The following day, after a quick familiarisation tour of the property with the Sales Manager, Angelos Sirotopolous (ex Melbourne lad and a staunch St Kilda supporter), around the suites and facilities we set off back to town on the hotel shuttle. The next tick was to catch the bus to Sparta in the Peloponnese and then change buses to go another hour further south to Glykovrisi where Bettina’s mate Reinhardt has his olive farm and where we were destined to spend the next 11 nights.
The central Athens bus station is located on the northern outskirts of town. It is completely surrounded, block after block, by scrap metal dealers, junkyards and recycling plants. I have to say if you were an international visitor arriving to Athens for the games you would be mortified. Pot holed roads, remains of dead dogs, quagmires of mud and puddles of waste oil sludge everywhere. I half expected to see the remains of the Exxon Valdez lying at the rear of one of the yards. You could be forgiven for plotting your travel agents untimely demise when happening upon this little lot. If it was your first impression of Athens then I think it safe to say that it would cloud your impressions for the rest of your stay. I certainly do hope they have something better planned for the Olympics. Once again the coach ticket was unbelievably inexpensive at only 15 euros. It is about 300km to Sparta and a further 80km’s down to Glykovrisi.
The trip took about 5 hours and as we crossed the narrow neck of land connecting the Peloponnese to the rest of Greece at Corinth we could see the Corinth Channel, which is a shipping channel cut through the rock. It enables ships and ferries sailing to Italy to head directly north and negate the need to circumnavigate the Peloponnese thereby cutting hundreds of sea miles off their trip. It was originally started by the Romans. They would haul their ships through the channel on ropes attached to the prow and then to teams of men on either side of the channel along the top. It was broadened and deepened to allow modern ships and tankers through at the end of the 19th century. Kind of a mini Suez Canal and a superb feat of engineering.
I was really surprised by how mountainous the Peloponnese area is. There are two main ranges of mountains running north / south which have a height of between 2,500 and 3,000 meters approx. I could often see snow covering the peaks. Not what I expected in Greece at all. The entire trip was either going up hill or down hill as the road zigzagged through the countryside. The ground cover is predominantly rocks and shale with a low cover of tangled undergrowth. A very harsh kind of environment in its own way.
Lots of old fortresses and immense stone walls known as Cyclop Walls were to be seen dotted around the hills as we wound along the road. The Cyclop Walls were built prior to the Mycenaean period 500 years BC. The massive blocks of stone fit together in the most precise jig saw I have ever seen. Each of the walled areas has 5 sides like a pentagon. In their entirety each one is probably about a kilometre in length and 4 -5 meters high. Why they were built is a complete mystery, who built them is also a mystery. The Mycenaean’s were the first to record their existence and they were amazed at how anyone, other than monsters, could have constructed anything containing stones that are several cubic meters in size. The monster of choice at that time was the mythical gigantic one-eyed Cyclops. Hence the name but the mystery remains. Another one for Eric von Daniken.
Maybe Cyclops were one eyed bug blatters from a distant galaxy who had become sick and tired of building all those pyramid thingies in Egypt and were trying their hands at something more creative whilst on holiday. I can imagine the conversation between the Cyclopses, “ Jeez Ralph open your eye, there’s no way a five sided pyramid is ever going to work. Let’s give it a miss and stick to the four sided ones like in Egypt.”
When we arrived in Glykovrisi (formerly Bisani during Turkish rule), Reinhardt, Bettina’s mate and ex-geologist, was there to meet us and the first order of the day was to wander into one of the open air cafes on the villages main intersection for an ouzo and a beer.
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