Today we do a walk about - a lot in the hills, and a bit around town. We're looking to make our way to several waypoints - the old town, a "remote" church, and a high village. It begins with a short tunnel.
Traditional fishing rig - the old man retired from his sea?
Hanging blossoms and eucalyptus trees.
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Making our way to the old town.
We're very close now....
This must be it.
The town is old, but only by our standards - it was established at the end of the 1600's by families that had returned from the deep in the hills after having been forced there by pirate attacks during the previous handful of centuries. These fortifications gave them defensive advantage to withstand pirates.
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We typically only learn the details just as we stand on these very spots of history reading the tour guide.
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Onward and upward the trek moves onto the next way-point - the high church. The trail is well established, and perhaps very old (hundreds of years?). The touring is as much about the getting there (the trek), as it is about finding things.
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Gerri pauses and contemplates the next destination, high on the hill at the not so far horizon.
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There's even an occasional yellow/black trail blaze to assure us we're tracking rightly.
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E-gads, this is a sporty trek.
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Kardamyli seen from above - all the zigging and zagging is as much gaining altitude as it is distance.
The trail is solid, yes, it's paved with baby boulders, not the smoothest - Tim is happy with his boots vs. shoes on previous travels.
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Mercury (Mighty Mouse to some), swift of feet, rockets ahead.
Here's a wide view - modern people find some solitude today living in the hills - and escape from our time's version of piracy - hustle/bustle stealing our time.
The next goal attained. People were inside doing restoration, so it was closed for access.
 A coming,.... |  ..., and a going. |
Hmmmm, figuring out how to get to yonder village, we access the internet for help, and our intuition. We find the village on a distance ridge, and make a strong guess as to the best way, not the dusty road, but a trail that seems to dive into the gorge in the desired direction.
Gerri has doubts, Tim is ready to go-for-broke and presses ahead, his only lead today.
Now looking down onto the bottom of the gorge, hoping the trail will go up the otherside. We encounter a German couple we'd seen at the church looking a bit confused, we never saw them again, hmmmm.....they were seeking a historical water cistern, which we think we encountered later on in the trek and trust they found it also. Oh well, it would be hard to get lost, you just need to eventually walk down hill, and hope it doesn't take you too far from "home" up or down the road.
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Yay, this seems right, going up the slope of the gorge in the correct direction.
Just a little further now...
And yellow-black blazes reappear...
We made it, was there any doubt (okay there was a bit at one point).
New stuff, old stuff, all in harmony, more or less.
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The final stage of the trek, getting home begins.
We find the village path continues out and down towards Kardamyli.
An awesome view with Mount Profitas Ilias (7,895 ft) in the distance - our trek will not go there today (or tomorrow either).
At the outskirts of the village, not that this tiny village should really qualify to have outskirts, but it does have beautiful spring blossoms.
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We're starting to think we opted for the donkey trail, perhaps if we had backtracked to the entry trail to the village, we could have found a smoother way down the interior of the gorge, and coming out closer to our next event. The labor involved to build this thing, all those years ago, is impressive however. Walking on baby boulders, not so much, says our feet.
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Imagine the man/woman/child hours, to put up more than a mile of this stuff. The history I'm guessing is long forgotten, but we might guess it brought a massive pride of accomplishment.
The end brought a certain level of relief to our feet.
It's "Fix" time, hanging out on the square back in Kardamyli.
We finish the days' touring (oh yeah, trekking) doing the Rick Steve's town walk tour. Here's the newer church, where Rick points out the loud speakers high on the corners, used for holiday overflow, especially Easter, when some people have to take in the services from outside the church.
More eucalyptus trees on the main square, where on New Year's Day they dump snow from high in the mountains to make a temporary Winter Wonderland.
A very nice looking villa...
At the small town wharf, where before the winding combustion engine vehicle roads were laid, was the only access to the town.
Back "home" - a toast to a successful trek.
We were kicking back all the way past 8pm, when Gerri remembered we needed to find this very cool pub in town as pointed out to us by a couple California women we met on our last night in Athens. It was worth the short walk and going back out-on-the-town, with a very personable bar keep and good conversation with a British pensioner couple from York, England, who have come to this little town for years, and are again on a multi-month stay here.
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