lefkos, finiki & arkassa
Saturday September 2nd
For the last few days, I'd been sleeping on a beach in the little cove of Lefkos and already I had itchy feet. It was time to take a look further down the coast at Finiki, which also sits on the edge of the sea, about a dozen kilometres south along the mountainous coastal road - "It's not far. A bus ride. But nothing there." - according to Nikitas, my new found Lefkos friend, whose taverna overlooks the beach where I'd been sleeping. He couldn't understand why on earth I'd want to leave his idyll and waste time wandering round Finiki but I was curious and, anyway, I could be back on the
Wednesday bus.
At first the journey was fairly uneventful until I looked out of the window and saw the earth getting further and further away and realised our old tin can was ambling up a narrow mountain track. I don't mind flying through the air but hitting the ground does not have quite the same appeal, so I put all my concentration onto the little plastic number tag on the seat in front and tried to control my imagination. No use, every few seconds I had to steal a glance at the ferocious Aegean pounding the shoreline way, way below and listen to the lady behind me chanting, "Oh, Theus! Oh, Theus! Oh, Theus!" - quite an alarming introduction to quiet little Finiki for wimps like me. Then, if things weren't bad enough, we reached that point when you stop climbing and through the front windscreen there is nothing to see but sky. A terrified hush filled the bus as we swung to the left leaving a gaping empty space on our right. For what seemed like hours our driver hugged the mountain wall until he eased our bus into a steady descent and that's when it was suddenly filled with explosive yatterings and prayers of thanks - even from the locals.
In no time at all we were down on the flat and our bus chugged to a stop all safe and sound and happy again. Someone was cooking kalimari. We thanked our saviour driver and some of us even shoved money into his shirt pocket in gratitude for safe arrival (mmm...). Personally, I was more than ready for a large, restorative lemonade.
Although once a modest fishing settlement, now Finiki seemed to be full of flashy plastic furniture like a primary school playground and I could see why Nikitas thought I might prefer something less obvious. So to stay or not to stay, that was the question. Perhaps the next town, Arkassa, would be more interesting - and yet, the very naivete, the evening light, the shore, perhaps I should simply let it be.
So I had a look around and found two interesting possibilities for low-key camping. One was a rather obvious leeward cave shouting over the village square and the other was an on-the-outskirts-less-obtrusive-very-detached type encampment and on a hill overlooking the sea.
This took the form of a cast-iron double bedstead (on the left in the picture)! I found it waiting outside an isolated and abandoned old stone house on the side of a hill and with no footsteps in the sand except my own. On the bed frame itself were three double mattresses, unbelievably clean and dry. I turned the top one over, spread out my sleeping bag to air and stowed my pack and snorkelling stuff underneath and already it felt like home. Now, time to follow the highway to Arkassa and have a bite to eat. Everything else could wait until tomorrow.
From the first I liked Arkassa. It is an unusual, unpretentious town built on opposite banks of a dried up old river crossed by a rickety bridge and bowlegged walkways joining the two. The air was clear and everything smelled of rock and coffee and herbs. In the main square alone there were four kafeneia and a minimarket. It had a wide beach offering a wide horizon where one could marvel at the raw crimson sun fading to a tiny dot. There were shops and flowers, neat houses and alleyways and the whole place fair bustled with life.
Round the central square were scattered wooden chairs where people sat in an orange evening sunset and talked and passed the time of day and the sound of their voices tickled my mood and my mountain horrors soon dissolved. Just off the square was a taverna named, 'The Restaurant Petaluda', the Butterfly Restaurant, and it was while waiting for my dinner that I had the most pleasurable sensation of feeling at home. I happened to catch the eye of the owner and felt so amused by the whole experience that I had to compliment him on his beautiful town and restaurant. He was so delighted he turned and called over his shoulder into the kitchen, "Hurry with the souvlakia and potatas for the English!"
My dinner arrived and I enjoyed the best souvlakia on sticks I had ever tasted although there was far more meat than chips but really, all was delicious, tasty, tender and very too much.
To me, the kafeneion, is the heart of rural life in Greece and across the square from the Petaluda was one such haven. It was called 'Kafeneion Biktoria Kamaratoy'. I went there to relax and write up my notes over a bottle of the local Retsina wine. And it was there that I sat in the company of wild, romantic Greeks, flaying the very air with their humour and their drama as slowly, I confess, I became a little squiffy and smiley and nodded sleepily as they included me in their madness. I have to say I did very little writing.
And oh yes, I was very pleased to be actually sleeping on a double bed instead of on the unforgiving sandstone slab that I'd grown accustomed to on the beach at Lefkos. Also, I realised that by stashing my stuff under the bed camp at cosy Finiki, walking the modern highway and playing with the bustley Arkassa, I might have found the best of both worlds.
Drifting off to sleep, I was back in Lefkos at the gentle Cambio Money Exchange waiting for it to open. It sits on the rim of the beach and you can't help but be beguiled by the whispering wash of the tide and its foreplay with the pebbles on the shore and all this beneath a clear blue sunny sky.
In the next second a blood-curdling screech ripped through my reverie wrenching me back to Finiki in a flash! A pride of screaming mad pumas were bickering somewhere down in the depths of the village darkness, or it may just have been some tomcats, but either way, as soon as the noise died down, I fell asleep again at once.
www.grecofilia.co.uk
© Grecofilia | created at www.mrsite.com
my four day tour
sabbatoSaturday September 2nd
"Avrio, Tony. See you tomorrow. OK?" He grinned and continued mending his fishing nets. "I doubt it, Nikitas. There's no bus tomorrow!" "Listen to me, my friend. You spend half an hour in plastiki Finiki and you'll be so glad to leave, you'll walk back - you might even run!"
For the last few days, I'd been sleeping on a beach in the little cove of Lefkos and already I had itchy feet. It was time to take a look further down the coast at Finiki, which also sits on the edge of the sea, about a dozen kilometres south along the mountainous coastal road - "It's not far. A bus ride. But nothing there." - according to Nikitas, my new found Lefkos friend, whose taverna overlooks the beach where I'd been sleeping. He couldn't understand why on earth I'd want to leave his idyll and waste time wandering round Finiki but I was curious and, anyway, I could be back on the
Wednesday bus. At first the journey was fairly uneventful until I looked out of the window and saw the earth getting further and further away and realised our old tin can was ambling up a narrow mountain track. I don't mind flying through the air but hitting the ground does not have quite the same appeal, so I put all my concentration onto the little plastic number tag on the seat in front and tried to control my imagination. No use, every few seconds I had to steal a glance at the ferocious Aegean pounding the shoreline way, way below and listen to the lady behind me chanting, "Oh, Theus! Oh, Theus! Oh, Theus!" - quite an alarming introduction to quiet little Finiki for wimps like me. Then, if things weren't bad enough, we reached that point when you stop climbing and through the front windscreen there is nothing to see but sky. A terrified hush filled the bus as we swung to the left leaving a gaping empty space on our right. For what seemed like hours our driver hugged the mountain wall until he eased our bus into a steady descent and that's when it was suddenly filled with explosive yatterings and prayers of thanks - even from the locals.
In no time at all we were down on the flat and our bus chugged to a stop all safe and sound and happy again. Someone was cooking kalimari. We thanked our saviour driver and some of us even shoved money into his shirt pocket in gratitude for safe arrival (mmm...). Personally, I was more than ready for a large, restorative lemonade.
Although once a modest fishing settlement, now Finiki seemed to be full of flashy plastic furniture like a primary school playground and I could see why Nikitas thought I might prefer something less obvious. So to stay or not to stay, that was the question. Perhaps the next town, Arkassa, would be more interesting - and yet, the very naivete, the evening light, the shore, perhaps I should simply let it be.
So I had a look around and found two interesting possibilities for low-key camping. One was a rather obvious leeward cave shouting over the village square and the other was an on-the-outskirts-less-obtrusive-very-detached type encampment and on a hill overlooking the sea.
This took the form of a cast-iron double bedstead (on the left in the picture)! I found it waiting outside an isolated and abandoned old stone house on the side of a hill and with no footsteps in the sand except my own. On the bed frame itself were three double mattresses, unbelievably clean and dry. I turned the top one over, spread out my sleeping bag to air and stowed my pack and snorkelling stuff underneath and already it felt like home. Now, time to follow the highway to Arkassa and have a bite to eat. Everything else could wait until tomorrow.
From the first I liked Arkassa. It is an unusual, unpretentious town built on opposite banks of a dried up old river crossed by a rickety bridge and bowlegged walkways joining the two. The air was clear and everything smelled of rock and coffee and herbs. In the main square alone there were four kafeneia and a minimarket. It had a wide beach offering a wide horizon where one could marvel at the raw crimson sun fading to a tiny dot. There were shops and flowers, neat houses and alleyways and the whole place fair bustled with life.
Round the central square were scattered wooden chairs where people sat in an orange evening sunset and talked and passed the time of day and the sound of their voices tickled my mood and my mountain horrors soon dissolved. Just off the square was a taverna named, 'The Restaurant Petaluda', the Butterfly Restaurant, and it was while waiting for my dinner that I had the most pleasurable sensation of feeling at home. I happened to catch the eye of the owner and felt so amused by the whole experience that I had to compliment him on his beautiful town and restaurant. He was so delighted he turned and called over his shoulder into the kitchen, "Hurry with the souvlakia and potatas for the English!"
My dinner arrived and I enjoyed the best souvlakia on sticks I had ever tasted although there was far more meat than chips but really, all was delicious, tasty, tender and very too much.
To me, the kafeneion, is the heart of rural life in Greece and across the square from the Petaluda was one such haven. It was called 'Kafeneion Biktoria Kamaratoy'. I went there to relax and write up my notes over a bottle of the local Retsina wine. And it was there that I sat in the company of wild, romantic Greeks, flaying the very air with their humour and their drama as slowly, I confess, I became a little squiffy and smiley and nodded sleepily as they included me in their madness. I have to say I did very little writing.
Later, in strolling back along the coast road towards Finiki, its telegraph poles above me glimmering in the same way the columns of the Parthenon do at night, I could clearly see the orderly white buildings sprinkled around the bay and over the hills that edge the shoreline with its boats. The narrow strip of road that peels off the highway and curls through the village stood out in the moonlight like a lustrous silver ribbon, and somewhere above, out of sight of the village and high on a hill, in a green field overlooking the sea, my bedcamp sat patiently waiting alongside the old stone house, guarded by the lovely white-washed chapel of Agia Nikolaos. I promised not to be too late.
Coming off that road, I fell into a seat at the first kafeneion in the village, 'O Nikos', with it's uncommon formal atmosphere and unsmiling owner, and yet it was there, whilst sipping my nightcap and reading my notes that I realised Finiki is wonderful at night, absolutely lonely, with the softest air I have ever known, perhaps the very breath of the Dodecanese. The crystalline waters, the flower displays, the statuesque cypresses standing above the olive trees, the openness of the people, the old and the new, even the bright plastic chairs, where would I have been without them? Then I looked down at my legs and saw how hairy and golden brown they'd become and realised I hadn't actually worn any long trousers for over two months but more importantly it was not just my body that was changing, but my outlook. So I was slowing down into Finiki and already looking forward to a daily dilly-dally to and from Arkassa.And oh yes, I was very pleased to be actually sleeping on a double bed instead of on the unforgiving sandstone slab that I'd grown accustomed to on the beach at Lefkos. Also, I realised that by stashing my stuff under the bed camp at cosy Finiki, walking the modern highway and playing with the bustley Arkassa, I might have found the best of both worlds.
Drifting off to sleep, I was back in Lefkos at the gentle Cambio Money Exchange waiting for it to open. It sits on the rim of the beach and you can't help but be beguiled by the whispering wash of the tide and its foreplay with the pebbles on the shore and all this beneath a clear blue sunny sky.
In the next second a blood-curdling screech ripped through my reverie wrenching me back to Finiki in a flash! A pride of screaming mad pumas were bickering somewhere down in the depths of the village darkness, or it may just have been some tomcats, but either way, as soon as the noise died down, I fell asleep again at once.
www.grecofilia.co.uk
©2010 - PERMISSION TO COPY. The content of this website is the Copyright of Tony Brown and is protected by international copyright law. You are welcome to copy it for personal or non profit, or educational purposes only and you have my permission to do so, provided it is copied and re-published in its entirety complete with copyright notice and website address. If you wish to copy it for electronic publication on an intranet, website, blog or Newsletter you may do so provided the article is copied and re-published in it's entirety with all html, copyright information and hyperlinks intact and unaltered in any way with no redirects. If you wish to copy it for any other purpose please contact me for permission first. tony@grecofilia.co.uk
© Grecofilia | created at www.mrsite.com