny evening, we enjoyed supper looking out across this magical
panorama, with Pelicans, Grebes and Cormorants gracing the lake (Photo
1). 
Our next
stop was the Prespa Lakes in the far NW corner of Macedonia. In the 1913
territorial carve up of the imploding
Ottoman Empire, the 2 Prespa Lakes - Megali (Large) and Mikri (Small)
Prespa - found themselves at the converging point of what became Greek
Macedonia, Albania and subsequently the Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia (FYROM - independent since 1991). The borders of the 3
countries meet uncomfortably in the middle of
Megali Prespa. It is still
a militarily sensitive area, given the inter-ethnic strife endemic in
the
Balkans, the Greeks' hysterically proprietary anti-reaction to FYROM's
1991 adoption of the name Macedonia, and the flood of illegal immigrants
from Albania entering Greece by this mountainous back-door. Given the
position in the heart of the Southern Balkans, Prespa has been a
conflict point throughout history. During the 500 year Turkish
occupation, the area's isolated position made it a sanctuary for
Christian refugees who built monasteries and hermitages around the
lakes, including the beautiful basilica of Agios Achilleios (see right)
now stark ruins. During the 1946~49 Greek Civil War, the Communists
had their HQ at Prespa and the vicious fighting around Mounts Grammos and
Vitsa led to destruction of villages by bombardment and
desolation of the Prespa countryside. Major depopulation followed as
residents emigrated either to Eastern
Europe or USA/Australia depending
on loyalties during the Civil War. Despite a revival of interest in Prespa,
the population remains small with a number of deserted villages. There
is still an army post by the Lakes, officially to discourage illegal
Albanian immigrants, but despite the ominous sight of armed
soldiers, their presence was largely unobtrusive. The illegal Albanians
are another dilemma for the Greek authorities, since without
their cheap labour (€5 for a day's work), local agriculture producing phasolia beans on the fertile soil around the Lake could not survive.
Despite the weather turning unsettled giving the area a gloomy feel, we
enjoyed 4 days thrilling wild-camping by Mikri Prespa and close to the
hamlet of Psaradhes on the shores of Megali Prespa where the 3
countries' borders converge. The bird presence was awe-inspiring: huge
flocks of
Dalmatian and 
White Pelicans nest and feed on the Lakes (Photo 2);
it was impossible to eat breakfast without reaching for binoculars and
camera, as Pelicans soared and wheeled overhead, treating us to superb
aerobatic displays. The constant presence of Pelicans, Storks,
Cormorants, and Egrets around our camp became commonplace. The overcast
weather gave the Lakes an eerily dramatic beauty which created endless
photographic opportunity, both by the lake-shore (Photos 3~4) and
across the lake to the distant Albanian hills as we walked the path
trodden by illegal immigrants from Albania (Photo 5).
The lakes are set at an altitude of 3,000 feet, and the nights were
distinctly cold;
rain during the night fell as snow on the surrounding
6,000 feet mountains. After the recent torridly hot sunshine, it seemed
totally irrational now to be wearing sweaters and jackets to walk over
to the taverna for supper, and to welcome the log fire burning in the
grate. The local fish specialty is crisply fried steaks of Grivadhi,
huge carp caught in the Lakes, served with local phasolia beans; you'll
get fish at Prespa like no-where else in Greece. Despite its remote
position on the borders of Albania and FYROM, Prespa had come to feel
curiously homely after our 4 day stay: the soldiers at the army post
gave us a cheery wave as we walked past, and locals in the taverna
greeted us with a welcoming 'Yassas' as we arrived for supper; even the
Pelicans seemed to treat us as part of the scenery.
But it was
time to move on, and unfortunately it was Sunday when we drove to Kastoria, another lake-side town. There
is something menacing about driving on a Sunday in Greece: put a car's
steering wheel into Greek hands and he/she changes character into a
personality-deprived homicidal maniac, even
more so, curiously, on
Sundays. Perhaps this is why you see churches dedicated to Agia Kyriaki
(Holy Sunday), to ward off the evil eye of
Sunday drivers. We survived, just, the experience to camp by the
lakeside at Kastoria. Set on a wooded hilly peninsula extending into the
lake, Kastoria's wealth stems from its unique position as the centre of
the Balkan fur trade; the name derives from 'Kastori' , meaning a
beaver. The town is still filled with fur emporia, and the signs in
Cyrillic script suggest the target market is now Eastern Europe; perhaps
the inflated prices are now only affordable by Russian Mafiosi buying
furs for their jewel be-decked womenfolk. Be that as it may, we spent an
enjoyable day walking the narrow streets of Kastoria's old quarter,
admiring the impressive mansions of the wealthy fur traders and tiny
Byzantine chapels endowed by them.
the remote mountains
of North Epiros and down to the barren Sarandaporos valley where
the friable shale and mudstone mountains spill rock-fall debris across
the road. The drive was made even more challenging by the convoys of
slow-moving trucks which use this route until the Egnatia motorway is
completed across the Pindos Mountains. Beyond Konitsa, we turned off the
main road up into the remote Zagoria region, set amid wooded hills and
craggy limestone gorges. Cobbled footpaths (kalderimi) were the only
communications between the isolated villages. The mountainous terrain
meant spanning gorges with the arched pack-horse bridges for which
Zagoria is famous; many of the bridges survive as monuments to the
skills of the itinerant gangs of craftsmen-masons who built
them and the
wealthy families who sponsored their 18/19thcentury construction. We
camped at Kipi village and spent a memorable day walking
the kalderimi to visit several of the stone pack-horse bridges, single,
double and even triple arched spanning the craggy limestone gorges (Photo
6). But no visit to Zagoria would be complete without at least
sampling the world's deepest ravine, the 12 km long Vikos Gorge; in
places the walls are 3,000 feet high cutting through the limestone
tablelands of Mt Gamila. We camped at 3,600 feet by the mountain hamlet
of Monodhendhri, and descended the superbly engineered kalderimi which
zig-zags some 2,500 feet down into the bed of the Vikos Gorge. The
wooded cliff-walls fell away before us, giving a staggering view of the
awe-inspiring scale of the gorge. Turn after turn, we continued
downwards, losing height in spectacular fashion; and 1 hour later, we
stood in the dry bed of the gorge, peering distantly upwards at the
unbelievable route of our descent. Without doubt, this was the climactic
point of our whole trip. Our limited time and resources meant we had to
re-ascend by the same route. Although a gruelling climb, the path was so
well conceived that we gained height in remarkable time and reached the
village in another hour, virtually the same time taken for the descent,
perhaps inspired by the thought of the cold beer awaiting us at the
taverna. where we also enjoyed a suitable climactic supper of lemon-lamb
and plevrotous mushrooms.
Moving on,
we negotiated the Ioannina traffic and drove over the hills south of the
city to re-visit the site of Zeus' Oracle at "Wintry Dodona" as
Homer calls it. Dodona had been a sacred site from time immemorial. The
cult of Zeus reached Dodona with the first Greek-speaking migrant
peoples
in the early 2nd millennium BC; the god gave his oracular responses through the rustling of the
symbolic oak tree's leaves in the sacred precinct, interpreted by
priests with very strange habits. From these primitive beginnings, the oracle
grew in prestige until eclipsed in political influence by Delphi. But even by
Hellenistic times, Dodona remained a prestigious site and King Pyrrhos
(of 'Pyrrhic victory' fame) built the monumental theatre seating 17,000
spectators and stadium to host the festival of Naia in honour of Dodonan
Zeus. Looking out over the theatre's stone seating and down the long wooded
valley overshadowed by the towering massif of Mt Tomoros (Photo
8), we could understand why the spectacular setting of Dodona had
remained a sacred place for so long. It was even taken over by early
Christians, who in their intolerant zeal not only usurped Zeus' sacred
site but chopped down his oak tree and built a basilica on the site of
his temple. We camped close to the sacred precinct, and as dusk
fell, fireflies twinkled among the grass as if to symbolise the magical
mystery of the place.
We had both been reading Eleni Gage's North of Ithaca during our
time in Greece, the story of the author's rebuilding of her
grandmother's house in the village of Lia; her father's earlier book
Eleni had told of the
tragic execution
of the grandmother, Eleni Gatzoyiannis, by Communists during the Civil
War. Since Lia was only a short distance off the road from Ioannina to
the ferry port of Igoumenitsa, we drove the 32 km up into the Mourgana
mountains bordering on Albania to see for ourselves the setting of a
family's tragedy from that dreadful period of Greek history. It was a
moving final experience in a trip that had brought us so much learning.
And so to Igoumenitsa for the ferry, as squalid a port as most, and
scorching hot in the June sun. We had travelled with Minoan Lines, but
had been unable to book in advance the Camping on Deck option as
allegedly full. At the docks, we enquired further, all ready to resort to
Greek methods of persuasion (ie a €20 note, to help the boarding officer
in reaching a positive decision). In fact, we were directed aboard and
were able to sleep in our own camper. Bear this in mind if you cross to
Greece in your camper.
