We had a few adventures in Petrilio. I was very very tired after Niala and so when a dear little white mare emerged from the undergrowth near the road and tried to kick the shit out of George, I was in no real state to hold on to my temper. Petrilio is a diffuse village, made up of several hamlets. So, the first one we got to,with the mare following, I shouted for help. George was in a state of excitement and fear.. the kind of fear that is accompanied by admiration.. George is a low status horse, he always accepts a lowly position in the herd – except in the herd made up of him and me, where he constantly labours to get top position-and other horses always recognise this, and generally thrill him and terrify him by being dominant.
Obviously getting kicked isn`t nice, and whatever the mare wanted George to do to show subservience he couldn`t do because he couldn`t run away because I was holding on to him. So her plan was to show him who was boss. My shouts were answered when several blokes emerged from a café.
“She`s a good little horse she won`t do anything! She just wants to be friends! She`s lonely,!” They said
All of these things were true. And poor little thing she had been isolated for so long that she had no idea how to behave with other horses. It wasn`t her fault. BUT George was in danger. So like tigress defending cubs I turned on the astonished nice old men, telling them that she already HAD done something and would certainly do real damage if they didn`t do something.This wasn`t all I told them either.
Someone caught her and tied her up. George and I made good our escape . I don`t think I`d better go back to that part of Petrilio.
The next morning we went up the road til we came to where the E4 crosses it. I had a choice of where to go. I didn`t take either of the routes I had been intending to take. (a photo of the mountain I had originally intended to cross.. and no doubt SHOULD have crossed is posted.)
We stopped for lunch and while I was wandering about looking at the stupendous nature up there (see photo of orchids) I saw a sign that said “Lake Plastira”
I usually avoid very “developed” tourist areas because often their character has been destroyed, or they are full of people so you don`t see any nature. Also, of course, many beautiful places become clichés-not their fault, but clichés non the less.
I went to Egypt with a friend, and he really didn`t want to visit the pyramids for this very reason. I didn`t accept those reasons for not seeing the pyramids, and so, I felt, it was hardly right not to see Plastira. Because everybody likes something doesn`t mean its not beautiful, and interesting, after all.
We set off up the very steep track that said it went to Plastira. Sure enough, it did.
It was a fabulous day and the view was wonderful.
“I was right to come here.” I thought.
I met a guy who had just brought his sheep up to the mountain. He sold local products in a shop in a village near the lake he said. Better and better.. he produced his own cheese and added value by selling them to tourists directly through his own shop.Sustainable development in action. Giving local people the chance to stay in their place, and a chance to escape from the poverty and hopelessness of being a small farmer.
Perhaps Plastira was working for everyone.
The newly arrived sheep were sitting on the track in a state of confusion. They didn’t know where they were, or what to do there. The thing to do, they thought was to hang out and chew the cud for a while. They really didn’t want to move to let us pass. Two or three dogs barked at us, but the sheep stayed hunkered down. Then a large white dog rose up from their midst. By lying there still he had given them the confidence not to move. As soon as he moved, the sheep made way for us.
Eventually, after a dramatic descent, the track joined an asphalt road. We reached the village of Pezoula. There, apparently, you could visit a working water mill (done up with EU money) there was a café and a taverna ( grants from eu) and a shop. You could rent rooms. I didn`t want a room (just as well as they were closed) but I did need to buy food for me and for George. I passed by some women who were doing something with sheep. (This in the village) The stared at me with suspicion.
“You! What are you?”
“Where did you get that horse?”
“Where are you from?”
All using the singular form of “you” which is very rude.
I finally found the shop. There was a woman there who condescended to sell me some biscuits and other things from a mouldering supply of long past its usebydate stock she had.
Yes, the restaurant was open, she said. It looked closed to me.
But I went there.
“We`re closed” Snapped a very unpleasant fellow who had been watching telly with his mates. They were cooking something for themselves.
These places that get help from the state and the eu are supposed to stay open. He has been closed for 2 months he said. And the other place was also closed.
The woman in the shop had told me that the people who had the watermill (the same as had the sheep,) would sell me some corn for George. So I stopped there.
“Get out of here, NOW!” said the old woman.
“Don`t you dare speak to me like that!” I said.
“We don`t want your kind here”
“And what kind is that?”
Foreign. That’s`s what.
Well I was beside myself with fury and went to the absolutely unvisited by tourist water mill.
“It is a disgrace for your village that people talk like that to foreigners” I said. “You have taken foreign money, you can`t exclude foreigners.
Shame on you”! I said. “Shame on you!”
I went on down the hill til I got to Kalivia of Pezoula. Here, the horrid old man in the café in Pezoula had told me, I would find food.
I camped and walked towards the lights of the village. I passed a garage. The guy there told me that there were lots of tavernas, and I would certainly find food. This was a lie told to get rid of me.
In fact I found the shop of my friend who had the sheep up on the mountain. This did not sell cooked food but I bought cheese etc.He took his business seriously. He was trying to do a proper job. But everything he did was undermined by the unprofessional work of those all around him. There was about 8 tavernas and cafes all new, all paid for by us taxpayers, and not one open. I have put a photo of one. Here two guys were oafishly watching football. They were closed they said.. though the effort to make a salad and fry some eggs would not have been great. I could go to the next village they said. How far? 2 1/2 kms they said. It was actually, as I found out the next day at least 5 kms.. and you can verify this from the map. And yet this guy felt it was fine to suggest I walked another 10 kms. I had explained to him that I had walked at least 20 kms that day, and had travelled about 40. I obviously exhausted.
So I am posting a photo of that taverna. You`ll know not to go there.
I asked what had happened to the famous Greek hospitality.
We`ve lost our Psychi he said. The only true thing he did say.
When I asked what he would do if it turned out I was a writer, and this lack of hospitality became widely known, he said “If you were a journalist you would have contacted the Dimarchos, and he would have made sure that there was a place open..”
Which is exactly what happens, at every level, up to government level. EU inspectors are coming? Everything is as it should be. Or its someone else`s fault.
For eg, it was my fault I couldn’t get anything to eat. I wasn`t important.
How different from the attitude that a dear old lady expressed when I thanked her for her help- in a traditional old village, many miles from Plastira.
“But we are happy to help people” she said “any visitor may be Christ himself. And who would want to turn Him away?”
Almost everyone in Pezoula is the answer to that.
That I was subject to racist abuse was my fault for being foreign, I suppose.
Along from that taverna there was a periptero.
There was a lovely chap in there. I asked him if he was local. Yes he said. Why do you ask?
I told him about the harridan in Pezoula -of all my troubles. He kindly sat me down and gave me a lemonade. Told me not to worry about racist oldladies and lazy goodfornothing taverna owners. After a while I felt strong enough to go back to camp.
The next morning I packed up and set off to follow the track my map told me went along the shores of the lake. I called in at the shop of my sheepowning friend. He told me that because the lake was so high, the track was submerged. I hadn`t actually seen the lake from close, but I asked where to go to do so. George was photographed outside the shop. The photo is on his website. I went to pay my respects to the guy in the periptero, and then went on down a road to the lake shore. I found myself in an odd place.. I later found out that it is going to be for processing water for big hotels on the mountain side.. chlorine and everything. There will be no more buildings on this site. The reason such a HUGE area of pasture has been scraped up is not easy to understand. Apparently the land has been donated by the Dimarchio,and so they needed to “clear” it. Er why?
Some rudimentary atavistic knowledge has meant that “trees” have not been cleared. By trees I mean oaks. Hawthorn and wild pear do not count as trees so are cleared.
Even among the educated middle classes in Greece there is an unhappy lack of knowledge about biodiversity. I have personal reasons to regret this, because this ignorance cause me a great deal of upset in the so called editing of the Greek version of my book for Arkturos. Changes were made to the text so that it is now peppered with errors. The changes were made as a result of faulty assumptions about how the environment works. They expressed a way of thinking that hasn`t been current in environmental theory in the rest of Europe since the 1970s. And yet, in 2010 it is still taken as mainstream by a member of the intelligentsia, who works at the university, and has been involved with environmental education for many years. So, we can hardly be surprised that grasslands and wild trees are treated with such lack of respect by ordinary members of the public.After all we can`t expect them to be more educated than the people who are supposed to be educating them… Not being surprised is one thing though. Not being worried and upset by it is quite another.
The grass by the lake was lovely. The place(apart from the part made desert by order of the Dimarchos) was so full of life that I went into a kind of ecstasy. I just unpacked George and set about exploring this extraordinary place.
The main interest was in insects that live near water. I had just heard that in China women who have a career instead of having a family are called dragonflies. This awakened an interest in these fierce beautiful insects, and I have posted a couple of photos. Since I haven`t got a career, and also am not a lethally effective killer, like dragonflies are, I decided I am not a dragonfly ,even though I haven`t got a husband and family.
I spent the whole day in a kind of dream. The patches of thyme were actually crawling with so much life that they were in constant motion. Butterflies fluttering, bees fumbling for pollen, all kinds of small forms of life swarming over the flowers. Quite extraordinary.
I also watched damselflies. These are beautiful in a less sharklike way than dragonflies. These were laying eggs and pairing..
Barbie doesn`t know about sex..well at least is she does its not because of Ken, the boyfriend you can buy for her, because, the last I heard, he lacks the equipment needed for such activities , and so probably she would be shocked by the lascivious behaviour of these insects, even though their lovely colours do dazzle and attract like jewels, and are the colours that attract Barbie..
The next morning I went prospecting for more nature and I found a female tortoise digging a hole for her nest. She started early,as soon as it was warm enough to get her vital systems working. From the photo you can see how VERY unsuitable a tortoise`s construction is for hole digging. But she doggedly kept on, digging with her hind legs, for hours. By midday it became too hot for her, and she had to abandon her task and seek shade. In the evening she would return and finish the job.
On the ride I found many tortoise nests. You can locate them because when the tiny tortoises hatch you can find the egg shells near the surface of the ground. I greatly fear that many of these nests had been predated, and the tortoises had been eaten before they hatched. The nests of turtles on the Greek sea shores are very often predated by dogs, and foxes are much better hunters than dogs…
At about midday we set off in the direction of Musaki. All along the road were new hotels and cafes and restaurants. All new. Many already shoddy.
All empty. All paid for by me and you.
By evening we got to Musaki. Sanity. A real place with real people and proper respect for themselves and therefore others. I can`t tell you how glad I was to be there.
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