Ecological Alonnisos

8 uninhabited islands make up the National Marine Park of Alonnisos. Started in 1992 this park protects primarily the endangered Monk seal which lives and reproduces on Piperi Islet, but it also protects many rare plants and animals. People are forbidden to approach the Piperi area, but may visit many of the other islets. The island of Alonissos boasts the clearest water of the Greek Islands. It is also tiny and relatively untouristed.

Enough said! We were in and decided to include it on our route to Thessaloniki. We quickly discovered that tourists keep mainly to the beaches of the south end and so we headed north to the mountains where the goats definitely out numbered the people. One morning while packing up our things at perhaps the best sleeping spot on the island, we were treated to a visit by a local shepherd heading into the hills to give water to his goats. He appeared at the lookout with his dog on a home-made vehicle not uncommon amongst the locals. I always enjoy our visits with shepherds. They are so eager for conversation, eccentric beyond description, and unfazed by what we are doing.

Keep pedalling!!

On the hottest of days and the steepest of grades there is an undying rhythm that engulfs you and goads you to keep spinning those pedals through the harshest of Greek landscapes. The impervious sound of summertime: cicadas. They fill the barest of surrounds with their sound. At times deafeningly so.

Fig capital eats deraillers

"Who are you? I don't know your face." A man on a mule leans in to examine Basil's face where we are setting up camp. The only people that visit these parts are the people who are from here. A quick conversation about Basil's ancestry and we are assured that it is safe to camp where we are already camping.

Our new unplanned route found us in territory so remote that the milk truck doesn't deliver to the villages in this forgotten zone. The demand simply isn't big enough. And so we made our way to Kymi to ride a piece of the northern coast before the ferry arrived a few days later to take us to Alonnisos. I was quite excited to be visiting Kymi as it is legendary for its thin-skinned figs. I would have to settle for dried ones as figs haven't quite kicked off their season yet, but I would get to see and feel and breathe what some consider to be the fig capital and what a delightful surprise the village turned out to be. Like most towns founded in medieval times, pretty Kymi is perched 250 m above her harbour up a 4 km long exquisitely serpentine road. There is an understated dignity to towns that support themselves by means other than the mass tourism that pours into Greece every summer and we were surprised to find this in Kymi. As we cycled through we found ourselves wishing we could spend more time exploring the town. As fate would have it we did just that.

Somewhat tired from a bad night of sleep and still recovering from our exhausting day fighting the winds that greeted us at our landing on Evia, my ceramic pulley imploded while making our way up a particularly steep grade. We found ourselves limping back to Kymi to search for parts and then on to Halkidi 2 hours by bus away to pick the parts up. On our return to Kymi that same evening, the ticket collector confirmed several times that we were actually wanting to go to there. He seemed convinced that we really must have made an error and actually meant to get off in Eretria with all the other resort loving tourists. In Kymi, while looking for a place to eat another man assaults Basil with the question, "Who's are you!?" Really, the only reason you'd be in Kymi is because you or your parents are from there, so, the inquiries into our ancestry continue...

The Road Less Travelled

We came to realize that the wind farm had indeed blown us into the Greek equivalent of Oz. After much deliberation as to the future of our trip, we decided to throw all caution to that damn wind and entirely abandon our original plan to cycle through the mainland checking off many "must see" tourist destinations. We decided to favour areas not so talked about in guide books and to visit roads that barely appeared on our maps. Giddy with delight at having freed ourselves from the burden of a plan, we turned, not west to the archaeological sight of Eretria, but north to Trahili. What was in Trahili? We had no idea! But we had 5 days until the next ferry and so we pedalled north.

Stopping for water in Partheni, I heard the familiar lamenting bray of a donkey. Common to my life in Mexico, it was a first for me here in Greece. As I pedalled on - real unsanitized Greece flooded my soundtrack. The donkey gave way to chickens and roosters clucking up their scandals and, in the midst of all this, the voices of the village filled the valley. We had fallen into a rift that had missed the anti-septic hand of progress. As we continued we saw more donkeys, even people riding them, more people in humble homes living with their chickens and their sheep, and, best of all, whiskered ladies in black. Wise women with backs bent from decades of hard work. Women who didn't flinch at the thought of the physicality involved when we told them we were cycling through Greece. We made the right choice in dropping our plans and opening our itineraries to lesser visited Greece.

Along with lesser visited Greece came even steeper grades. Climbs have easily averaged 10% and on our first day on the road less travelled Basil reported seeing 18% on his computer. My muscles ache just thinking about it.

Evia to OZ

I'm concentrating with every muscle in my body to hold myself and my bicycle in forward moving line on a road which has betrayed me by switching from asphalt to gravel at a particularly steep moment in a particularly strong wind. Cars pass and honk giving us the all approving thumbs up. We can barely see as the wind whips our faces and bodies and bicycles with the most portable and sharp gravel it can pick up. I grumble as a car passes too fast and covers us with even more dust and gravel. I want to shoot him the finger, but I'm afraid to take even one finger off my bicycle. The next curve delivers a terrifying blow that sends an entirely powerless and startled me straight across the entire road to teeter on the edge of a cliff that plunges a few hundered meters down a bramble filled ravine and over many rocks to a most violent sea. I laugh with a combination of hysterical disbelief and disbelieving relief. Basil screams at me to get back to the other side. I fight slowly to push myself and my bike back to the other side of the road. As the wind picks up whipping us with more gravel, I brace myself against my bike and, with my face tucked deep into my shoulder, I have an epiphany: never cycle through a wind farm. Yes, kids: never cycle through a wind farm.

Kato Hora

Winding our way through the white-washed streets of Kato Hora we bump into the most unlikely Byzantine Castle complex. It just sits there entirely forgotten in the middle of town. The streets are dead, it is hot, and I can't help myself as I climb all over every accessible part of this once grand place. Every turn brings yet another tiny church. I am overjoyed as I jump from stone wall to slate roof in this funny little complex. Always keep your ears open for mountain goats.

Beach time

There is no shortage of unique little beaches in Kythera. However, the daunting task of getting to some of them, combined with all the necessary eating and drinking, seriously limits the number you might visit in three days.

Eat and Drink Kythera

So, what do you do on the little visited Island of Kythera, besides cycle her mountainous roads? Eat and drink! And, given that Kythera does not rely on mass tourism to survive, she produces no shortage of local tasty treats. Her thyme honey is reputedly the best in Greece. There are several rare varieties of grape that are grown here. One of them produces the award winning Petrolaros wine, the vine of which Aphrodite herself brought to the island. In Kalokerines we crossed paths with a lovingly restored 200 year old wind powered stone flour mill. Maria of Maria's Sweets grinds her own locally grown wheat which she then uses in some of the most phenomenal renditions of greek cookies that I have tasted yet. The sunday market is also a good outlet for local produce and jams and other goodies.

Aphrodite's Egg

It must be the endorphins that pump through your body after a day of cycling, but I always find the sighting of monumental places so much more exhilarating when I have brought myself to them under my own power. I have dreamt about this place since my childhood. I have dreamt about this place since I picked out my first book of Greek mythology in the 3rd grade. I have dreamt about this place since I stood in the Uffizi gallery in Florence gazing for much too long at Boticelli's "Birth of Venus". At last when I turned an unexpected corner on a descent from Livadi into Hora, there it was - the birthplace of Aphrodite. Thanks to those rosy rays of the afternoon sun it was every bit as mystical as I hoped it would be. I could absolutely imagine the goddess of love and beauty rising from the seafoam in such a place. If you can't, perhaps you should try cycling there...

On the Road in Kythera

What will we do in tiny Kythera for 3 whole days!? Surely we'll be bored. Surely we will cycle all her roads in one day. Ha! double Ha! Kythera has presented us with the most impressive grades yet. On one particularly steep climb Basil managed to glimpse 15%. This makes me wonder how steep the climb was when he couldn't manage a glimpse. These grades renewed our thankfulness for front panniers as they may well be what prevents us from tipping over backwards. Thankfully there also seemed to be no end to mountainous windy roads to explore. Some of them even beckoned us on well into the night.

Love and Beauty

Skirting the most intense of the Mani we found ourselves in the Port of Gythio where one of western history's most famous love affairs of all time began. It was here that Paris and Helen first cultivated their tryst that eventually launched history into the epic Trojan War. Gentle and pretty Gythio must have been a more romantic place in it's day, but it is also a good jumping of point for Kythyria legendary birthplace of Aphrodite goddess of love and beauty.

Manic for the Mani

Where does a Spartan go when his empire has fallen and he simply can and will not submit to foreign masters? Why over the Taygetos into the Mani - the most formidable, dry and wild and unwanted mountains of course! Wouldn't you? The coastline which plunges harshly off the skirts of these mountains doesn't give much reprieve either. Agriculture is pretty dismal in this region. A few scraggly olives and figs is about all it can muster. However, this was enough for the scene of some epic feuds whose reputation was enough to encourage any would be conquerers to leave these wild and tenacious people entirely alone.

The bitter and bloody clan wars of the 17th century into the time of Greek Independance have left the dry and scrubby Mani landscape studded with equally stark and very distinctive tower settlements used as refuges in times of trouble. The Maniots, as these former Spartans came to be known, lived in clans governed by chieftains and their own code of law. Their fierce resentment of any outside attempt to govern them is perhaps what gave birth to our modern word "mania".

I must admit that the startlingly barren landscapes of the Mani combined with an unusually warm sea have a strangely magnetic appeal. One that will bring us back to explore this area in more detail, hopefully in the spring when the wildflowers are at their most spectacular.

The Sacred Olive

Rumour has it that when Athens was first founded there was a competition between Athena and Poseidon to present its citizens with a gift. The patron deity and namesake of the city would be chosen based on the gift. Athena, goddess of wisdom presented them with the first domesticated olive tree. The olive tree became synonomous with gentleness, wisdom, peace, and charity. It also quickly became the money tree of the mediterranean and there has been no looking back ever since.

In the 6th century BC, cutting down an olive tree was punishable by death. Landowners were encouraged to clear their land for the creation of olive groves as it was decreed the only exportable agricultural product. The end result was one of the world's earliest man-made ecological disasters. Great swathes of land, unsuitable for the cultivation of olives, was cleared and large scale erosion followed.

Today when passing through Laconia and Messinia, two of the world's top producers of olives and olive oil (come on, it's hard not to love a kalamata olive), groves of this sacred tree still make up a large part of the surrounding landscape. In Messinia, epic feuds have been fought over arable land for olives.

Don't Pass on Langada Pass

Riding over the Taygetos range between Sparta and Kalamata was an epic journey that I have anticipated for years. This sparsely populated range is every bit deserving of its reputation for fierce and remote beauty. The road winds forever upwards through switchback after switchback, under plunging cliffs and past the occasional roadside altar. We were beckoned through the pass by the call of wild goats and the promise of fresh picked cherries. Always good motivators for me. Unfortunately, the heatwave we cycled through cooked our cherries before we got to enjoy them, but there was still some satisfaction in having cycled one of Greece's most daunting passes to get them.

Milagrolution

Now, I don't practice any particular religion, but I do go to church. I am fascinated by people's faith which compels me to wander into any old church whose doors are open. I love to feel their story and to poke around and see what their devotees have been up to over the years.

In Mexico I fell in love with "milagros", tiny tin, or brass painted to look like tin, offerings that you can buy outside all major churches. The idea is that you take your purchase representing your particular woe inside and you pin it to the saint you are asking for a milagro, or miracle from. They come in a vast array of forms representing the myriad of things that can go wrong in the average Mexican person's life. I have seen everything from body parts to insects.

Well, imagine my delight when, while wandering through a museum of Greek antiquities, my eye spies the very same thing, only much bigger, much, much older and chiselled in marble (and with a particular leaning towards reproductive parts). Of course it's a very ancient pagan ritual! Gods and saints really like tokens, either that, or they have bad memories and need the token as a reminder for where to put their focus, but it seems to me, that the modern day miracle makers have much humbler taste. I mean, I love the tin milagros, but let's face it, marble is much nicer than tin. The greek orthodox folks also have their own larger version of the mexican milagros, you can see them pinned under the painting in the final photo.