Many Mani Views

Monday, May 6

As we left our house this morning, the first “neighbors” we encountered were a shepherdess and her flock, who were on the road ahead of us.   She worked mightily to corral them off to one side of the road, but they definitely had minds of their own, and not just the two who lagged behind, engaged in a territorial head-butting contest.  On other trips, we’d seen sheep behaving “like sheep” and rather docilely following the leader, but this was a herd of a different order – lots of independent thinkers and one pretty frazzled shepherdess! 

We spent the entire day on the Mani Peninsula, in the southern Peloponnese.  Most of the things we’ve read have described this as the wildest and harshest area of Greece and what we saw today may confirm that – in every good way.  

Our first stop was along the harbor in Glythio, at the northeastern corner of the peninsula.  We walked along the portside promenade, enchanted by the blue water, white fishing boats, and pastel buildings of the town, which climbs the hillsides it seems to be built into.  “Streets” are little more than staircases as they rise from the quay to the upper reaches of the town.  But it was the blue and white, echoed by the Greek flags flying in the breeze, the tables and chairs of the waterside tavernas, the water, sky, clouds even the snowy peaks in the far distance that truly captivated us.  The fresh-caught octopus hanging to dry along the boats didn’t hurt, either!

As we left Glythio, we passed a pickup truck, its bed overflowing with a mountain of artichokes.  If we’d expected to see bountiful agricultural land throughout the Mani based on that encounter, we would have been sorely disappointed.  But, we’d done our homework, and we knew better…

The chief product of the land in the Mani is stone, and it’s everywhere – walls, homes, churches, towers, olive groves, and fields full of stones.  This is a HARD land in every sense, and its very harshness had ramifications for the way society was organized, or more brutally honestly, fractured.  The scarcity of fertile land made earning an honest living a struggle and pitted families against each other; the stone towers that fill the peninsula were built by clans whose warfare was ritualized and unceasing.  The towers top the mountains, climb the hills, and fill the villages of the Mani.  Many of them are crumbling ruins, some are inhabited, and a few have been rebuilt so that they look practically new, if not exactly homey.

The same desolation that has made life so difficult in the Mani has also resulted in a most spectacular landscape.  The mountains that fill the interior of the peninsula drop down to the sea in dramatic fashion and the views from the cliff-hanging roads are jaw-dropping.  Rocky shores, turquoise coves, isolated beaches, seafront villages, crashing waves, and terraced rows of olive trees make the Mani as beautiful as it is forbidding.  

We drove to the farthest end of the peninsula, Cape Tenero, which is the southernmost point of mainland Europe east of Spain.  The ancient Greeks believed that the soul of the dead came to this point, the Sanctuary of the Dead, to enter the Underworld via a cave belonging to Hades.  There are extensive archeological ruins in the area (of course!) and we visited the closest, a Christian church built atop a temple dedicated to Poseidon, the god of the sea.  We ventured no further, as the combination of ferocious wind and extremely rocky trail made exploration seem a bit foolhardy; we were hungry, so we opted for lunch, instead!

This afternoon, we stopped in Vathia, which is chock full of stone towers in every state of repair and disrepair.  Though some of the structures are evidently, many were falling in on themselves, or just abandoned.  The town has commanding (and very windy) views of the sea far below, but it’s hard to imagine making a life among the fabulous scenery and rocky lanes.

 

This was a great day – lots of photo ops and a glimpse of a world that is at once beautiful and forbidding.