Our Beautiful World


From Nowhere To Nowhere
Page 4



 

We have mentioned the goats earlier. Just how they managed to get around down here,
except for those who didn't (the skeletons), we have not found out yet, but they say
that if you are a goat, it is not as difficult....?

Speaking about goats, they were not the first one we met that day. You see, that
when we went off early in the morning, we had not yet found the path leading from
Agios Dimitrios up to Kastania, and will tell you later why...

So we had to follow the road, as shown on this map:

This picture should give you an idea on how the road curved up the hill, going
from right to left, then to the right, and again to the left, with some extra curves
behind the smaller hills. But back to the goats again.




We met them on the road up the hill above Agios Dimitrios - or they met us -
we don't really know, but anyway, they counted to more than 300 - or should
we rather say that WE counted them....

One thing did we learn up here - that knowing just a little bit of a foreign language,
is always a good thing. In greek you say 'kalimera' instead of the normal
'good morning/good day' - they like it just that way in Greece. We learned that, and when
we met the herdsman, an old friendly looking man, we said 'kalimera'.
He suddenly lightened up, and replied 'kalimera' - and then - well, he spoke
a lot of greek, we don't know what, except for one word: Patitiri.
So we thought he asked if we came all the way from the capital Patitiri. We said no.
Then we tried to tell him we came from Agios Dimitrios, and were on our way to
Stovili via Kastania, and then back again to Agios Dimitrios. Stop.
We believe he understood, and went happily further on.

On top of the hill, where we turned northwards to Kastania, we had three exciting experiences where birds where involved. First three big 'falcons' (?) called our attention with loud screems, then showing us how they rised higher and higher into the sky, dwelling on the warm airstreams
as the sun warmed up the land below.

Next two other birds of prey seemed to have upset each other, after one of them had entered
the territory of the other. Anyway, one of them didn't like the other, so he (she?)continously
dived down toward the other one, trying to hit him (her?).

The third episod was more or less like the first one.

That was early in the morning, now back to the canyon out there again.

It is still there, and as we told you before, sometimes it was quite narrow.

But when we met the english couple on the
way down, they could tell us that they had found an old path from where the road ended just north of Agios Dimitrios, and followed
that one along the coastline. It was, they told us, an old goat-track, and every 5 or 6 meters, they had to stop and take a close look to
find it furhter ahead. Also they were glad they had long trousers and socs on their legs, because of the ever closer growing thorny bushes.

Now they told us, that is was quite a lot
easier to walk upward the canyon than to
walk along the coastline, so that way we learned that it was not as bad as we just thought ourselves....


As you see from this map, showing all the way from Kastania (2,2) down to the beach,
it is not as streamlined as it looked in the book (referred to on page one).
The black dots from the beach and southwards, are the goat-track the english ones went.

  

Everything has to come to an end, but this one was a good end. Back to Kastania, we
followed the nicely stone-laid track 20 meters towards Agios Dimitrios, and then a good
path into the wood - crossed a hill - and then a road (look at the map) and finally
came to a very nice viewpoint where the tourist-office had put up a nice 'hut' to
find shadow during the hottest time of the day - and where they had put on an extremely
nice view of the ocean below, with the island of Peristria in the background.

The last half hour was through lightly densed wood on a fairly good track, which however
was getting poorer further down, and ended up as a very, very narrow, nearly
invisible track when it finally ended down on the road along the coast. But we would
not have experienced the goats and the herdsman saying 'Kalimera' on the road up
the hill in the morning, if we had found this track before. And not the falcons and the other
birds, and the xxx and the xxx and so on. But as we said, everything has to come to
an end, so here we wind it up, saying thank you for joining us.

Received from Rachel:
I enjoyed reading the story of your walk on Alonnisos - it brought back many happy memories of walks on other small Greek islands. My husband and I are going to Alonnisos for 2 weeks in September, and look forward to finding the beautiful scenery that your pictures show.
We had a similar walk on the island of Tilos two years ago. I love the heat and don't wear a hat, but Jim has a large hat with a wide brim to keep the sun off his head and neck. We both had bottles of water, although they were mostly ice, as we have learnt a good trick of putting our water bottles in the freezing part of the fridge overnight! It then remains cool throughout the day.
We had taken the pathway suggested along the coast to reach a deserted beach, where we swam and sat in the shade of one of the few trees, Jim sketching and painting a picture of the beach. Then in the afternoon we took our local map and headed back inland towards the road, using the dry river bed as our guide. We, like you, had to scramble over large boulders, and fallen trees, passing skeletons - until we came to an opening in the gorge where there was a fenced goat enclosure. We could see the path on the other side, and so climbed down a wall and into the goat enclosure. Although there was a large fairly level area in the middle, most of the animals were seemingly clinging to the cliff edge, where they could find some shade. We reached the far side of the enclosure, where there was another wall to climb up before getting through a gate in the fence. I climbed the wall easily as there were rocks protruding which I could use as steps. As I turned to wait for Jim, I saw the accident, but was just too late to prevent it - Jim climbed up and was watching where he was placing his feet and he hit his head badly on one of the protruding rocks, sending him jerking backwards, though luckily he managed to cling to the top of the wall, and with help, dragged himself onto the ledge and to standing, then stumbled to the shelter of an overhanging cliff, where there was shade. He took off his hat and blood was pouring from a gash in his head. What were we to do? No-one for miles and we had only a very basic first aid kit with us. My mind worked quickly - I reached for my frozen water and poured it over his head. It really was still like ice and the cold temperature was sufficient to stop the flow of blood. We held the bottle of iced water to the wound for a few minutes, and after a while Jim felt well enough to continue to walk. It seemed important to get back to civilisation as soon as he was able and away from the pollution of the goat enclosure!!!
On arrival at our holiday apartment, we showed Jim's painting to the local man who lived upstairs, and we were pleased that he recognised the beach. I then recounted our adventure of the goat enclosure and showed him Jim's wound - he ran upstairs and came down with iodine, which he unceremoniously poured onto Jim's head (OUCH!!). This made Jim's hair turn yellow! Then he sprayed on some white antiseptic powder! He explained that his wife was a nurse and they have these items ready for emergencies. Jim did look rather odd when we went to the taverna to eat that evening, with his crust of white hair tinged with yellow, but at least we knew he was not going to get an infection!!
Hope you don't have emergencies like this one, but remember the trick with the iced water! It's very refreshing!
Rachel

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ANIMALS

over 250

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BIRDS

over 500

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FLOWERS

over 225
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