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Backpacking in Mani August 30, 2008

Posted by dodo in : Greece, Hotels, Tickets, Tour, Vaccinations , trackback

Five hundred drachmas for the room: the matter was soon settled. Just over £3 for a generous bed, a vine-clad balcony with a splash of bougainvillea, two lemon trees in the garden below, and a view over olives to the sea — not a bad deal. Then the old lady took me firmly by the arm and led me into the bathroom. She pointed to a large hole in the ceiling. The sight of it seemed to provoke in her a torrent of recrimination. She spoke fast, too fast for my rudimentary Greek. What was she trying to convey? ‘You can’t get a plumber these days, not for love nor money. “You simply can’t trust the workmen any more, can you?’ Together we contemplated a knotted cord dangling from the black hole. Ipárhi Fero zestó?’ I persisted tiresomely, ‘Is the water hot?”Zestó, zestó,’ she echoed shrilly, irritated by a fatuous question, and launched into another dramatic monologue with a wealth of expressive gestures. Then suddenly she was gone, leaving me to ponder along the unpredictable and intractable nature of language as a medium of communication.

Travel GuidebookWell, the water wasn’t hot, then or at any time. And indeed, who cared? Outside were the mountains of southern Greece, and in the days that followed there were more important considerations than hot water.

I was in Kardamili in the Mani. A year ago the name Mani meant nothing to me. Then I read Patrick Leigh Fermor’s classic and felt an overriding desire to follow in his footsteps. The Blue Guide too was encouraging: ‘The predominantly mountainous region south of Sparta is seldom visited by foreign tourists . . . superb scenery and unexpected traces of the past.’ How much had the Mani changed since Leigh Fermor, that most distinguished of scholar gypsies, explored it? I intended to find out.

Kardamili seemed a good base, since the author himself writes of it with such affection. Arriving on a hot afternoon in October this year I found a pleasant but unremarkable village spread along a bay. What sets it apart is its situation, with the massive range of the Taygetus mountains towering above. It is reached by bus from Kalamata through scenery of Arcadian gentleness. Then, for the last twenty minutes, the road snakes down the mountainside. Mountain, plain, sea and sky — the scale has grown suddenly grander. Yet there is nothing gentle about these scorched mountains. The traveller is moving now through terra incognita. You enter Kardamili full of expectation.

The first thing you hear on leaving the bus is German: hochdeutsch, plattdeutsch, schwitzerdeutsch. There are German speakers everywhere, of all ages, from strident young back-packers to the discreet elderly, all deeply tanned, moving with the assurance of long-standing expatriates. These German tourists pervade the Peloponnese and the islands. There seems to be a seasonal mass migration from the Rhineland and the Ruhr, extending well into October. No corner of southern Greece is immune — not even, alas, the Mani.

There is one escape: take to the hills. This never fails. During five weeks in Greece I met four other walkers, all British, two of them women.

The hills above Kardamili are a good place in which to loosen up. I followed the main road up the mountain leading west, then struck off along an old mule track. The goat bells receded and I seemed to be moving through even deeper layers of peace. There was stillness, an immense blue sky and only the olive trees for company. These olives — their trunks warped, gouged, carbuncled, abrasive to the touch — seem indestructible, as if they could survive even a nuclear winter. The trees gave way to scrub and there was little shade. I was sorry I hadn’t brought more water. Even in an October sun one can get quickly dehydrated on these exposed slopes. I headed for the white gleam of a village in the distance and was grateful to find that the one and only store sold iced drinks. The storekeeper asked if I was German. When I said ‘English’ he started on some obscure anecdote in which I could make out little except the name ‘Margaret’ and the repetition of `kato, kato’, ‘down, down’. Days later I realised he was trying to tell me about the Brighton bombing; it had occurred the same morning.

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Backpacking in Mani

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