George’s Log

Day 20

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:49:24 -0500

Wow. What an adventure. Got off the plane to Naousa, did several hikes around two of the largest mountains of Greece, travelled to Kalamata, Marmari and Vathia, met some awesome people, got sick, took my dad to the hospital, slept very little, enjoyed the nightlife, got a break from the world, saw a lot of new, wonderful scenery and engaged in some good conversation.

An excursion to Taygetos, where the actual excursion was the smallest part of this trip. Definitely very different than what I expected. Almost nothing went as planned. A great experience overall that I will always remember. I learned a lot about people, about the land and about me.

Thanks mom, dad and giagia. Thank you Vasoula, Kosta and Kosta. Nena and George, you are lifesavers. You all made this trip a sweet, unforgettable memory. Life is great!

Day 17

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:57:55 -0500

Two days before flying out! There is just no more time for the excursion. Timing on this trip has been terrible. Some early waiting on more people to join, then an acute sinusitis, and now the weather. It’s been raining non-stop, really strong winds and I am not even in perfect shape to climb after my recovery. Climbing five peaks is just out of the question at this point.

I have been watching the weather and trying to recover as much as possible for the past few days. I have decided I’m going up Taygetos no matter what, even if it is for a short while. I have to give it a shot, since this is one of the primary purposes of this trip. Well, unfortunately, today is the worse darn day of them all. The weather started to deteriorate quickly and the forecast is not good.

I was going to set off by myself, although Vasoula has been asking to join for a while. Unsure of how well she would do and a bit worried about the weather, I never gave a straight answer. Just last night we decided we would give it a shot together, since nobody else was interested and she really wanted to go.

The plan is to start ascending from the village of Anavryti to Lakomata, then head toward the shelter. Vasoula is going to stay at the shelter, while I am going to make a summit push at 4am with just a day pack, ice axe and crampons. This will give me a chance to take some long exposures of the valley of Sparta at night and some shots of the sunrise from the gulf. However, the weather looked all but clear. We will be picked up the following day by my cousin, since both my parents are still in bed sick.

I estimate a 6 to 7 hour rough hike from Anavryti to the shelter, so we take off around noon. Vasoula’s friend, Nitsa, drives us to the village. As soon as we arrive, we meet with 3 experienced climbers coming down the other way, just as the weather is setting in. They descended about 1000 vertical meters; we are going to climb the same vertical distance up. They looked beat up form the road and said it’s probably not a good idea with the weather looking like that and that the steep descend at the end really beat them up. They couldn’t imagine what it would be climbing that initial slope up.

I am thinking we’ll still take off and if it starts to look bad, we can just go back to Anavryti and make a pick-up call. Vasoula has a day pack with a change of clothes and I am fully packed for a 4 day trip for two people, just for training and to break in my excursion pack and boots. I also have two camera bodies and three lenses, batteries and three litters of water. The rest of the gear is here. My pack weighed in at 36 kgr in the morning. Vasoula has jeans and work boots on as she lacks basic climbing/hiking gear. That got me a bit worried but what the heck.

We take off at a temperature of 17 C from 820m altitude. The first hour is pretty tough. Temperature drops quickly to about 15 C and sweat starts to constantly drip from my base layer. Vasoula is doing fairly well and is pretty excited about the climb. Then, we hit the steep slope the other climbers were talking about.

I hadn’t had time to study the ascend on the map, otherwise I would have probably not gone through with this with a 36 kgr pack! That had to be one of the toughest 60 minutes I had ever climbed. 50% slope with the weather constantly changing at the early part of a very long hike is simply nerve breaking. Finally, after a lot of stops we reach 1600m. The temperature is now in the lower teens and the wind starts to pick up.

Right when we thought we were out of the woods, it starts drizzling and the temperature drops another couple of degrees. The wind is hitting our faces with all the water coming down from the sky. I’m starting to get worried we are not going to make it and that we should start heading back. After a while the clouds set in and we can’t see past 100m.

We are now about half way, maybe a little past it. We stop and evaluate our situation. The weather is all over the place, so it doesn’t look like we’d be in any better shape going back than moving forward. There is really no quick outlet to a road to get picked up from where we are at. At least we have cell phone service to check with the people in Sparta and get weather updates. I receive a call from the climbing club of Sparta saying they are a bit worried about the conditions up in the mountain, because it is raining real hard down in the valley. Honestly though, it isn’t that bad; at least not yet. The main problem is that we don’t know what is in store.

We decide to try and make it to the shelter. At this point there is no way we are staying the night out. I had not gotten the chance to find a key to the shelter either, so we would have to camp out in tents near the walls for protection, but it still does not look like the weather is going to clear up for me to either climb the summit or take pictures.

I start to feel how heavy the darn pack is. Vasoula is trying to keep dry without sweating too much. I have to give it to her, though: for a girl her age and being an unexperienced climber, she had better moral than I did. She was making conversation all the way, while I was thinking how the hell we were going to get out of this. She even said “Oh, we’re so lucky it’s not hailing”! “Lucky” is definitely something I would not have considered us to be at that point. Such an optimist. Unbelievable.

The hike from this point on is not rough, but we go through a couple of rain pours, and we get soaked. We see a sign in the fog: “Shelter 15 minutes”. You have no idea how great of a feeling you can get by looking at a sign! We arrive at the shelter with the rain turning into snow at 2 C. We are at 1700 m and we finally make it after 6 hours. I cook a quick meal, while we wait to be picked up by George and Nena.

I didn’t climb any of the peaks. Would I have exchanged this hike for a summit push? No. It was a great experience and a rough exercise. The peak will be waiting for me next Spring, along with the other four. Vasoula is a great climbing partner. I would have never imagined. It was well worth it.

I really didn’t feel like taking pictures with everything going on, so here’s a just a few.

Day 16

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 13:25:07 -0500

We set out with Vaso, her mom and my friend George Kortzis to Marmari today. Marmari is a small village in the south of Mani (the southern part of the middle leg of the Peloponnese). There is a humongous, newly built and expanding condo group with an excellent bar (or so they tell me) and a restaurant.

Vasoula, being a topographer and having travelled in almost every single darn place in the South took me on a tour of some of the villages I had visited when I was very young and hardly remember. She probably knows what’s under every stone in Mani.

Took some good pictures along the way and had a crazy time with the owner of the condos (who is my neighbor in Sparta and also a priest). Definitely a lot of fun and some great scenery. Mani is known for the stone towers and the lack of vegetation.

Pictures here.

Day 15

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:09:24 -0500

Feeling a bit better today. I had to change my ticket to next Thursday instead of today (Saturday), because of my sickness. I am still under the weather, so I will have to wait for Taygetos. I may not even get to climb that mountain during this trip.

We set off with Vaso to meet my friend Kosta Mihalopoulos at the Parnon shelter to show us some 30m or so waterfalls. Having lived on that mountain for a long time in the past, I was surprised he had actually located those falls he was talking about. Imagine my surprise when I figured they were indeed 100m waterfalls, with just the single highest one being probably around 35m! I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

We also took some pictures of villages on the way back to the shelter and the east coast of central Peloponnese as viewed from the mountain.

Pictures here.

Day 10

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:28:12 -0500

Damn it! I was supposed to start climbing Taygetos this morning at 7:00. Instead, I woke up with a fever of 102.2. I brought the cold from the US and it has not given me a rest since then, but this is the highest fever I have ever had. Even though conditions are good, I cannot risk any deteriorating health problems up on the mountain. I have to wait it out and cut it a bit shorter. I am considering extending the trip for a few days and changing my return ticket.

I have been trying to get some other people to join me in the climb, but have had no luck yet. It looks like I will be climbing alone (if at all considering the sickness). If I end up taking off in the next couple of days, I will have to deviate from my originally planned route to follow a different path lower in the mountain. The snow and ice make it very hard to traverse without ropes and without more advanced climbing gear than what I have brought with me.

The current, more feasible plan is to take a day of rest, catch up on blogging and wrap up some odds and ends. Then, take a lower route to the Taygetos shelter from the village of Anavryti. From there, weather permitting, I will leave all gear in the shelter and do a summit push for the highest peak with a very light weight and just the ice axe and crampons. If I get lucky and there are no clouds, I’ll grab some shots of the sunrise.

Day 9

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 03:32:56 -0500

Talk about a fun day today! Kostas drove to Kalamata. Short of the burnt forest (again), it was an awesome day trip. We had some sea food at a local taverna (unfortunately, I had forgotten the camera in the car) and then went downtown for desert. We walked around quite a bit right before sunset.

Vaso is a terrific girl with an awesome, very unique personality. Definitely, real fun to be with. She has an interesting musical accent, reminiscent to that of the Dorians (first inhabitants of Sparta many thousands of years ago). Kostas calls it redneck (vlaha), but I prefer to refer to it as Dorian. People in the south (where Sparta is), have a more musical accent in general, especially when asking questions, but in Vasoula’s case it is very strong.

Kostas likes making fun of other people all the time (in a good sense) and we had a really good time of his imitations of myself and Vasoula. We all got a bit of a tan as the sun was strong, even though it’s still March.

Pictures here.

The mountain in the background is Taygetos from the west side. I am climbing the east side. Taygetos separates Sparti from Kalamata (Sparti being in the East and Kalamata to the West). You can clearly see the clouds coming down on Taygetos in one of the pictures. That is of big concern for my upcoming hike.

Days 7-8

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:28:23 -0500

Drove to another manure site up at Tsintzina today. A shepherd has goats up here in the summer, so the manure was ready for fertilizing the garden before planting.

We drove down to the village later, where we are remodeling the house. It looked great, with enough rooms to comfortably host more than 10 people. The fireplace kept us warm at night raising the temperature from 50 to 72 in a few minutes.

We stayed the night over with dad, then finished up the garden the next day. We also tried to find a team that was replanting trees after the wild fires last summer, but we had no luck. It was really really sad to drive through acres over acres of burnt down forest on the way up to the village. I don’t really want to talk about it and I did not take any pictures on purpose.

Pictures here.

Day 6

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 03:26:59 -0500

We went geocaching behind the castle of Mystras with my friend Kostas today. We finally found the cache after searching around for a while. As the area was burnt by the wile fires last summer, we were concerned the stash was not going to be there. Trees had also been cut off and the area cleared of a lot of vegetation. We did find it though and Kostas was happy. It was his first cache.

Reevaluated some of the gear today. I laid out the tent and bag, sorted out the food and made sure clothing is appropriate for the current weather. It looks like I will be hiking in temperatures form around 75 degrees down to about 0 with a wind chill up on the summit.

Later on I went to the village of Goritsa to give dad a hand with the manure for the vegetable garden he plants every year. He got one of the trucks stuck in a field while trying to backup. He actually went half way over a 5 foot ledge, so I’m just glad he’s ok. I was there watching speechless, without being able to help.

We got the truck unstuck the next day and finally made it up to the village of Tsintzina.

Day 5

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 03:25:06 -0500

We took a longer, six hour hike to Soha from Kalyvia Sohas with mom today. Some magnificent scenery on the way. Soha is the summer village of Kalyvia Sohas at about 1000m. The trail was a bit rough, covered in stone; a very good test for the hiking boots. I will let the pictures speak for themselves here.

Day 4

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:24:10 -0500

Vlahohori is a small deserted village further up from the old castle of Mystras. We took an evening two hour hike with mom to break in the boots and test out some night gear. The clouds came down fast half way through and didn’t take long for some thick fog to set in. Short but fun.

You may see the castle of Mystras in the background and the city of Sparta further back.

Day 3

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 03:21:29 -0500

We got to Vergina early in the morning. They have built a museum around the ancient graves, in the shape of a huge grave itself. It was a terrific idea and a magnificent sight. The displayed artifacts were mostly made out of pure gold. Some of them had such elegant details and design that is very hard to parallel to any hand made jewelry that I have seen today.

The dim lighting and the carefully placed spot lights transport the visitor to thousands of years in the past; at the same time and place where these people carefully constructed their weapons, clothes, jewelry, cookware and dinnerware, appliances, pottery and art. Most of the artifacts are very well preserved and they show the amount of work they had to put in constructing everything using their bare hands and a few small and plain tools. It was indeed a hair-raising experience that is very hard to describe in words. If you are around the area, do not miss this museum.

Unfortunately, I could not take any pictures inside the museum as it was strictly prohibited. Here are some I found on the net:

Day 2

Sun, 9 Mar 2008 13:46:38 -0500

This day alone was easily worth the whole trip to Greece. I had no idea what to expect. I thought I was going to Naousa to climb a few peaks for practice. Instead, I was confronted with sights that I had no idea existed.

I will try to make this short. Greece was occupied by the Turks for almost 400 years between 1453 and 1821. During these years, the Greeks were preparing the revolution of 1821 and were trying to keep the greek customs, language, religion and way of life intact. They succeeded for the most part. The Turks on the other hand were trying to alienate the greek nation. One of their ways was to enslave children (both boys and girls) and teach them the muslim doctrines, instead of the greek. The kids were called Gianitsaroi (single: Gianitsaros). As a cover up in preparation for the revolution, greek young boys would use face masks of both women and men to get organized during the occupancy. Boula is a a woman figure, even though the actual person behind the mask is always male.

During “Apokries” (see Day 1), the citizens of Naousa get dressed up as Gianitsaroi and Boules, dance in front of the city hall in large groups and ask the mayor’s permission to go around the city and dance. And they really go around the whole darn city and dance non stop for hours and hours behind their wax masks.

By the way, a lot of people today like to toss around the word “freedom”. I wonder if they realize what the value of this word is and what it really means to some. Let me tell you a short story about freedom. While under the Turkish occupancy, just so that the Turks would not take the young greek children to convert them to Gianitsaroi, the greek mothers would dance holding their children to their death over the ledge of the gorge of Arapitsa (see picture in Day 1). Oh, and that was not just at Naousa, but also at Zalogo. I am not aware to this day of any other nation around the world that has ever demonstrated how they value freedom in a similar way. Fighting for it is obviously a totally different thing (one that the greeks also have proved they are more than capable of for many thousands of years). How is that for the virtue and value of freedom?

No words can really describe what is going on in Naousa during that feast. I will let some of the pictures give you an idea and the video that follows. If you are ever in Greece around that time, make sure you do not miss this custom.

Day 1

Sat, 8 Mar 2008 15:17:07 -0600

I landed at the airport Eleftherios Venizelos of Greece after a pleasant and quick flight from St. Louis through New York. My uncle Yanni, mom and dad all got on the road to Naousa immediately after my arrival.

Our first stop was Thermopylae, the historic pass where king Leonidas of Sparta together with 300 Spartan warriors, 700 Thespian volunteers and 400 Thebans sacrificed their lives to hold the Persian army (which suffered severe losses extremely disproportionate to those of the Greeks) for enough time (3 days) to give the Athenians an interval during which to prepare a successful naval battle at Salamis, which proved decisive in the war against the Persians. With the battle of Salamis and the subsequent final battle at Plataea the Greeks won the war against the Persians, sending Xerxes back to Asia and preventing Europe from becoming a Persian empire.
The only reason for the Spartans eventually losing the battle of Thermopylae was the betrayal of Ephialtis who revealed a mountain path that led behind the Greek lines. The Spartans stayed under the command of king Leonidas, the Thespians volunteered to stay and the Thebans were forced to. The rest of the greek army was dismissed.

There is a monument of the heroic Spartan resistance at the pass of Thermopylae. The statue of Leonidas is in the middle of the statues of river Evrotas and mount Taygetos. The greeks were known to give a human representation to elements of nature during the ancient times. River Evrotas runs through the valley of Sparta between mounts Parnon and Taygetos. Taygetos is the highest mountain of the Peloponnese and the second highest mountain in Greece (short of mount Olympus) at 2407m. There is a very similar statue to that of Leonidas at Thermopylae in Sparta, only he is holding a sword instead of a spear in Sparta. Pictures of the monument on our way to Naousa can be found here.

Next stop was the chapel of Agia Paraskevi at location Tempi. River Pineios runs through that location forming astonishing gorges. A subterranean spring next to the chapel is believed by the faithful Christians to yield holy water. It is called Agiasma. Pictures of that location are in the same page as Thermopylae, here.

About seven hours later, around 5:30 pm, we reached our destination, the city of Naousa in Macedonia. Macedonia is the northern part of Greece, home of Alexander the Great, Aristotle and many more Greeks since the 5th century BC. Naousa is a small town of extreme beauty and a pronounced presence in the history of Greece during the years of Alexander the Great as well as the dark years under the Turkish occupation. I will give some insights into the history of Naousa along the journey.

The visit to Naousa was with the climbing club of Sparta (ΕΟΣ Σπάρτης), who had organized a lot of sightseeing and other activities around Naousa. At the time of our visit was the greek holiday of the last weekend of Apokries. This is the last weekend that you can eat meat, before the 40 day fast that ends with Easter. People get dressed up in costumes, much like they do in Halloween in the USA, but the meaning of Apokries is very different and unique in Greece. The greeks usually engage in drinking, feasting, flirting, dancing, singing songs of sexual content using words otherwise censored and other activities that would resemble those of a pagan nature to the outside observer. Although, tied to the Christian tradition of fasting meat before Easter, Apokries has its roots in the ancient greek feast of Dionysus. Dionysus is one of the twelve greek gods, the god of wine, feasting and fertility through strong love affairs. The greeks used to honor Dionysus by doing what the god was all about: drinking, eating and celebrating life and erotic pleasures.

In Naousa, the festivities are much more exaggerated and rich than they are down in the south where I come from. I was indeed amazed and very surprised by what I saw. Here is a short video attempting to convey only a small sample of what was in store for the days to follow. This is what we ran into as soon as we entered Naousa.