A most impressive feature of the Mani is the mountain, or mountain range called the Taygetos. It is absolutely dominant throughout the peninsular south of Sparta. At Kardamili and Stoupa, as well as places further south, the mountains tower above the coast and often, as this week, they steer the weather.
It's hardly surprising as the range is over 2,000m in many places, with the peak at 2,404. This elevation, combined with lapse rates and dew points means that there's a great deal of mist and cloud formed with any unstable airmass. That's what we saw this week, with a thunderstorm every day from Saturday to Thursday.
This was what things looked like yesterday afternoon at about 5pm (that's over four hours before nightfall). This is the raw picture from the camera; it really did look like this. You can guess what happened next! (Note that rather nice looking Landy conveniently parked for the beach).
In 2003 we hired a small Suzuki jeep and drove up the mountain from Stoupa to Saidona. Then we left the tarmac and very slowly drove up to the watershed at 1,700m. It was gravel all the way save for some tricky stones near the village. We had to turn around at the top and drove the circuit back down to Kardamili.
This year, with the advantage of the most suitable vehicle for the job, we decided to do the drive again, but continue over / along the watershed.
However the road is in a much worse state; this is a deep rut. The stony sections were so difficult that the camera was forgotten.
Yes we did manage to squeeze through here!
It was low ratio gearbox all the way up and down. Low ratio is just like using a smaller cog at the front of a bike - you can manoeuvre uphill very slowly without needing to slip the clutch and downhill there's full engine braking so no fear of wheels locking.
After a few kms driving along the watershed and down the eastern flank, we came across this monastery; Panaghia Giatrissa.
It's right at the top of the tarmac of the eastern side. We then discovered that we could get back down to 'our' side of the mountain using a very dodgy road that wasn't even on our very detailed map. So we launched ourselves and half an hour later we again reached tarmac at Milia, a total drive off-road of about 35km.
Milia is a pretty village at the head of a valley, which looks like this in early afternoon:
It would have been so nice to have spoken to the local people. I do my best to try to understand and in this case the old guy kept the café and there was so much history on the walls it would have kept a few conversations going. However I'm only confident with hello, good afternoon, thank you and goodbye. Almost a David Frost moment there, but not quite.
So we drove up into the Taygetos which was a specific objective. On another trip here I intend to hike to the summit.
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