Peloponnese

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Now here is a real gem, people. Although everyone was very tired (Karl excepted, as driver, who couldn’t afford to be), we took a whole day in the Peloponnese, en-route to Patras for a ferry to Venice at midnight. We hadn’t done any research, having just less than a day and the Tom Tom didn’t know the roads, so we did our best. We chose to head first for Nafplio, a coastal town in the south-east of the island (if you can call the Peloponnese an island). Although touristy, Nafplio was very enjoyable. Dozens of waterside cafes adorned the main front of the town. We had a breakfast ice-cream there, though Asha managed to stand on a piece of broken glass and had to leave with a bloody foot and a tearful face.

From Nafplio, we decided a nice route to Patras would be to Tripolis, onto Ancient Olympia and then to Patras. On the basic map we had, it all looked reasonable and didn’t look to be too demanding. That’s where the lack of research kicked it. The roads were incredibly winding, mountain roads through the most spectacular scenery we’d seen. It was like an inland Amalfi, dropping instead of to the sea, into inaccessible gorges, with small towns and villages clinging to the hills and cliffs in impossible places. Along the way were many signs for ski resorts and the buildings turned to Alpine-style chalets. Signs for snow-chains were at the side of the road, quite amusing in 35C.

We stopped for lunch (pork and potatoes was all that was on offer, though it was delicious) in the mountains and started the trek downwards towards Olympia.

Arriving at Olympia was strange. Like Delphi, it was anything but obvious actually where this amazing site was. The new town was easy enough to find, but there were no clues as to where ancient Olympia might be hiding. Even asking people revealed little. It was approaching 7pm when we got there, so we had little time and little daylight left. After a few false starts, we decided to ignore one-way signs, ignore private-property signs and took off in safari-style to the dirt tracks. We didn’t manage to gain access to the site, properly, but did manage to get a view of some small piles of rocks and pillars that presumably those able athletes used to pick up, throw around, run around with and later eat. Like true tourists, some camera-snapping was done and we thought we’d better head for the midnight ferry from Patras. It was a lot of fun this mini adventure, down dirt tracks, wondering when the Greek guards would come chasing after us in proper off-road vehicles.

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