DAY 11: Day of Surprises

Today was the day that I had been dreading all of Ireland: the drive from Athens to Kalamata in the south (look it up on a map and appreciate the mountain range that runs through the middle of the Peloponnese).

Let me start by saying the impression that I had gotten from all of the guidebooks, online info, etc. was that the roads are pretty bad, though they have been recently fixed up, and that the mountain passes are treacherous.  Good start to this trip.  But I was determined to visit as much as possible, and Katie was definitely up for it, so renting a car it was.

The night before our drive also happened to be the annual “spring forward” for Greece, which was an issue because our phones did not do it automatically, though we weren't positive about mine, which has been our alarm while travelling.  So...we set the alarm for 5:45, in case it  didn't set (which would be 6:45 in new spring time), and I definitely woke up around 5 in the morning in anticipation.

After getting our bags, we had already decided not to attempt a taxi to Syntagma square and instead braved the Metro.  It was actually a very lovely Metro and we navigated our way like locals (well, locals that heave around 14 kilo bags and 15 pound backpacks).

After getting back out to the airport (which is about 20k outside Athens), we found the car rental desk and got our paperwork sorted---and a free map, which our plan hinged on.  See, this was going to be done basically by memory: I had Googled the route enough to have become familiar and we could not buy a map beforehand, seeing as most are extremely inaccurate.  SO...by memory of a place we had never been before.  Our theory: when in doubt, head south.  Kalamata is at the bottom, on the coast, and there are only so many roads.  This theory stayed strong, as the map we were given wasn't particularly helpful and Katie ditched it about five minutes into the journey.

After being sorted, we trekked out to where the cars were parked and found ours...a baby Suzuki Splash (see pictures).  This was surprise number one.  Only Katie's bag fits in the back.  But it IS automatic, which is all I really cared about.  So we settled into our new ride and took off, albeit slowly.  I immediately abandoned the directions which I had painstakingly written down off Google the night before and started following the convenient road signs and what I could remember from riding the bus to Athens when we had first arrived. 

I knew we had to aim for Elefsina and follow the curve of the bay, staying on the main road for the majority of it.  Katie took some pretty cool pictures while I tried to figure out the speed limit and appropriate range for possibly exceeding it.  The half tank of gas was a slight worry that would have to be dealt with before the mountains, so we were on the lookout for gas stations.

The ride: the highway was glorious. Except for paying the tolls (about 12 Euro total; surprise #2).  At first we could see the bay with the island of Salamis in it (where I tried to explain the Battle of Salamis and all the cool naval fighting that happened...) and then neither of us remember passing over any canal through the isthmus before Corinth. But, we did pass right under the Acrocorinth, which is REALLY COOL, and the top of the steep rocky outcropping is still covered in ruins. Way too excited for driving the car.

After that, I paid more attention to the road, though constantly distracted by the scenery.  We drove through the heart of the mountains (still snow on some), which reminded Katie of home with their high desert feel.  Though many spring flowers are out, Greece is still a pretty rocky and sparse place.  In the middle of the mountain range we hit its very own microclimate of rain and fog, which was a surprise (#3?), though made for some starkly stunning scenery.

We finally came down from the mountains behind the valley of Messenia (you know, where all the Spartans had their helots who worked the fertile land for them while they paraded around fighting people.  Oh, you DIDN'T know?  Sorry...) and came into Kalamata proper, where Katie stated that my passive aggressiveness came out, as I failed to stop for tourists crossing from bars on one side of the marina front street to the beach on the other.  She was also slightly critical of the fact that I was going 30k over the speed limit—but in my defense, there was a line of cars behind me and people were passing on windy roads...it was my civic duty to speed!

We continued around the bay (which is gloriously surrounded by mountains; the one behind our hotel is incredibly high and looming, with its almost constant crown of fog at the very top) until we reached our base of operations for the next four nights—Akti Taygetos hotel.  We reached it in almost 3 hours exactly; a trip which I had alotted 4-6 hours on our itinerary (surprise!)  The hotel—supposedly a conference resort—is fine; I'm not terribly impressed with it for how much we're paying, but of course it beats sharing a room with six other girls in a hostel.  Especially unimpressed when we discovered, after exploring the premises, that the POOL WAS EMPTY (really upsetting surprise!).  Alright, we've come to accept that it is not exactly tourist season and that it is still pretty cool (though warm compared to jolly England), but still.  To be fair, we aren't planning on spending any time at all during the day in the hotel, so it's not really an issue in the slightest, but the fact that it was just an empty pool seemed to undermine our enthusiasm for the moment.

In light of this sad revelation, we crossed the main road (read: street) and took stairs down to the water's edge, a nearly hidden path that our helpful front desk lady, Angela, suggested for us.  There we attempted to walk along the rocky beach, squeezing between the chunks of cliff that had clearly fallen off and the water.  It was gorgeous to look at though; the water is as clear as bathwater, though slightly cooler than that technologically advanced invention.  After exploring for awhile we returned to our room to catch up on work and such, heading back out to our hidden cove later in time for the sunset, which peeked through the clouds and mountains across the bay to light up the sky.

We capped off the night by watching a movie—P.S. I Love You, which we had meant to watch in Ireland, but had been constantly pushed back until now.  Apparently, the majority of it had been shot in Wicklow, the county that Glendalough was in.  Katie made sly remarks about Irish boys who can sing, because she is so, so funny.

Acrocorinth ruins!

Toll booths are the devil

Random bridge

Pretty much summarizes the journey after we left the main highway

Akto Taygetos