13 March
2025 – The Mesa Mani Part 2
Miles
driven today = 38
Total Miles
to date = 1,923
I was
joking when I said last night that I hoped the beach road at Porto Kagio would
still be there this morning, but I swear it was a lot narrower when we drove
out than it was when we arrived yesterday.
The tide had certainly come all the way over it and washed on the
taverna walls in places. I then had to
pop the traction control on to get ourselves under way on the first steep uphill
section of tarmac. The road continued to
snake up and up so that we could see back across to our overnight stop from a
dizzying height with the vertiginous drops fraying Lisa’s nerves and tightening
my grip on the steering wheel.
We had cows
and calves in the road, a family of wild pigs scuttling for cover as we passed,
and several sheep who appeared to be pink in colour courtesy of the dusty red soil
of the surrounding countryside.
Our first
stop was the village of Lagia.
At 400
metres it is one of the highest settlements on the Mani.
We stopped
in the only parking space in the village large enough to accommodate us.
Lagia used
to home to four separate family clans, each of whom had their own defined
settlement.
Each
settlement also had its own church.
Much like
the other hilltop villages we have seen, a lot of the properties have obviously
been abandoned for many years.
Whereas
others have been renovated.
Apart from
seeing one other campervan driving through while we were there and hearing
somebody shouting at his dog, the place seemed entirely deserted.
Once again
wild flowers were in abundance and the bees were having an absolute whale of a
time.
I mentioned
the other day how narrow the roads are through some of the villages.
You can get some idea from this although it
certainly wasn’t the tightest gap we had to squeeze through today.
We gradually
started to descend again towards the coast at Kokkala but spotted numerous
other tower house settlements en-route.
Some of them really are perched in the most precipitous of hilltop locations.
It’s all very well making yourself difficult
for your enemies to attack but the paper boys round here must have had really
tough rounds.
Our next
stop was at
Phlomochori.
We spotted a coach parked up a little way
before the village so decided it would probably be prudent to follow his lead
and walk the last couple of hundred metres.
Note, expert framing of the photo to remove the coach.
As it
turned out there was loads of space and we could have saved ourselves the walk.
Phlomochori
is another ancient settlement with a tightly packed network of alleyways
between the buildings.
It also has
some of the tallest tower houses to be found anywhere on the Mani.
We stopped
for lunch next to the beach at Kotronas.
And watched
the waves while we ate our sarnies.
Our old
friend Mr Mavromichalis overseeing proceedings.
The
original pan for this evening was to continue on to Gytheio and spend the night
there in a car park next to the local football pitch. None of the local campsites are supposed to
be open but I double checked the recent reviews on a few of them and we found
that Camping Mani Beach is indeed open and accepting ACSI cardholders at their
2024 rate of €21 a night. So we’ve done
a bedding change in the hope we can get that through the site’s solitary
washing machine in the morning and then maybe get the bikes out to explore
Gytheio when that’s all out to dry.
We did make
a bit of a boo boo when we parked up.
There are a few other vans here but the spots next to the beach were
largely empty so we nabbed one. It was
only once we’d got the van set up that we realized that we were broadside to
the still quite ferocious wind, which made sitting outside rather
uncomfortable. It’s abated somewhat now
but the surf is still thundering onto the beach.
There is a
taverna next door. The sign below the hangman's noose says – “Hot
Beer. Dirty Food. Old Fish.
Bad Serving.” They’re not open
but I can’t imagine they would be pulling in too much custom even if they were.
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