Karen Berger

In the Footsteps of the Gods 
A Walking Tour In Greece

by Karen Berger
another version of this article was originally published by GORP.com.


They threw their girl babies off of cliffs. Walked over the very gates of hell. Fought battles we are reading about three thousand years later.

The brochure arrived in my mailbox on one of those quintessential northeastern winter days filled with gray slush, gray skies, and black moods. The pictures contained all the color that snow and grit had stolen from the city: the sparkling Mediterranean blue that in the distance darkened into a mysterious wine-dark sea. The guide company was offering a trip to the Peloponnese, an area of the world about which I knew next to nothing.

Of course, like everyone else, I'd read Greek myths in grade school, and worked my way through Homer and Aristophanes in college. But all I knew about the Peloponnese was that they'd had a war there. Precisely when, I couldn't say.

The bit about the girl babies and the cliffs I got from a guidebook.

Ditto for the gates of hell.

Greece sounded good. That Mediterranean sun, of course. The promise of quiet rural B&Bs in the middle of nowhere, not a corporate logo in sight. Lots of hiking, without the indignity of hiking food. Indeed, quite the opposite: I could look forward to hearty meals of souvlaki and gyros, of fresh-out-of the-ocean fish and spit-roasted lamb. And don't let's forget the olive oil: pungent, flavorful, ubiquitous.

Some background, then:

The Peloponnese peninsula is the southernmost part of the Greek mainland. Technically, it could be called an island; The Corinth Canal, which cuts through the thin Isthmus of Corinth, separates it from the rest of the country. The Taygetos mountain range runs like a spine through the center of the peninsula. It is a rugged, dramatic landscape, with peaks rising to nearly 8,000 feet.

As far as places you might have heard of: Sparta, home of the famed ancient warriors, is in the Peloponnese. So is the ruined Byzantine city of Mystras. Oh, yeah, and those gates to Hades. (Or one of them, anyway. I later learned that at least six other sites claim the honor.)

Bottom line? Here was the choice: Late winter in New York, or sparkly blue waters, April sun, Greek food, and the promise of rugged hiking in Mediterranean mountains, which just happens to be the terrain I like best. Plus all the olive oil I could ingest.

Simple decision, really.

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Starting Out

Some disclosure: I don't usually go on guided trips. Especially not guided hiking trips. So I wasn't exactly sure what to expect when I landed in Athens's new international airport. Jonathan Tite, an English expat who guides walking, kayaking, and sailing trips all over Greece, met me there, a handy welcome to a country where I not only didn't speak the language, but couldn't even read the alphabet.

So, instead of having to struggle with the local transportation and find my hotel, all I had to do was slip into a minivan with my fellow travelers. On the five-hour journey to the tiny seaside village of Kardamili, Jonathan had way more time than he needed to give us an overview of our itinerary for the next few days, which pretty much consisted of walking and eating.

One thing he didn't mention: SNOW!

But there it was, glimmering the next morning, when we awoke and went outside. I rubbed my eyes and tried to remember where I was. Greece, right?

As in sunny Mediterranean Greece? Olive groves? Islands? Vinyards? If I'd wanted SNOW this time of year, I could have gone to Greek-town in Chicago and suffered a LOT less jet lag.

So what if the snow was in the mountains and we weren't going to exactly have to wade through it, since my guided group (which included a 70-year old retired rabbi who walked with the aid of a cane) wasn't exactly mountain-climbing material. But sho 'nuff, Mt. Profitas Elias— at 7,933 feet, the highest mountain in the Taygetos -- was wearing a shimmering mantle of snow. The nights were surprisingly cool, making me glad I'd thrown a couple of extra layers of fleece into my travel bag.

Our walk started low on the scrub-covered base of the mountain a few kilometers from the small fishing village of Kardamili, where we spent the first night. We left the main road at Exochori, an old olive-growing village built into the steep olive-covered slopes that plunge from the mountains of the interior down to the sea.

Only there wasn't much in the way of olive-growing going on, and not just because it was Easter Saturday. Winding through narrow alleys that led up through the village, something struck me: The quiet was all out of proportion to the rows of houses. You'd except kids laughing and playing, mothers calling, old men sitting in the sun. But the only sign of life was an elderly goatherd leading her flock up the trail in front of us. Aside from that: silence.

And then a perky hello in a distinct Australian accent broke the quiet.

The accent belonged, incongruously, it seemed, to a woman who looked like, and in fact was, a local resident. Like several million other Greeks, she had lived abroad; hence the broad and cheerful Aussie vowels.

"All the young people are gone," she told us. It was something we would hear again and again in the rural countryside. No jobs, nothing to do, the city is more exciting, no one wants to sit around and watch the olives grow. The population of Greece is about 11 million people; of that, more than 3 million live in bustling Athens. A diaspora of several million more lives abroad, mostly in the United States, Australia, and Canada. Exochori, the woman told us, had once numbered 7,000 people; now, less than 500—mostly elderly—remained.

We followed the goatherd up narrow paths that fed into a dirt road overlooking the Viros Gorge, a steep-walled cut in the earth. Overhead, Mount Ilias loomed, shining white. Jonathan told us that on the saint's feast day, a candlelit procession of the faithful made their way up the steep, rocky slopes on old goat paths.

The path we were following was blazed for hiking, but in fact it was an old trade route that had been used for thousands of years. We climbed down into the gorge, then up the other side to the village of Tseria, where we lunched on an assortment of mezedes (Greek appetizers), including—among other things—tzatziki (yogurt with cucumbers and garlic), dolmas (stuffed grape leaves), bread, olives and feta cheese. But the highlight for me was a traditional Greek salad made of tomatoes and cucumbers that tasted like they came straight from garden to table without having to suffer intermediate indignities like gas-powdered refrigerated trucks, plastic wrap, and those price-stickers that American supermarkets zap onto anything that stays still. Oh, yes, and plenty of olive oil.

After lunch, we descended back into the gorge, where the path became an ankle-twisting obstacle course. We made our way between the steep-walled cliffs on either side, pausing to visit a ruined Byzantine monastery, a collection of small crumbling buildings in which remnants of brilliantly colored frescoes reminded us of a centuries-old devotion.

Ever the dutiful guide, Jonathan pointed out the gouged eyes of the faded fresco saints. It's something any Greek will mention to you if you stop in to vist a church just about anywhere in the country. Many of the old Greek Orthodox religious sites were vandalized during the reign of the Ottoman Turks, and no one in Greece has forgotten, no way, no how. Old wounds have long shelf lives in this part of the world.

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More Ancient History, Easter Dinner, the Gates of Hell, and an Underground Fairyland

My guided walk was billed as a "Culture Walk," and you couldn't ask for more as far as truth in advertising was concerned.

Each guided walk, I've since learned, has its own character, depending on the tour company, the terrain, and the nearby places of interest. The walk through Greece was less of a hike than I was used to, and the group's pace was, to put it mildly, leisurely. But this was for a good reason. Almost at every turn, cultural and historic sites called out for us to tarry and explore.

Arriving on Good Friday of Easter weekend, we were just in time for the most important celebration of the Greek Orthodox year. Easter here lasts at least four days. On our arrival in Kardamili, we had observed the traditional candlelit processions of celebrants making their way to Good Friday observances.

The observances continued on Holy Saturday—our first day of hiking—when we heard fireworks while eating the traditional pre-celebratory meal of magirepso(lamb giblet soup). On our second walking day -- Easter Sunday -- hiking took second place to eating. After a morning's hike in the hills near Kardamili, our group convened for an afternoon feast of traditional Easter dinner: spit-roasted lamb. Served, of course, in olive oil.

The third day's excursions highlighted the region's history—and one natural wonder. Leaving Kardamili, we drove south to Cape Tenares, the tip of the Peloponnesian peninsula's central finger. This is the land of the Mani, people reputed to be descendants of the ancient Spartans. It is a harsh place, sere and rocky, blanketed with the dull gray-green of the ubiquitous olive trees.

From time to time, we passed silent villages presided over by stone houses built in the shape of towers. The buildings looked like they could withstand a siege, and that, precisely, was the point: Centuries-old feuds once defined the social structure of the region. But today, many of the villages are abandoned.

Our morning walk started at a trailhead near a ruined building—the temple of an oracle of Poseidon. Two thousand years ago, you would have come here to ask for advice and wisdom; most likely, you would have received riddles in return. A few hundred yards after starting along the path, we looked down and saw the faded but still visible colors of a mosaic floor, dating from Roman times, Jonathan said.

But there is something even older here. You have to go into a boat and find a cave under the rocks that guard the shore, but if you do, say the locals, you have found the gates of Hades. Enter at your own risk. It's worth noting, however, that the same claim is made in about seven other Greek locations, and we saw no signs of the mythical underworld, the River Styx, or Charon the ferryman. Continuing on, we followed the rocky path to a windswept lighthouse on the tip of the peninsula, which marks the division between the Ionian and Aegean Seas.

Walking stirs up an appetite. It's one of the things I love about hiking: you can try the desserts every night, eat everything that appeals to you, practically drink the olive oil, and still lose weight. Guilt-free, we headed off to lunch in Porto Kaiya, a small fishing village, to indulge in freshly caught calamari and fish. And olive oil.

We may not have found the gates of Hades, but I wonder if there might be another entrance to the underworld. In the afternoon, we turned from walkers into tourists of the sit-down-and-be-carted-around variety. What we sat down in were flat-bottomed boats poled along by ferrymen, and what we were being carted through was the Diros Caves, a flooded underground fairyland of stalagmites and stalactites, with one fantastic chamber after another. It's not the best-run tour in Greece—the boatmen are surly, the tour is too short, and the cost is higher than other tourist attractions—but it's worth the entry fee to see what nature in a creative mood can do with a little limestone and water.

After driving to the seaside village of Porto Itilo, we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the ruined Turkish castle of Kelefa, which guards the town, before hiking back down to the sea.

Mystras and Sparta

Before my trip, images of ancient Greece filled my mind: the Greece of the Acropolis and Delphi, the Greece of constantly conniving gods and goddesses.

But Greece's history also encompasses the Byzantine Empire, which left behind churches filled with brilliant religious art. Our fourth day began with a walk through the World Heritage Site of Mystras, a ruined medieval fortress city dating from the 13th century. Built into a hill on the eastern slopes of the Taygetos Mountains, the ruins occupy a dramatic defensive position and offer a panoramic view over the Plain of Sparta.

Walking through the ruins, I could think of only a few places I've been to—Machu Picchu in Peru, Kilwa in Tanzania, Gedi in Kenya—where I had seen ruins as extensive as these.

Mystras comprises a fortress-like castle towering over palaces, churches, monasteries, convents, and a host of small buildings in various stages of excavation and restoration.After spending the morning exploring the ruins, we drove to Sparta—called Sparti in Greek—to see its acropolis (the powerful heart of an ancient city, containing municipal and religious buildings), which includes an amphitheater dating from the second or third century B.C. The site is under excavation, but much of it is accessible to visitors. If you are so inclined, you can climb down to what was the stage 2,000 years ago and look out into the audience. Or, you can follow the lead of a couple of local teens and use the hillside as a mountain bike course. As if to underscore the sense of time travel, on the way back to our hotel, we stopped in the prosperous and very modern town of Sparti to send emails from a cyber café.

The fifth and final day of hiking was the longest and most rugged. Starting near the village of Nea Mystras, a well-graded hike led us nearly 1,000 feet uphill to the picturesque mountain village of Anavriti. A number of hiking trails take off in various directions from here, including the E-4, one of the trans-European hiking routes. Jonathan said that the entire E-4 was in place in Greece, and my mind immediately started picturing what it might be like to hike from one end of the country to the other. But instead of climbing onto the E-4, our route took a level path for a while before descending back down along a switchbacked trail decorated with wildflowers.

And that was the end.

On the ride to Kalamata, where we spent our last night enjoying a convivial celebratory dinner (and need I say that the local produce -- Kalamata olives -- and, of course, olive oil figured prominently into the meal?), I had the opportunity to consider the misgivings I'd had about guided walking trips. Yes, I'd walked at a slower pace than normal, but somehow it didn't bother me in the least when one of my companions stopped to point out an orchid or a poppy or an anemone on the side of the trail. I hadn't hiked as many miles as I might have on my own. And I didn't experience the solitude that I find so rejuvenating on a backpacking trip.

But in five days of walking, I'd seen ruins of temples, palaces, and churches from all periods of Greek history; picked spring wildflowers; and floated into a fairytale cave. I'd visited hidden mountain villages that rarely see tourists, admired snowcapped peaks and the shimmering Mediterranean Sea, and genuinely enjoyed my fellow travelers.

The verdict: I'll go again the next chance I get.


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Article and photographs copyright © Karen Berger, 2001 - 2002. No part of this article or any accompanying photos may be reproduced in any media without the express written permission of the author.