Greece 6: Hitting my stride, hiking through Zagori

     With the advice of my hosts, I decided to drive one town over(named Vitsa, three minutes away), and begin a hike.  I would go down into the gorge, and pass several old bridges, on the way to Kipoi(pronounced Kipi I believe).  The decline was slow, so the walk began easily.  At first there were mountain views, and then there were views into the gorge.  As I don't like to look over the side, I decided to hunt for insects.

    Eventually, I reached the first bridge, Misiou.  I was able to walk below the bridge, as the river had dried up.  I named it "rock river" in my head.  After taking photos, I had to figure out how to get to the other side, as it was required to continue the hike.  After some investigation, I decided there was no way to climb up the rocks on the other side.  I was forced to cross.  There was a short barrier on either side of the bridge as you walk across, but it was not super high.  After preparing myself for about five minutes, I hastily slunk across.

        After a distance, I encountered the second bridge, the Bridge of Kokkoros.  There seemed to be even less railing here.  Luckily, I would not have to cross this bridge or any of the others.  It was a bit hard to decipher where the trail on my app wanted me to go next, but it turned out I simply had to follow the rock river.  

    The rock river curved left and right, up and down, before the last bridge finally appeared, the three arched Plakida-Kalogeriko bridge.

    I hiked the path that led up to the road and a few minutes later I was sitting at a cafe in Kipoi, drinking water and refilling my bottles.  There were two more bridges within a seven minute walk from town, so I walked on.  Before arriving at either, I encountered my first tortoise of the trip.  The first bridge was so unimpressive, that I will not bother posting it here.  The second one was only mildly more interesting.

    My choices were to find a taxi or to walk back.  I decided to walk back, but rather than taking the same trail that I took coming, I would walk the main road until it crossed a hike down to meet up with the path just before the very first bridge.  Cicadas were pretty loud after I crossed the bridge.  I noticed at one point that after I had walked past a loud area, it went silent.  I thought that perhaps I was close enough that a cicada sensed my movement.  And there it was.

    I arrived back near the hotel and picked up two small Gatorades from a local shop.  I took it easy for a while and then walked into the old town for dinner.  Edit:  I confused the dinner with the following night.  On this night I tried a pie restaurant and got a vegetable pie and a mushroom pie, which tasted quite different from each other.  The mushroom pie was better.

Greece 5: Reaching Monodendri, in the beautiful pindus mountains

        The next day I hopped into the car to visit the monastery that was closed previously, the Great Meteoron.  It was fairly large, but not much different than the previous ones.  

    Two minutes down the road, I visited the Monastery of Rousanou. This one was the smallest by far, with one tiny courtyard and three rooms underneath.  Getting into the monastery required going across two shaky bridges.  You can't actually see the shaky bridge from the picture below, as it is horizontal and extends from the stone staircase.

    Afterwards, I returned to my hotel and ended up needing to take care of medical problems longer than expected.  This, combined with my late start, made it so that I would not make it to the two remaining monasteries before they would close, as I had intended a hike.  So, I relaxed in the hotel room.  The next day I left for Monodendri.

    The drive was easy enough, until I was about a half hour away and driving up the mountain.  I encountered a fire truck and a tow truck, with a hook that seemingly was going over the side of the mountain.  A policewoman instructed myself and others to pull over to the side.  After ten minutes, no progress had been made, so I turned around and went back down, remembering that there was an alternative route up the road.  This alternative route ended up being an overgrown dirt path, so I hoped that if I kept going, another would show up, and it did.

    I arrived at Monodendri, one of forty six villages in the Zagori region.  I believe Monodendri to be one of the biggest.  After checking in, I walked into the village and then followed a path northeast to the Agia Paraskevi Monastery.  There was a notice stating that the woman that stayed here was hard of hearing.  I entered the small site and she instructed me in Greek to go to three places.  I said that I didn't understand Greek and so she yelled louder, still in Greek.  I nodded and took the first entrance.

    The main reason to visit was to see the fabulous view from a balcony.  

    Google Maps had indicated another viewing site just east of town, so I followed that path until I found the abandoned buildings and small amphitheater.  Unfortunately, there was no view in site.  I tried following the path, knowing that it would lead down into the gorge, but turned around after a few minutes.  There was another sign in Greek that I tried following and then doubled back again after the path deteriorated.  Finally, I followed the Alltrails app to an indicated photo spot, which ended up being right above the gorge and across from the monastery that I just visited.  It was a tremendous view.

    Back in town, I admired a sleeping cat for a while and then walked along the cobblestone path back to my hotel.

    As it was approaching sunset, I drove ten minutes away to another lookout point for the Gorge, called the Oxya Viewpoint.  I had it entirely to myself.  At the location of the second picture below was a stone balcony.  Just beyond the balcony was a sign saying to pass it at your own risk, with a sheer cliffside off of it, but a narrow path for I assume more views.  I read a blog stating that "of course" people went past it anyway.  Nope, not me!  That drop was insane.

    As I returned to my car, a whole bunch of people passed me on the way to the view.  I guess it was time for local shepherd's to bring in their flock of goats for the night.  I passed a few groups and stopped to take pictures.

    The Zagori towns are known for their pies.  Vegetable pies, meat pies, and cheese pies.  Here is a picture of a Mediterranean pie, which was similar in ingredients and taste to pizza.  The cheese pies are not melted mozarrella or anything like that, but a drier, crusty pie with, according to online research, feta and "mizithra" cheese, which I have never heard of.  When I was eating dinner, there was only one other couple at the restaurant.  When you order the cheese pie, they give you a massive platter of it.  As I was leaving, they insisted I take a piece.  It was excellent.

Greece 4: The strange mountains of Meteora and their monasteries

    The route to my next destination took me north, right over the mountain that housed Delphi.  I was expecting a steep drop on the other side, but it was surprisingly very flat and beautiful farmland.  The farmland quickly turned into the first real forest that I have seen in Greece.  The path eventually declined and I passed through more farmlands, with many fields filled with sunflowers.

    The destination was a town called Kastraki, a town near Meteora, a collection of unusually shaped mountains that shoot right up from the ground and are home to six still functioning monasteries.  There reportedly was up to twenty four monasteries at some point.  In addition to the six still functioning, there is one that my hotel informed me was only visited to maintain once a week and is not open to the public.

    I picked the hotel because of its reviews and view of Meteora.  Unfortunately, it was located up a single, winding road.  When I first drove in, I worried about what would happen if you were to run into someone on that same road.

    All I did in town that first night was have dinner.  It was fried courgettes with a sort of concoction to spoon on top, along with the first time I tried souvlaki, the Greek equivalent of a kebab.  I took the following pictures from my balcony.  Aside from these pictures, it was so hot and humid, that I never sat out there.

    I left the next day around eleven for a circular hike that would visit three of the functioning monasteries and would walk me past the one that didn't take visitors.  The six monasteries all have different days of operations, so one of these was having a day of rest.  I walked directly from the hotel to the beginning of the trail.

High up, in a crack in a mountain, was a ton of clothing on clotheslines.  They looked to be knotted to them.

Near the beginning of the trail, I caught sight of the first monastery that I would visit.

A second one in the distance.

    Not long into the hike, I came upon the first stop, the Holy Monastery of Saint Nicholas Anapafsas.  There was a stair path along with a winding driveway.  Each monastery had an admission of three euro.  This particular monastery was fairly small, with about four inside rooms, along with a covered and uncovered balcony, with a bell tower up top.  There were not too many visitors, but a fellow photographer struck up a conversation with me.  He is Greek and was visiting with friends from America.  He, himself, lived about an hour away, but he hadn't visited Meteora for many, many years.  He explained that they use sunflowers in their fuel and that he is involved with conservation.  The breeze from the top balcony was absolutely wonderful on what was a very hot day, reaching about ninety three degrees and humid.

This...doesn't look safe to me.

I continued the trail, which meant that I had to follow the road for a short bit before it turned off into a forest path.

You could see the remains of walls on a few perched cliffs.

This would be the second monastery that I would visit.

The path divided, and I took the rightmost trail to the Monastery of Varlaam.  This was much larger than the first one, and with much more people.  It had a small museum in the lower level and a fairly large area to walk around on the top level.

From a top level, you could see the Great Meteron Monastery.

    I returned to where the path divided, and continued up the untraveled side, which led me directly to the Great Meteoron Monastery.  I had brought two water bottled with me and was down to my last half a bottle.  I was starting to get worried, as I still had three quarters of the hike still left to go.  Although this monastery was closed(as I was informed by my hotel), the sign indicated that it should have been open.  Many people were coming down just to be turned away by the closed door.  I followed the path up until I reached the parking lot.  There were 4-5 vendors selling jewelry and knick knacks.  Drivers kept coming and turning around or parking and trying to walk down.  Luckily for me, there was a food truck.  I refilled my water.  

    I followed the road for about thirty seconds and then had to hop up onto a dirt trail.  I needn't have worried, as the first quarter of the trail that I had already done was straight up, and the rest of the trip would be at a slow and easy decline.  I encountered two to three families on the way up, but I had the rest of the hike to myself.  At first I was along the mountains, but ended up in a valley and then a forest, before exiting right near my hotel.  This is what I saw.

The always closed monastery.

    I left the hotel for dinner at a different spot, unoriginally named Stefanos Meteora Tavern.  I picked them because they had some items on the menu that I had not found elsewhere.  They had a dish called Imam Bayildi, which was an eggplant and onions in a sauce, along with bouyiourdi, which was melted feta cheese, with peppers and tomato.  Both were excellent.