gasping

We land at Poros island and cycle straight to a little beach where we can camp in an olive grove.  The island is tiny but hilly, as we discover the next day.  We know there are other nice beaches and find a good dirt track that takes us on a traverse above the coast and out to a little cove of a beach.  It's down a footpath and quite isolated.  It's perfect.  It's paradise. 

We are only just getting settled when an older Dutch couple arrive.  They both strip and the man starts padding around the small beach collecting rubbish.  He also has a rake and a shovel and while I can't bring myself to look at him, in the eye or anywhere else for that matter, Gayle cheerfully engages him in conversation.  They live here.  He is the unofficial caretaker of the beach. He is bothered by the dead goat caught on a rock in the water.  He drags it to the beach and bags it into a black bin bag.  "It isn't a goat", he shouts out, "it's a cat!" I look up in horror, the stench of the bloated carcass wafting over, just as the naked man walks past carrying the bin bag to a dump.  Perfect? Paradise?  What a fool I am.  There's no such thing.

these hairy caterpillars live in the dwarf oak trees and are toxic.  The roads on Poros were covered in their trails.  Friends tell us only the leader can see.

The next day we ride the ten minute ferry over to the mainland and set off up the coast.  We're looking for a little road that cuts inland around the back of the ancient Greek site of Epidavros/Epidaurus.  We want to avoid the main roads where we can.  Mid-afternoon we come to the junction and look up at a mountain.  Somewhere high above we can see a road sign.  This indicates where the road is heading: up, up, up.  It's a vicious and steep climb softened by occasional hairpin bends.  Halfway up a man stops in his car near to a house and tells me he used to cycle this road three times a week, as part of a loop.  Why did he stop?  He's young, but rather portly.  Children, he explains.  Not feeling like hardcore fitness fanatics, we continue up to a village resting on a saddle.  Some children playing in a park show us the tap to collect water.  And then we scoot away and find a lovely little camping spot in a grassy clearing above the road.  Sleep well.

looking back on our climb from the coast

trying to find the back way to Epidaurus - in the end we go via the road

 Epidaurus is famous for its theatre, which is still used for festivals of ancient Greek theatre.  It seats 14,000 a Spanish woman tells us, as we sit up in the cheap seats.  She has a guide.  We don't.  We watch as different tour groups arrive and take seats as their guide then stands centre stage and claps loudly to demonstrate the marvellous acoustics.  It's unoriginal and a bit repetitive and frankly, for 6 euros, I was expecting a better show.  It turns out that the theatre was merely the entertainment for the patients who came here in search of a cure.  It seems the place was really a kind of health spa resort.  

 Out beyond the car park (a recent addition) are the ruins of the main complex, with baths, temples, stadium, fountains and wards for the sick.  Fascinating stuff - there was only one other such complex, an Asklepion, and it's on the island of Kos, dedicated to the healing powers and cult of Asclepius.  Strangely I enjoy the ruins much more than the theatre, which has survived well.  On our way back from the ruins a man hurries up and looks over our shoulders, asking desperately "Is there anything to see?"  How do you answer such a question?  "Nah, it's just a load of stones." Instead we smile mischeviously, but answer honestly. "Everything."

It's downhill to Nafplio in the morning - a reward for all our climbing in the previous two days.  The town is a little touristy and we decide to stay a night because it has a pretty old town.  We wonder if there are are many such towns left in mainland Greece.  It sits on the eastern side of a large gulf and is overshadowed by a large fortification on the prominent hill next to it.  We cook our tea in the bathroom of our guesthouse.  So decadent.

the high life - pasta a la nafplio

Around the unintersting shoreline of the gulf we find our road into the main mountains of the Peleponnese.  We know it veers off the main highway to Tripoli but two farmworkers bar our way.  Behind them we can see the valley we want to take, but they are adamant that we should not go on.  We tell them names of villages on the road ahead.  Soon the younger one phones someone, maybe his boss. A friendly vpoice asks where we want to go.  I tell him a village name.  He tells us to go back to the main road andcontinue three hundred metres to the next turn off.  I give the phone back to the farmhand and we thank them for saving us a wrong turn.   The correct road is a delight.  Barely any traffic, it follows up a valley beside an old railtrack and then climbs steeply and swiftly.  A woman on a road bike cycles past.  She's not Greek, but we guess she lives here.  

After numerous switchbacks and plenty of huffing and puffing we stop at a stream.  We are surrounded by steep mountainsides terraced with olives.  It's a terrific sight of human endeavour.  Somewhere someone is pruning the trees with a chainsaw.  We pass a sign indicating the olive groves are organic and push onto one of the terraces to camp.  We love olive terraces.