Monday April 21, 2008

Our Holiday in Greece Continues by Spiro Liacos. Monday May 5, 2008 Monodendri and the Vikos Canyon. (see index page at www.meanttobemusicals.com.au/Greece) It took us three hours to drive to Monodendri today, near the Vikos Canyon. The sign near Kalambaka said there was only 120 or so km until Ioannina, but the road was ridiculously windy and narrow. The scenery was very nice and our destination was beautiful, so the trip has been worth it. The Zagorohoria are a group of villages in the mountains north of Ioannina. We stopped off at the information centre where we picked up detailed maps of the area and ideas for places to visit. The villages were gorgeous: stone is the only material they are allowed to make their buildings with, so whole towns perched on the side of the mountains are pretty as a picture. We drove through Vitsa and stopped at Monodendri, out of which leads the path to the Vikos Gorge. There were plenty of signs saying that rooms were available, so we drove on to the Oxia lookout, that overlooks the Vikos Canyon. Wow! What a view. The Vikos Canyon is 900m deep and only 1100m across at its widest point. It is about 12 km long. The vertical canyon walls, the forested canyon floor, and the river that has cut its way through all combine to create one of the best views I’ve ever seen. The walk to the lookout did not have guard rails. If we’d tripped at certain points we would have fallen vertically downwards to our deaths. We drove back to Monodendri, hired two rooms, and went for a walk to another lookout near, and at, the Monastery of St Paraskevi. It was raining now and we were getting wet, but we decided to keep going. The monastery is perched on the cliff face overlooking the canyon towards the north. The canyon isn’t quite as deep here, but is it stunning none-the-less. I went for a walk to some “caves” and had to walk along the edge of the cliff towards them. More precipitous drops. I actually got a little scared on the way back. It seemed very dangerous. We returned to our rooms and the boys wrote their diaries in the hotel’s restaurant. Tuesday May 6, 2008 Today the plan was to walk along the canyon floor. We knew the entire length was not possible (for us), so we packed a few snacks and a little water and set off. Everything was fine up until then. It was overcast, but the views of the misty canyon as we descended into it were stunning. But then it started raining. The rain steadily got heavier and we stopped for a while under a tree to see if it would stop. I’d been reading about the Vikos gorge for a whole year, so I felt bitterly disappointed that the rain had stuffed us up like this. We waited, and waited, but then I just decided to go on. If we got wet, bad luck; we would get back and put on dry clothes. Everyone agreed (or they sensed my enormous desire to climb down into the gorge and decided not to upset me any further) so we moved on. Shortly afterwards it stopped raining! It was a long way down, but we finally made it. The red- brown walls of the canyon looked fantastic and the forest, with the many shades of green was beautiful. The river bed was filled with rocks and boulders but no water! We walked along the path for a little while but then it got a little too dangerous, so the kids and Georgina and Fanoula decided to return to the river bed where we had been. I went for a walk along the path. Absolutely stunning. Radiant-green forest trees, rocks, boulders, areas where landslides had occurred, mist. It was difficult, but it was one of the best bush walks I’ve ever been on. We returned to Monodendri, and it started to rain as we ascended. The rain had held off the whole time we were in the canyon! We had a late lunch at the hotel and decided to go for a drive to the other villages on the northern side of the Canyon. The roads were windy and extremely dangerous. Brake failure meant certain death: there were few guard rails and the roads zig-zagged and hairpin-bended their way around the cliffs. Driving a narrow mountain ridge towards Papingo we had to negotiate about 15 hairpin bends. Papingo was magnificent. It is filled with narrow streets and stone restaurants and buildings, and sits at the foot of Mount Astraka, a 2400m high mountain that towers above it. I was hoping to see some snow on the ground, but the snow was much higher up the mountain. Me and the boys went for a walk and sat in a café with a fireplace to have a bowl of ice-cream. What an extraordinary place. Wednesday May 7, 2008. We packed up our stuff this morning to return to Rizoma. Saying goodbye to Monodendri, we drove past a beautiful stone-arch bridge where we stopped for a while, and then drove through another village to get to the Beloi lookout. Today was partly cloudy, but their was blue sky over the Vikos Canyon and it looked magnificent. There were clouds in the canyon, but, once again, the blue sky, the green canyon floor, the white mist and clouds, and the grey rock walls combined to produce stunning natural scenery. We drove on to another triple-arch stone-arch bridge near Kipoi. Beautiful structure, beautiful setting: the river flowed down through the valley and the stone town was high up on the hill above us. We then drove onto Ioannina. Ioannina is a historic town built next to the shores of a fairly large lake. It was here that the Albanian-born Turk Ali Pasha declared in about 1820 that he wanted to set up a separate nation as a break away from the then mighty Ottoman Empire. Ioannina was to be its capital. The Ottoman Sultan sent an army and defeated him. Ali Pasha was hunted down on the island in the lake and killed. We caught a little ferry boat to the island and went to the Ali Pasha museum. It was just a little two-storey building, with some rooms decked out with furniture from the 1800s. The turks had chased Ali to this building and fired shots from underneath the floor and wounded him. Storming the building, they took hold of him, dragged him outside, and beheaded him. There were some marks on the floor which were supposed to be the bullet holes, but the holes were more like grooves than holes. The museum had a voice over which described who Ali Pasha was and the role his Greek Orthodox wife (and later widow) had played in the Revolution. The island was fairly pretty, but the town was filled with souvenir shops and eateries. Nearly every single shop keeper tried to entice us into buying something, from the restaurateurs to the souvenir sellers to the fruit-stall attendants. Tourism is obviously their only source of income. Returning to Ioannina, we went to the castle, where the Pashathes had ruled from. The two mosques are now museums. We saw Ali Pasha’s burial place. There was a Byzantine museum which was okay, and a large open area. It was quite interesting. However, we had a long drive back, and we were tired. We walked back to the car and three hours later we drove into Rizoma. It had been a successful excursion: Accommodation was arranged last minute after we had arrived and there was no organised itinerary. Well done to all! Thursday May 8, 2008 Lunch at Vaso’s, massive amounts of rice, pork chops, roast lamb, salad, pasticchio. There was so much left over that they invited us back for Friday lunch. We politely declined because we have planned to visit Mount Olympus tomorrow. In the afternoon we went to Theia Litsa’s house in Trikala for dinner. We took Theia Vangeli and Theio Phillipa with us. Friday May 9, 2008 Mount Olympus is Greece’s tallest mountain and the once-believed home of the gods. The mountain is clearly visible from the National Highway which runs along the east coast of Greece. We turned off the highway and drove up to Litochoro, the town that sits at the base of the mountain. From there we drove up to Prionia, the highest point that cars can reach. The scenery was magnificent. The rocky, snow- capped peaks of the mountain range can be seen from nearly every turn in the road. Grooves in the upper flanks of the rocky mountains had lines of snow had still hadn’t melted even though it is May and the lush green forest on the lower half filled the rest of the valleys. Prionia was a single car park with a single small tavern. There was a lovely little wooden pedestrian bridge passing over the creek that flowed along the side of a steep mountain ridge. The boys again loved playing around the rocks of the creek and soon began constructing a dam. They have loved building dams. After lunch we went for a walk up the mountain. We first passed a beautiful waterfall and then continued on. The forest was beautiful and the view up through it to the mountain peaks were stunning.

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