Clifftop Donkey Paths

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I sleep a little restlessly. I don’t think I was too worried about us getting broken into, mugged and robbed. Our host Mikail told us last night that it’s so safe here that the crime rate is negative. I’m not quite sure what that actually means. I haven’t noticed any criminal types wandering the streets handing out money. I think what I was probably a little concerned about were hazards of the natural variety. Just before I turned the light off I was reading that there was a 7.7 magnitude earthquake here in 1956 that generated a thirty metre high tsunami. Fifty-three people died and more than a hundred were injured. I’m fairly sure we’re high enough up in the mountains to avoid a tsunami, but the cliffs towering above us didn’t look all that stable the last time I looked. I wonder if I can get a beer for breakfast?

The Rembrandts are staying in this morning, preparing their masterpieces on the hotel terrace. I leave them to it and decide to see whether I can get up to the top of one of the cliffs - the ones that are going to collapse and crush us to death when there’s an earthquake. It’s windy and overcast, and the clouds are swirling around the peaks. The whole area’s crisscrossed by a network of steep rocky donkey tracks. All of them have dry stone fences on either side, a lot of which are topped with rusty sheets of the steel mesh they use to reinforce concrete. Every now and again I come to a gate, well a sort of a cross between a gate and a fence, and they’re all made of rusty mesh too. I can get some of them open, but only by removing half the paraphernalia that‘s been used to attach the sheets of mesh to each other. I’m probably trespassing, but there’s no one up here, no one at all. Well I hope there’s no one up here. I guess a few angry landowners could be hiding behind some of the fences waiting to pounce on any trespassers and haul them off never to be seen again. I’ve yet to see an animal either, and good luck trying to grow any crops in amongst all the rocks. So why have they bothered to go to all the effort of building these fences … so many fences … and what are they trying to keep in, or out? Tourists, it’s got to be tourists. I’m suddenly starting to feel very nervous. I come to a mesh gate that I can’t open, and rip a huge tear in my shorts as I try to squeeze around it. I’m sure the police this will use this as evidence. Anyway, the views from the clifftop down over the village and across to the coast are excellent.

There’s supposed to be a church up here, so I consult the Google machine to try to work out how get to it. It seems that Mr Google doesn’t cope overly well with trying to find routes involving donkey paths. His solution? Well that would be to draw a straight line from wherever I happen to be to the church … no issue for him that this involves scaling multiple high stone fences topped with bits of sharp steel. I quickly give up on that idea and head back down to the village.

Next up is the tiny stone church that we saw hanging from the cliff face as we dined on the hotel terrace last night. One of the Rembrandts told me that it was built in the 1960s as a memorial to a single individual. That doesn’t seem overly consistent with one reviewer’s comments that the locals used to hide here from pirates … unless of course they still had trouble with pirates here in the 1960s. Anyway, the view’s excellent, even if you have to get down on your hands and knees to get through a tunnel to get to it. And even then you can’t actually get into it; the door’s locked. It’s ridiculously small, like a capacity of one.

I join some of the Rembrandts for a bus ride down to the port. The port village of Aegiali is very cute, with all the usual supply of whitewashed buildings with blue trimmings, crisscrossed by a network of windy alleyways.

Most of the Rembrandts have already been in for a dip, so they‘re happy to watch on as I make my way alone across the sand and into the waves. It’s a bit chilly, but I can’t back out now with all those eyes boring into my back. I don’t last too long, and when I come back they tell me I haven’t stayed in long enough for my effort to qualify as a "swim". Such cruel travelling companions. It seems I wasn’t the only one in our party that had a sleepless night. One of them says she kept waking up thinking the building was moving. Huh? I tell them what I read about the earthquake and tsunami, and immediately wish I hadn’t. A couple of them look like they’re about to make a dash for the next ferry.

The Rembrandts are a great group of people. They’re all so welcoming and friendly. And it’s a small world. I got chatting to Tom yesterday, who’s married to the group’s art tutor Regina. It seems we worked for a couple of years for the same company, in the same office, at the same time. And then there’s artist John; we discover that I played cricket for many years with his best mate. I’d have to admit to having felt a bit nervous about spending three weeks with a large group of people, who, with two exceptions, I didn’t know from a bar of soap, but this now feels like it’s going to be a lot of fun.

We head into the village for dinner with Marija and Anna. I hope Mikail’s right about the crime rate. We’re told that when we leave the hotel we need to leave our room keys hanging on hooks on a board at reception. No one told us that it was a hookey board … hanging right out in the open near the street.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Beautiful
This looks like a lovely location.

[RENanDREW]

Beautiful...
All your photos are lovely, but this one has a certain 'transporting' quality about it :)