On the Road Again

 

 

On the Road Again

 

The mad dash from the island of Spetses in the eastern Argolid to Messinia, in the Peloponnese, the most southwestern province of Greece, began with an early morning ferry ride across the Saronic Gulf to the sleepy village of Kosta, where my rental car was “resting”—but still costing me 23 euros per day—and was poised for another 300 kilometers.

 

The ride from Porto Heli to Ligourio, a distance of some 75 kilometers, traverses a lonely landscape punctuated by olive groves, steep mountains speckled with windmills, and a roadway that is circuitous, unguarded, and at times perilous. Here is a good reason to have a standard transmission, slowing the little beast on the hairpin turns and the steep descents without burning up the brakes. It is a “Dorian” landscape, which describes the mysterious peoples who overran this region in around 1200 bce and were likely responsible for the demise of the Bronze Age Mycenaean citadels—the superpowers of their day, which sent their men to rescue Fair Helen from the Trojans. The Mycenaeans  reigned for roughly one thousand years. Then they disappeared. Without a clear explanation of how and why. Their presence and then their demise has kept archaeologists busy for the past 150 years, since the time of the legendary German archaeologist Schliemann.

 

Evidence of those early periods are everywhere and often in unlikely and very remote settings—Mycenean bridges and water systems, the remnants of roads, and of course the citadels themselves, Mycenae being perhaps the most storied of all—the palace of Agammemon.

 

An aside: my father wanted to name me Agammemnon, after his younger brother. My mother, praise her, would have none of it. She stole my name off a New England tombstone, or so she recounted to me years ago.

 

I wasn’t thinking about history, per se, but about not running off a cliffside while falling asleep at the wheel. Once past the dusty market town of Argos, you enter the very modern and highly engineered National Highway, which was built by exceptionally competent German and Greek engineers in advance of the 2004 Olympic Games, which were held in Athens.

 

The road is an exceptional feat of engineering know-how, a miraculous track through and around 6000-foot mountains that appear impenetrable, but have been cut open with tunnels, some of which are a kilometer long. Passing the city of Tripoli, the road descends toward the large valley leading to Kalamata, our province’s capital city. There are said to be over 5 million olive trees in this region, which seems an exaggeration until you cross over a suspension bridge that hangs over a 2000-foot valley floor and look down and across. Olive trees as far as the eye can see.

 

My plans to shop in Kalamata (for garden tools and groceries) were all for naught, as the shops are closed on Sunday. So I arrived to a house that had been closed tight for ten months with nary a bottle of water. I did manage to buy some cold beers from a kiosk in Petalidi, overlooking the Gulf of Messenia, which after another hour were about to  explode in the heat of the afternoon.

 

 

Σπίτι sweet σπίτι

 

Descending from our village, I could see the house in the distance, with it’s perfectly groomed pasture—now the law in Greece owing to the severe fire danger—compliments of my friends P. and D. They have always kept our trees alive, vibrant, and productive: lemons, oranges, mandarins, avocados, pomegranate, olives. All heavily laden with fruit.

 

Each year since 2013, when this renovation project began, I have been enveloped by a surreal moment as I put the key in the lock and open the door after such an absence. In short order I expelled the carcasses of dead scorpions, convinced myself that the place was devoid of snakes after a cursory inspection, unloaded my little suitcase, then set off for a run down the mountain to the long beach called Anemomilos on the east and Mavrovouni (“black mountain”) to the west.

 

The color of the sea is spectacular—a luminescent cobalt borderd by a kilometer of white sand with hardly a soul anywhere. I  swam out to sea, roughly in the direction of North Africa, startled and awoken by the low sea temperature—at least relative to Spetses. The deepest place in the Mediterranean, at over 22,000 feet, is located about 20 kilometers off shore. This place yields an abundance of fish species…and very cold water.

 

This, dear reader, is one of the best kept secrets in southern Greece. Fortunately no one is reading this blog, so the place may stay uncorrupted for a while longer.

 

Village people

 

You enter our village, following a prolong absence, at your own peril. Had I to walked down the main street, with its plethora of cafeneions, restaurants, bars, and nick-nack shops, I would have been accosted by any number of village friends (locals and foreigners) sitting along the street watching the world go by. Alas, I snuck into the village the back way, through a maze of narrow streets, and arrived at my favorite traditional taverna, where the owner kissed me on both cheeks and asked, “What can I treat you to for a drink?” In short order a half kilo of local, chilled white wine appeared on the table—ample to wash down a large village salad with a hunk of feta and a plate of gigantes beans, my first and only meal of the day.

 

I slithered back home, following the same route, undetected.

 

Monday night was a different matter—the grand entrance along the seafront. Every ten meters, someone would rush out to me, implore me to sit for a drink. It is a dangerous way to start the evening.

 

First Full Day

 

When you own a house in Greece, or even live here as a long-time foreign resident, the volume of bureaucracic necessities accompanying your presence is mind-altering. People overuse the alternate meaning of the word “byzantine” to describe ‘complexity.’ But no other word suits the moment.

 

In an effort to slay the beast early and often, I spent my first full morning in Pylos (Homer’s “sandy Pylos” from the Iliad and Odyssey) in what proved a futile attempt to attend to various bureaucratic tasks: collecting paperwork from the bank, settling with the tax office, meeting with the civil engineer—who, after 11 years has promised to put the permits in so we might have the luxury of electricity.

 

The reason why we have no electricity after such a long time is complicated to explain. (Call it γραφειοκρατία (bureaucracy), but it’s worse than that.) But the small truth is, who needs electricity? My communist friend Yioryo tells me that we humans should be living in caves. The world would be better for it. He has a point, I think. I have solar lights inside and out, a small generator, and an ice box. But no power means no laptop, no internet, no ability to make a living. The fact that we are not independently wealthy gets in the way of everything!

 

But I certainly amuse the locals. “Yianni, still no revma (electricity)? How can you live?” The fact is, in some ways I’ve been “camping,” more or less, for the past thirty-five years in Maine, so “roughing it” in the eastern Mediterranean is a familiar activity.

 

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The super-rich…and us

 

To say that this place has attracted a wealthy foreign community is a big understatement. Although our house is set off from others, on the edge of an endless olive grove that leads down to the sea, it’s hard to miss the many villas and other aspects of extreme wealth popping up everywhere. The real estate market has become highly desirable and much sought in recent years. We beat the trend—but, of course, our house is liter-sized. No infinity pool. No garage. No nothing. The Greek version of a traditional tiny home.

 

In my absence, a Dutch lawyer built a 5.5 million-euro estate over the crest of the hill, with a mortared, hand-built stone wall that (I’m told) is nearly a kilometer long. The Germans, Dutch, Austrians, and French occupy all of the high knolls, with broad views of the Ionian Sea to the west, the Aegean to the east. Our little house, by comparison, is an apothiki (store room), but we love it like a well-behaved child.

 

For the past few days, some of us have spied a motor yacht in various coves around the village. My friend K. looked it up on her app called Yacht Finder (there is such an app) and we learned that it is a recently built 170-foot oceangoing play toy, complete with helicopter deck, and just about every accoutrement that a wealthy heart could desire: sailboats, jet skis, wind surfers, speedboats, a couple of Mercedes Benz, and so on and so on. We learned that it is available for charter, with crew, for 75,000 euros a week…or at the bargain price of 250,000 euros per month. (Tip not included.) It can accommodate about 50 guests, so you can split the cost with all your good friends. It is said to be owned by a Russian oligarch.

 

Running

 

I have been a daily distance runner for 51 years. It is my modus operandi for exploring new places. In short, it is, and has been, part parcel of my life.

 

Years ago I discovered the network of goat paths and farmer roads that lead to a series of crumbling sandstone cliffs. With some care—especially watching for venomous snakes and spiders big enough to saddle—you can descend to Koudouni, which my kids named the “castaway beach” back in 2009, during our sabbatical year. It is only accessible by perilous trail or by boat and it is almost always empty.

 

In the descent, you pass the 12th-century Venetian tower that once served as a kind of medieval early-warning system. Manned by soldiers, who spied the horizon for pirates or Ottoman fleets, fires would be lit. Then the tower a few miles away would light their fires, and so on, alerting the inhabitants to get themselves and their livestock inside the Crusader castles. There are three: in nearby Koroni, Methoni, and Pylos.

 

Last June I took a tumble on the trail and dislocated two fingers—pinky finger and ring finger came of their sockets and were perpendicular to the others. The whole incident  was alarming. On the spot (fifteen minutes, at least, away from any help) I snapped them back into the sockets—which the village nurse told me was the best action. Those fingers, even today, look a bit like Viennese sausages—but I am no worse for the wear. Luckily my strumming, not my fretting, hand.

 

I love swimming in my birthday suit at Koudouni—and the times I’ve come across a Scandinavian or three, they are similarly (un)dressed.

 

The creatures of the night

 

When we spent a winter here with the kids in 2009, we were told of a remnant pack of African jackals (τζακάλια), leftovers from antiquity. Like the wild boar (αγριογουρενες), they were said to be few and far between.

 

But both creatures have increased tenfold. Now, lying in bed at night, in the silence of this olive grove, the howls of the jackals are incessant. To my ear, it is a beautiful music and I’ll often go out in the darkness, walk a few feet into the grove—the Greek in me believes firmLy in tempting Fate—in order to hear their rustle in the near distance. Like coyotes in eastern Maine, the howl is the worse than the bite, so to speak. They are wary of people and will disappear in a flash. I’ve only seen one, in very close quarters while I was out running in the olive grove behind the house. It rocketed up a 15% grade like it was nothing. Gone in a flash.

 

The other wonderful night sound emanates from the olive grove: small owls living in the hollows of ancient olive trees.

 

Jackals and owls put me to sleep with a smile on my face.

 

Village people

 

Last night at dusk, as a cherry-red moon was sinking like a ship (thank you Bob Dylan) into the Ionian Sea, a car stopped across from our gate. A tall, lanky youth shouted “don’t get up” and ran into our garden. It was P., the youngest son from the nearby camp ground, who was born with an intellectual disability. He is about 35 years old, very functional, and with a memory that astounds me.

 

“Yianni, they said you were here, so I had to come give you a kiss.” He grabbed my shoulders, held me tightly, and in Greek fashion kissed me on both cheeks. It was such a beautiful, welcoming gesture, that is typical of this region, well known for its traditional hospitality and filoxenia/φιλοξενία (literally, ‘friend of the foreigner’).

 

“How are your girls?”—he remembered their names, though I’m fairly certain they might not remember his—“and your wife, Anna? Will they be joining you soon? Please come down to the campground and let my mother fix you a coffee.”

 

The political pledge

 

I promised my wife and a good friend back in Maine that I would avoid talking politics in public (wife) and sullying the blog with ranting (friend). Maybe loose lips sink ships, too. The war in Ukraine is on everyone’s mind. With a Russian oligarch in the neighborhood, his house guarded by big brutes with gold chains and machine guns, it is better to be taciturn on the political front.

 

And yet.

 

The common refrain in the village is thus: “Trump will win the election in America. He will end the war in Ukraine”—which everyone opposes—and “Biden is a war criminal—in two different places. He will bring us World War III.”

 

Frankly, I’m not going to argue the point. Maybe I’ll cut old Joe some slack: he is “an accessory” to war crimes. Let’s not mince words. We Americans are clearly doomed. Demented felon vs. demented insider. And with us goes the world.

 

The beach

 

I could spend every day on the beach, because it is so exquisitely gorgeous. The beach in our village has received and maintained the EU’s “Blue Flag” designation as a pristine environment—there are only a few of these in all of Europe.

 

The sand dunes are the nesting areas for the endangered loggerhead turtles, which are the size of Volkswagen Beatles…but faster moving. At this time of year, when the moon is large (like now) they approach the beach at night, little heads poking out of the surf. They come to shore, dig their holes, deposit their eggs, and then head back out to sea. Kind foreigners mark the spot with a ring of dried bamboo to prevent others from treading on them.

 

Weeks later a multitude of baby turtles are hatched and instinct drives them to the sea. A large number are intercepted by foxes, which is very sad but part of the cycle of nature.

 

Another curious aspect of the beach, during the day, is the so-called “guardian bee.” After you set up camp—a high-quality umbrella is essential, along with several liters of water, sunscreen, a hat, some snacks, and the essential birthday suit—the bee appears. For the uninitiated, the guardian bee is cause for concern as it circles you encampment. Also, it is twice the size of a bumble bee.

 

But here’s the catch. The guardian bee is your friend. It circles your camp and drives off all of the stinging bees and other nuisance creatures. It stays with you during your entire residence—for an hour or for the entire day. It is hard to explain. But I just did.

 

Party hardy…

 

I met up with my Australian friends in the village last night. We sat in their courtyard and played guitar until about 3 a.m., drank (probably) too much wine. We were joined by a coterie of foreign home-owning residents: German, Dutch, Czech, English. The village is referred to as the United Nations of Finikounda by my friend Niko the poet.

 

The night air is indescribably delicious, wafting off the Mediterranean, bringing cool delight after a day of horrendous heat.

 

After we put the guitars down, we all talked about the topos/τόπος, “the place.” This place has seeped into anyone who has ever lived here or even visited. (There is clearly a Hotel California effect—you can come in, but you can never leave.) The place is the great equalizer, eliminating the differences of nationality, class, language. Because we are all bound by the indescribable “being” of this topos. It is the thing we all have in common: a love of place.

 

I love my village in Maine, and I love my village in Greece. Almost equally—but not quite.