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Published: March 29th 2008
We decided take a road trip to the Peloponnese. This was the area where the forest fires during the summer of 2007, a lot of the mountains were incinerated, instead of the lush green olive trees, what remains of the trunks. I realiszed that driving in the country side of Greece is pretty scary. The roads wind around the mountains, with no barriers stopping cars or people from going over the cliffs. Other than the ticket we got in Sparta, the trip was uneventful. Roads outside the main metropolitain areas usually accommodate one car, Christina overtook a truck that was going slowly and crossed a double line. Other cars did the same, but we were the lucky ones who got caught.
Our first stop was Monevasia. It was not really on our way, but it was a nice detour. Monemvasia has a medieval village located on a peninsula overlooking the sea. The village is well kept compared to other vestige we've visited. Moreover, people still live in some of the house and there are café's where one can sit and admire the view of the sea. It would been nice to stay the night in Monevasia, but opted to leave,
since we wanted to visit the Vlychada caves the next morning. In hindsight, maybe we should have stayed there, as the town of Gythio was not very impressive, especially during the low tourist season. Funny thing is, we visited a hotel in Monemvasia and it was quite nice for 45 Euros. So when we got to Gythios, all the hotels seemed quite dingy compared to the one we visited earlier on. We went looking for a hotel and ended up staying at a hostel like place, which cost us 30 Euro, which is way too high for what we got. It was funny, in the end, I was laughing my head off, since we could have stayed at one of the hotels for an extra 5 euros with all the amenities of a hotel, instead of this hole with no running hot water because it was not sunny enough during the daytime to heat the water. And it didn't dawn on either one of us, that 30 Euros was way too much. Actually, Christina was talking to the owner, and she asked Christina how much she wanted to pay, Christina volunteer 30 Euros....obviously, the lady didn't hesitate in giving us
the room. It was the best example of bad communication, as I thought 30 was a bit steep, but I thought Christina felt a certain affinity to the place, so I did not object. Plus I had her ask several hotels for the prices already, I felt bad to have her repeat the same thing over and over again. In the end, we had no hot water, no soap, no shampoo. Funny, how Christina had told me she did not want to stay at a hostel and we ended up in one, totally unprepared. In the end, it was quite interesting, I didn't think of taking a picture, but it was funny. Either the situation was funny, or our first day on this road trip just drained us and we could only laugh about it.
The next day, we woke up early, bought some food and went back on the road to the Vlychada caves. It was well worth the drive, as the caves are spectacular. I've seen other caves throughout my travel, but these caves are amazing. Luckily, we did not have to wait in line, and because there were hardly any tourist, the tour was quite serene.
From a scale of 1 to 10, these caves are rated 9.9, in case they find a cave that is better than this one. The tour begins at the sea level caves, where we boarded a small boat with our guide who skillfully navigated through the labyrinth of caverns and finished with a 2km of caves on foot. The experience is surreal and is a must do.
Once the tour finished, it was back in the car and we were on our way to Mystra. Honestly, I think we spent more time in the car than anywhere else. We stopped on our way here and there to pick cactus pear and I bought some camomille and some kind of Greek herbal tea at the side of a road. The vendor was lamenting the Euro being too high and sales being slow. Understandable as the Euro is at 1.57 to CAD$1 at the time of my visit.
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