More of an eventful day today as we headed south. Some twisting narrow roads through the mountains, first to Flomichori where we saw our first village with tower houses in it.
These houses are all over the southern part of the peninsula and they are quite striking. The story goes that the villagers were always fighting with each other and destroying the house roof was a popular way to kill your neighbour. Rules applied though: women weren’t involved so they could get food and there was a truce at harvest time so they could get the work done!
A lot of the properties are now abandoned or in ruin but there are a lot of new ‘lookalikes’ springing up and they blend in really well.
We got to Lagia next, which had a beautiful little church and a busy restaurant.
. Following the road south through some very barren mountainous landscape, we tried to get to the southern tip. Unfortunately the little car park was rammed – it being a Sunday, so we had to turn around and start the journey up the west coast.
This part of the Mani has a spine of rock running down its centre so there’s no real choice other than to follow the coast road – it’s all pretty wild and rugged. At one point we had to stop to get a cow to mooove.🐮
The stunning, but virtually deserted Vathia was our next port of call. From the outside it all looks lovely but most of it is unoccupied. We did see a peacock in one garden though – odd!
Needing to get in the sea to cool off we descended upon the little village of Gerolimenas. At the bottom of the narrow road it said ‘no right turn’ which caused us a massive problem as there wasn’t much space to go left or turn around. Cars appeared from nowhere, suddenly needing to get past. Two ladies decided to come and ‘help’ by waving Guy on after I’d said stop 🙄Got out by the skin of our teeth again! 😂
Re-approached the village from a different road and drove straight in and parked – no problem. Thought about wearing a disguise when we went for a swim though in case anyone recognised the mad English couple that nearly got stuck.
